The Story of the Night by Colm Toibin Review

This is a novel set in Argentina in the 1980s about a young gay man called Richard who is half Argentinian and half English.
Following the death of his father, Richard is brought up by his proudly English mother, and as he comes to adulthood he continues living with her in their low rent apartment, working at an undistinguished job at a language school. He lives a quiet, somewhat lonely life, satisfying his sexual urges with furtive, anonymous visits to saunas.

Although the "disappearances" - the secret arrests, torture and probable murders of political dissidents goes on around him, he claims, in retrospect, to have very little awareness of this and is later shamed when angrily challenged that he must have known about the disappearance of a girl he studied with. He seems to move through his world in a kind of fog, to be curiously disengaged. Ironically, it is when he is caught up in the patriotic fervour of Argentina's war with Britain that he feels truly and proudly Argentinian. That he is both of Argentina and yet something of an outsider, speaking perfect English, with an English accent is what draws the attention of an American diplomatic couple Susan and Donald who find work for him, when he finally walks out of the hated language school. Although his life takes on a new dimension, he still remains within his mother's fusty apartment, which he neglects to alter in any way, though he feels embarassed on the rare occasions he brings anyone back. The apartment seems to symbolise some kind of refusal to grow up, to fully live in the world.

Through the first two thirds of the book, we watch Richard floating on the edges of power, of the changes that are taking place in his country, partly through his agency. He remains fairly apolitical, though he is sickened when Susan confesses that she and her husband were in Chile, during the time of Pinochet's brutal repression and did nothing. Through Richard's eyes we gains some interesting impressions of Argentina during that period, though always from a certain distance.

In the last third of the book, the tone changes, becomes more focused and gripping, as Richard finally becomes emotionally engaged and is astonished to experience love, happiness and vulnerability. Harsh realities intrude but he does finally repaint his apartment and we get the sense he is finally, fully alive fully himself.

A delicate, subtle, sad and romantic book, whose meandering progress mimics the drifting quality of the hero's life and somehow draws you deep into the world of this elusive individual.

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters Review

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters


This is one of the books I got on a 3 for 2 offer, using a kindly Christmas GiftCard. Sarah Waters is one of my favourite contemporary writers. She plunges one very vividly into dark, gothic Victorian landscapes with intricate plots and, in Affinity and Fingersmith at least, an undertow of despair. I didn’t get on so well with The Night Watch, the book completed just previously to this one and set in the Second World War, but that may be because I was sulking about being so briskly weaned off the claustrophobic Victorian Gothic I so enjoyed. Perhaps I will reread it soon.

The Little Stranger is set in the Post-war period, but is very gothic indeed.

The surviving members of the Ayres family: Mrs Ayres, her son Roderick and her daughter Caroline live in Warwickshire in the once elegant Hundreds Hall, an eighteenth century mansion, now in a state of decay. They are visited by a Dr Faraday, who is called in to attend upon the servant.

Central to this book is the depiction of the changes in the social fabric of Britain in the Post-War period. The Ayres family and Dr Faraday can be seen as representative of the old order and the new. The Ayres are, in some sense, dinosaurs, struggling to maintain their crumbling mansion, but living on a level of genteel poverty and hardship that the working class families, who are moving into the council flats with all mod cons that are being built nearby, would no longer expect to tolerate. Dr Faraday, by contrast, is the son of a servant, who has achieved the middle class status of doctor through his ability, hard work and great sacrifices on the part of his parents. The old order still holds sway however: it is something of a shock to learn that the Ayres keep a fourteen year old girl as their live-in drudge. It would be a year or so yet before the school leaving age was raised to 16.

Following Dr. Faraday’s initial professional visit, he gradually becomes an indispensable friend of the family and a witness to the troubles which descend upon their heads.

As misfortunes are visited upon the family, the increasingly omnipresent Dr Faraday struggles to reassure them that there can only be rational explanations for the happenings that plague the Ayres, in the face of their growing insistence that the house is tenanted by some uncanny evil. Their struggle to hold on to the decaying mansion with its closed off, derelict apartments becomes more desperate even as this reader, at least, could not help inwardly urging the characters to just pack up and leave. The family’s efforts to keep up appearances and maintain their status arouses both sympathy and exasperation. Caroline the sister is an intelligent, capable woman, who enjoyed life in the WRENS, during the War. She is seemingly doomed to spinsterhood, being a plain awkward woman in her middle twenties. She wanders around the countryside with her dog, picking berries and helping with the milking. It doesn’t seem to occur to her that she could simply get a job and bring in an income. Roderick, a once bright and promising young man, was seriously physically and mentally scarred by a “smash” in the RAF. His life is bedevilled by great mounds of paperwork on his desk that represent the financial troubles of Hundreds Hall.

Discussion of social analysis in the novel must not detract from the fact that this is a genuinely scary, creepy book. The atmosphere of the decaying old mansion and its inhabitants, marooned in time is brilliantly evoked by Caroline’s reference to the fact that the stopped stable clock was once playfully manipulated by them as children so that it matches the permanently stopped clock of Miss Havisham. Even at an early stage in the narrative Caroline recognises that the joke has worn distinctly unfunny.

The atmosphere is quite similar to that of Affinity, where uncanny events are afoot and there is an atmosphere of malevolence, but unlike in Affinity, we are not provided with a rational explanation at the end, or not one that conforms to contemporary ideas about what is rational. Reminiscent of Poe’s Fall of the House of Usher and also, to me, of stories like Maupassant’s The Horla in which the reader has a rather clearer apprehension than the narrator that all is far from being well. Very much recommended.

Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino Review

At the moment I am enjoying rereading "Grotesque" by Natsuo Kirino. It is a compelling and disturbing book focusing on the twisted lives of a group of young women who attended "Q" an elite school/university (apparently the two can be combined in Japan) in which there is a polarisation between the super rich girls who have been there since elementary school and the hard working less privileged girls who are admitted later through their hard work. Like her previous novel "Out" it is a dark tale but with characters that appeal even less to the reader's sympathy. In the earlier novelthere was at least initially a grizzly cameraderie between the group of women factory workers as they rallied round their friend. In this novel the principle protaganist is almost entirely unsympathetic as she coldly watches and even gratuitously hastens the disintegration of those around her. She is a lonely and twisted character, deeply affected by the constant comparisons made between her and her beautiful sister Yuriko. Prostitution and murder blights the lives of the other main female characters. A friend of mine who had enjoyed "Out" was repelled by this novel seeing it as self-hating and anti-feminist. To me the novel seemed instead an angry indictment of the competitive, image obssessed society that shaped and distorted these women. The initially over-achieving character who ends by taking a bizzarre pride in the fact that she juggles being a business woman and a prostitute seems to mirror the twin expectations of  and pressures upon women in contempory society to be both beautiful and sexually appealing while at the same time be successful career women. Glossy magazines such as Cosmopolitan exhort women to not only work hard but look good, go to the gym, buy the right products, cook the right meals and have sex with an equally successful if less well groomed male in a variety of positions. The prostitute/businesswoman character who boasts of her career to sexual clients and sneers at her female colleagues for not venturing into the world of prostitution is indeed a grotesque image of someone trying to meet all the expectations thrown at the modern woman.

Another aspect of the novel that I really enjoyed was the vivid portrait of the Chinese character Zheng's life in a remote Chinese village and his epic and horrendous train journey to the big port city to find work. The novelist brings the world of a snobbish private girl's school and the world of a desperately poor immigrant to life with an equally unflinching eye.

The Burning of Bridget Cleary

Been reading a fascinating if disturbing book "The Burning of Bridget Cleary" (Angela Bourke 1999). It explores a bizzarre and notorious case occurring in Tipperary in 1895 in which a woman was burned to death by her huband, accompanied by a group of her own relatives. They apparently believed that the Bridget, who had been in bed for some days sick with bronchitis, had been stolen by the fairies and what remained in the bed was a Changeling or substitute. By burning the Changeling, the hope was that the imposter would be driven out and the real Bridget would return.

While it is impossible to get to the bottom of what really went on that night - were the bystanders really as helpless as they claimed to prevent Patrick's burning of his wife - why was a fairly common folk belief acted upon to such scarcely precedented extremes? - the book explores the event from a number of interesting angles.

The incident and responses to the incident illustrated the gulf between two worlds existing side by side - Victorian Modernity with its Police Force, telegraph, compulsory schooling, doctors and "rationality" and the thought world of the Irish rural peasantry with its complex lore about fairies, fairy doctors and other supernatural elements. Bourke explores whether talk about such things always equated with a literal belief in them or whether talking about fairies was a coded way of dealing with problems of daily life. The rejection of disabled children for example was explained or excused by raising the possibility that the child was not the parents' real offspring but a Changeling. Saying that a woman was away with the fairies could be hinting in fact at her infidelity. Bridget Cleary was known to be "haughty"; a smartly dressed, attractive milliner with her own Singer Sewing Machine and a flourishing poultry business. Was the assault upon her in part initially intended merely to humble her?
Much of the British and Irish press, in particular those of Unionist sympathies leapt on this story as evidence of how unfit the Irish clearly were for Home Rule, comparing them with those in further flung regions of the British Empire. Victorian racist discourse was ready to see the Irish as possessed of an inherent inferiority that would preclude self government. By coincidence the Oscar Wilde trial was simultaneously taking place in London and was also used against the Irish - if an anglicised and educated Irishman such as Oscar Wilde was incapable of conforming to Victorian norms what hope was there for his less privileged countrymen?
Of course this was also a period in which Irish folklore was becoming a source of interest to scholars particularly of a nationalist bent. W B Yeats and Lady Gregory were questioning countryfolk and recording their stories about fairies and the like. Lady Gregory emphasised that ill treatment of suspected Changelings was actually disapproved of in traditional fairy-lore - any abuse meted out to the fairy impostor was liable to be visited in vengeance upon the abductee. In that way such lore could in fact act as a safety valve urging tolerance of and explaining the behaviour of family members who might be suffering from periods of mental ill health such as post-natal depression - the person was "not themself" but with patience and kindness they might be hoped to return to themselves. As we know standard Victorian treatment of the mentally ill could be a lot less "civilised".

Genji Monogatari

Currently reading The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu - a substantial novel from tenth century japan. It's a lovely volume with accompanying woodcuts. It is one of those books that I have been trying to read off and on for years now - I read a little of it, get distracted, come back to it, start again and so on. In part I blame the size of the thing - it's too big to casually walk around with to the bathroom or  as a work-book i.e a book to be read on the train to and from work and at lunchtimes (very anti social I know).

I suppose also the culture of Heian Japan is often baffleing. People get upset about very obscure things, such as hearing the coarse  voices of ordinary people from within the house but seem to accept being abducted and possibly raped (it isn't quite clarified) as fairly normal if potentially embarassing. I suppose the more I read, the more I will understand. Interestingly though I find Heian women's accounts of their real lives are by no means so alarming as in this fictional creation. I can't see Sei Shonagon tolerating strange men (even princes) carrying her off in the middle of the night. It seems a bizarre conceit as well that these women are depicted as so small and frail that they can just be picked up and carried around like dolls or infants. All sorts of questions could be raised here about women writers and readers and the propensity in certain circumstances to romanticise a less liberated state than the one actually prevailing. Look at the craze a few years ago for wretched Bridget Jones and love of all things Jane Austen.

Went charity shop foraging again yesterday and came away with purple and black cotton/silk dress knee length and also rather serious full length black linen dress with lots of buttons.

"The Sundering Flood" Part Two

Finished "The Sundering Flood". As expected all turned out happily.. The last section of the book was primarily dedicated to filling in what happened to Elfhild following her abduction. Having in fact been kidnapped by a scurrilous and cowardly merchant who had lustful designs upon her, Elfhild is rescued by a chivalrous knight who is in love with her. Elfhild honourably warns him that her heart is given to another but he redeems her nonetheless and maintains her as a guest in his castle until he is killed in battle and Elfhild must flee from the cruelty and displeasure of the good knight's unpleasant mother. The striking thing about Elfhild's adventures is that while she is a largely passive figure herself - a beautiful noble object to be handed from one person to another - it is in fact an old witch who is active on her behalf. This "carline" uses all manner of trickery and magic to protect and further the interests of Elfhild, despite having no family relationship to her. She is a sort of surrogate grandmother replacing the two female relatives who were first rather uncaring guardians of Elfhild and then in turn died, leaving her alone other than this old woman. It is interesting that Morris chooses to make his heroine rather helpless and (at least in this section of the narrative) characterless while allowing an elderly woman to be wise and resourceful in her stead.

"Steelhead" reappears again, like a deus ex machina, to save the life of Osberne when he was treacherously set upon by enemies in a deserted place. He scares off his assailants and then carries the badly wounded Osberne to one of those healing hermits most beloved of Arthurian legend. Steelhead, though courteous, expresses some scepticism as to the validity of the hermit's Christian faith. This confirms the impression that Steelhead belongs to some older pagan tradition. His patronage of Osberne recalls to some degree the patronage of gods to Homeric heroes but I suspect his origins could be better found in a study of Norse or Germanic lore which was a subject of particular interest to Morris.

Osberne and Elfhild live out their lives happily at Osberne's old farmstead, scorning any grander fate despite Osberne's great renown. Osberne specifically forswears any further dabbling in knightly adventures. The life of the yeoman is to be preferred to that of the knight or noble.

An engaging and mysterious tale.

"My thoughts on The Sundering Flood" Part One

I am currently reading The Sundering Flood by William Morris. It was dictated from his deathbed and published posthumously in 1897. The novel is important as a work of proto-fantasy fiction; although it is strongly influenced by medieval romance, it differs in being set in an entirely imaginary alternative world.

The work is written in a somewhat tortured pseudo-medieval style which can be irritating particularly at first. One of the great pleasures of reading works written in Middle English is the sometimes startling freshness and directness of phrase.

It tells of the adventures of a young man Osberne a shepherd boy in a remote village which is cut off from its nearest community by an impassible channel of water - the "Sundering Flood". The boy early shows his prowess and hardihood by the slaying of wolves that harried his family's flocks. He also meets a young girl, a shepherdess who lives on the other side of the Sundering Flood so the two can only communicate across the abyss. There is a strong pastoral tone to their early innocent meetings, strongly reminiscient of Longus' Daphnis and Chloe. Osberne also has a mysterious otherworldly ally, wierdly called Steelhead, who gives him sword and arrows of supernatural deadliness and accuracy. Although Osberne is only a young man, his fame grows as his high deeds mount but things are brought to a head when his girlfriend is carried off by raiders. Osberne leaves his farmstead on a quest to recover the maiden and this leads to his serving under a noble knight and aiding him in his wars (once he is convinced they are just wars and that the innocent will be spared from slaughter). True to his socialistic principles, Morris depicts the farmers' son refusing the offer of a knighthood and also aiding his patron in ridding a neighbouring kingdom of its king and setting up a commonwealth run by guilds. He is no closer however to finding Elfhilda and after five years of having no news of her is ready to give up and return home. I shall see what happens next.