April 1, 2026 · 8:38 pm

Other People: Celia Dale (1964)

“What happens to other people can happen to you too. There’s nothing special about any of us, no special law that says one person has it good all the time.”

In Celia Dale’s novel, Other People, 15 year-old June Baxter lives with her mother who owns and operates a small corner shop in the small town of Havenport. Life has been very predictable and good. June and her mother live above the shop and June helps out after school. It’s just been the two of them for as long as June can remember. Mrs Baxter is always there for June, supporting her in every aspect of her life:

The absolute security of her mother’s presence, that fed, clothed and provided, loved, had made it unnecessary for June to ever fear anything, even to concern herself with anything outside the absorbing world of her own interests.

June’s father is absent, and she’s told he’s in Australia due to poor health and is in a “sanatorium” There are letters and photos locked up somewhere, but since there are no memories of life with both parents, June rarely thinks of him or what life must have been like before Havenport. She “used to ask about him,” but even curiosity has faded.

Life changes abruptly, however, when Mrs.Baxter announces that her husband is returning, and since they need a ‘fresh start,’ she’s sold the shop and they are moving to Bristol. Mrs Baxter has already bought a new home and a new shop, and June must leave her school and her friends behind. During the “adjustment” period (June’s father returning) June is to stay with Auntie Norah, her mother’s best friend, who’s a nurse in London. June is shocked at the sudden upheaval but the promise of change makes the future seem exciting.

Once in Bristol, June is terribly unhappy. Her world is ripped apart. She dislikes the new school and can’t make friends. She was the centre of her mother’s world (or so she thought) and now there’s a rival. She dislikes her father and sees him as an intruder. She is distressed by her mother’s obvious delight that he is home. June realises she hates him:

I hate his voice or I hate his feeble jokes or even, with exaltation, I hate him because he and mum laugh together–this was a dangerous hate, often bringing tears. She would lie sobbing into her pillow, quietly yet hoping perhaps to be overheard.

June, a girl with a great imagination, rebels against the new family structure.. She’s right on the cusp of discovering her sexuality when she becomes aware of Anthony who visits his mother next door. Anthony or Tony is a WWII veteran, and now Tony, in middle age and reduced to working in a London shop, misses those glory days. June’s attention is flattering, but everyone–Tony’s smothering mother, June’s parents, and even Tony realise the dangers of June’s immature sexuality. …

Celia Dale’s crime novels always have an intriguing view of family life and the claustrophobic smothering intensity of pathological familial relationships. Many current crime books take well-worn paths: the husband who suddenly goes missing, leaving his wife as number one suspect, the husband’s first wife who morphs into a super stalker for wifey number 2, the family who go on holiday and return to strangers in their abode-a-wee. These books can be fun reads but they take well-worn paths. Celia Dale explores the pathologies of domestic life while worming her way into the intricacies of seemingly deep relationships which can shatter in a second. She guts these relationships to reveal the inner rot, the burden of buried resentments and the fetid air of unresolved emotional wounds.

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March 18, 2026 · 10:13 pm

Love Over Scotland: Alexander McCall Smith

Back to Alexander McCall Smith’s lively 44 Scotland Street with the third novel in the series: Love Over Scotland. We meet many old friends here including: Bertie and his parents Stuart and Irene, anthropologist Domenica MacDonald, student Pat MacGregor, Matthew Duncan, art gallery owner, Angus Lordie and his dog Cyril, and coffee shop owner Big Lou. The title Love Over Scotland is a clue that romance is one of the book’s themes, but apart from hearts and flowers, there are other adventures afoot.

Readers of the series are familiar with Bertie’s trials and tribulations: in a nutshell, a domineering mother, Irene, who is pregnant, is a devotee of psychoanalyst Melanie Klein, and reading a brief synopsis of Klein’s theories (online) added to the humour of Irene’s hubris and complete lack of introspection. Since Irene is armed with all the answers to childrearing, she is an impossible woman. Bertie longs to have a regular childhood but Irene blocks (or tries to block) any independent choices Bertie tries to make. He is given the role of Captain von Trapp in the school play, The Sound of Music, and while Bertie is dismayed at the prospect, Irene is ecstatic. Bertie, now aged 6, speaks fluent Italian and is a wiz on the saxophone, joins the Edinburgh Teen Orchestra against his will. It’s another one of his controlling mother, Irene’s brilliant ideas.

“But I’m not a teenager,” protested Bertie, helplessly. They’ll all be teenagers, Mummy, I promise you. I’ll be the only one in dungarees.”

Bertie, wearing the infamous pink dungarees, finds himself adrift in Paris.

“Were you allowed to go to the Moulin Rouge if you were only six?” he wondered “Or did you have to be at least ten?“

Gentle, sweet (hapless) Matthew takes control of 4 million pounds gifted to him by his father and immediately makes some unfortunate wardrobe choices, including “crushed-strawberry” coloured trousers and a “distressed oatmeal sweater.” 4 million pounds serves only to highlight his loneliness:

He had heard there were singles’ clubs where everybody went on holiday together. That would be interesting, perhaps, but what if one did not take to the other singles? Besides the very word single sounded a bit desperate.

Matthew is ready for a relationship–and Pat is the sole candidate, but she seems to be interested in someone else.

He wanted someone who would be waiting for him, or for whom he could wait. Somebody he could share things with. And wasn’t that what everybody wanted?

Pat moves into a new flat and faces room-mate issues (again) and ponders if/why she has such poor taste in men. Domenica embarks for foreign parts and an anthropological study amongst pirates, and horror or horrors…Cyril is stolen.

Love is central here–Matthew loves Pat, and that’s awkward as his feelings are not reciprocated–plus she’s his employee. Big Lou has bad luck with men, and her current mistake “borrows” money to open a strip joint. With Domenica absent, Angus feels her loss, but Domenica lends her flat to a friend, Antonia, and Angus makes an effort to make her feel welcome. At first, Angus, who misses Domenica’s company and conversation, has a favourable impression of Antonia. But that impression soon sinks, and Angus finds himself disliking Antonia. Angus decides to make an effort and cook dinner for Antonia. Unfortunately several bottles of wine are consumed before she arrives and … well, Angus certainly manages to make an impression.

It’s extraordinary how the level of a good wine sinks so quickly, he said to himself as he lifted the bottle to the light.

Lard O’ Connor (Glasgow’s infamous yet oddly loveable crime lord) returns to right a few wrongs. Bertie’s therapist, Dr Fairbairn exchanges confidences with Irene, and she finds herself comparing her husband Stuart to Dr Fairbairn. In one session with Bertie, Dr Fairbairn decides that Bertie’s school-mate, Tofu, must be an imaginary friend as “no real child would be called that.” Bertie thinks Dr Fairbairn is quite mad and so this is just more evidence.

As Dr. Fairbairn gazed thoughtfully at Bertie, so too did Bertie gaze at the psychotherapist. When they eventually took Dr Fairbairn off hospital- to Carstairs-thought Bertie would he be able to make friends there?

Perhaps not, but then maybe he would be able to invent a friend too

I wasn’t keen on the sections involving Domenica, but mostly Love Over Scotland is very funny. The sections about Bertie are my favourite parts, and I don’t usually like to read through children’s eyes. Authors rarely get it right, but in this case, Bertie is very entertaining. On one hand, he has a savvy view of his mother and Dr Fairbairn but since he’s six, he’s mostly powerless. He does, however, have an opportunity or two to thwart Irene’s plans. And while Bertie may be a child prodigy he is still only 6, so he draws 6 year old conclusions when confused about the adult world. In one section, a righteous Irene troops off to the police station to report the family car missing, and once there, she asks Bertie when they last saw the car:

Bertie scratched his head. “Last week, I think. Yes, Mummy, it was last week. Daddy was out drinking, remember, and you…”

Later he mentions to the police that Irene said a “bad word” when she noticed the car was missing. I thought a lot about Bertie when I finished the book. Those teen years are in the future. I have to read the rest of the series …

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March 3, 2026 · 8:30 am

Under the Net: Iris Murdoch (1954)

“We all live on other people’s vices.”

I’ve read one Iris Murdoch previously : The Severed Head. Loved it, so when I saw a blog challenge to read Murdoch, it was just the excuse I needed. I decided to start with her first published novel: Under the Net. Under the Net is a much lighter novel than The Severed Head. It’s madcap and funny–not what I expected. Our hero, and I use that term loosely is Jake (James) Donaghue. Jake is a writer (more on that later) and his main gig is translating bad French novels. He scrapes a living, and this is supplemented by his serial sponging off women. So right away we have a flawed character who, during the cause of the novel discovers his code of morality–a code he didn’t know existed.

When the novel opens, Jake returns from France to the news that he (along with his loyal sidekick and distant relative, Finn) must find a new place to live. Jake and Finn have been living in a flat owned by typist, Magdalen. Jake and Magdalen are/were more than roommates, and this is Jake’s typical cheap tinsel MO. He has some sort of relationship with a woman, then moves in and lives rent-free. These arrangements inevitably come to a bitter end, and then he moves on to his next meal ticket. So poor Jake…he’s thrown into a pit of anxiety when Magdalen tells him to clear off as she’s getting married. She managed that relationship on the sly, but who can blame her? Jake is horrified when Magdalen tells him the name of her fiancé: Sammy Starfield, “the diamond,” bookie who has a bad reputation. Starfield “now did a bit of everything in those regions where money could take him.”

Jake is someone who appreciates someone (or something) only when he’s lost them. When faced with the fact that Magdalen is in a new relationship, he feels a pang of regret, but he “followed [his] rule of never speaking frankly to women in moments of emotion. No good ever comes of this.” Jake finds her choice of fiancé a bit odd.

“Madge is used to consort with tedious but humane city men, or civil servants with bohemian tastes, or at worst with literary hacks like myself.“

Jake thinks it’s highly unlikely that Starfield will actually marry Magdalen, but he has no choice except to move out and so is forced to find a new place to live. Parking his meagre belongings at a newspaper shop owned by the benevolent Mrs Tinckham, Jake asks old friend Dave to let him move in. Dave, whose well-worn advice is “get a job,” doesn’t want a free-loading roommate (or 2) so Finn suggests looking up Jake’s old girlfriend, Anna. Jake hasn’t seen her in years, and with no shame whatsoever Jake seeks her out hoping that she will let him move in (again). Anna, who once had a “singing act” with her sister Sadie, is now running a small theatre in Hammersmith. While Jake excuses his unexpected visit with his sudden desire to see her again, Anna is underwhelmed. Fancy that.

Anna seems changed. Sadder, more cynical:

“There was something detached and theoretical in her eye which I had never noticed there before.”

Jake surmises that there is a man somewhere behind these changes. Anna tells Jake that her actress sister, Sadie, glamorous and famous, needs a housesitter, and that seems like the perfect gig to Jake so he heads out. Sadie, a “notorious liar” not only wants a housesitter but also some sort of live-in bodyguard as she claims she’s “being persecuted by the most frightful man.” And this is how all the fun begins.

Throughout the novel, three women: Anna, Madge and Sadie shape Jake’s decisions as he swims his way through many moral dilemmas. He tries to take the high moral ground against Starfield but finds himself, instead, in a betting frenzy with the savvy, corrupting bookie. Initially Starfield tries to give Jake money to go away but Jake is outraged that he is being “bought off.” He protests and tries to take the moral high ground, tossing in, not so subtly, a reference to Starfield’s humble origins:

“I don’t belong to the social class that takes money in a situation like this.”

But Jake really does want the money Starfield offers, but how to get it without looking like a complete cad? Jake is a slippery character and he soon comes up with a solution that suits both men.

“What prevented the closure of this mutually rewarding deal? My principles. Surely there must be some way round. In similar fixes I had rarely failed to find one.“

In arguably the funniest scene in the book, at Jake’s suggestion, Starfield proceeds to create a betting frenzy in Jake which supposedly nets huge wins. So Jake is bought off but in a way that allows him to save face. At least temporarily, but Jake’s initial corruption by Starfield pales in the corruption that awaits him. Jake must choose to take money (a lot) and a great career move if he betrays the few principles he didn’t know he possessed. Jake’s adventures include a pub crawl, a betting frenzy, flat-imprisonment and dog-napping,

I sat there a long time. At first I kept thinking about the money. I brooded on every aspect of it. I turned it into francs. I turned it into dollars. I shifted it around from one European capital to another. I invested it avariously at high rates of interest. I spent it riotously on château wines and château women. I bought the very latest make of Aston Martin.

And

I had so littered my life already with compromises and half-truths. I could have picked my way through a few more. The twisting hills of falsehood never cease to appal me, but I constantly entered them; possibly because I see them as short corridors which lead put again into the sun.

And

Money. The heart of reality. The rejection of reality the only crime. I was a dreamer. A criminal. I wrung my hands.

Jake has done some questionable things regarding women in the past; he’s used them, and in this novel, he finds himself being used by women. Jake also harbours shame regarding his ex-friend Hugo. Jake feels that he betrayed Hugo (in a literary way) thanks to a book, The Silencer, that Jake wrote using Hugo’s spoken thoughts. Part of Under the Net includes Jake’s frantic avoidance of Hugo and then his desperate pursuit of Hugo. At one point Jake’s even forced to get a job, and to his surprise even though he works with a lot of women, none seem impressed with his charm:

“I noticed that none of them were took me seriously me as a male. I exuded an aroma, which although we got along so splendidly, in some way kept them off; perhaps some obscure instinct warned them that I was an intellectual.“

Jake won me over with his rescue (and subsequent relationship) of/with a dog.

Jake’s avoidance of Hugo and his cavalier behaviour towards women have hampered any progress towards maturity but there’s nothing to compare to making the right moral choices to pave the way to growing up. Sometimes all it takes is being presented with barriers we are unwilling to cross.

Thanks to Cathy and Kim for reminding me to read Iris Murdoch again,

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February 21, 2026 · 9:26 am

The Temptation of Eileen Hughes: Brian Moore

In Brian Moore’s novel, The Temptation of Eileen Hughes, 20-year-old Belfast resident Eileen lives alone with her mother, Agnes. Money is tight, Agnes has poor health, and it seems great luck when Eileen becomes the “pet” of Mona McAuley, the wife of Bernard, a very wealthy man. Mona, a “smashing” blonde, was a pharmacist until she was romanced by Bernard. Now, a deeply discontent wife, she helps him run his many businesses. Eileen was working as a shop girl until she was taken up by Mona. She is promised promotions, invited to parties at Mona’s grand house and even travels with the McAuleys.

When the novel opens, Eileen, Mona and Bernard are on a trip to London. Eileen and her mother think she’s a lucky girl, but it’s a very odd situation. The minute they arrive in London, Mona claims illness and fatigue, and so Bernard ferries Eileen around without the Mrs. Eileen feels uncomfortable about this, and when she happens to discover that Mona isn’t ill but picking up men in the hotel bar, she knows something isn’t right. But Eileen is innocent, she’s in a precarious financial situation, and she’s out of her depth. She knows there’s something off about her role in the McAuleys’ lives but at the same time, seduced by promises, poverty and need, the life the McAuleys offer is tempting and Eileen finds it “easy to get into the habit of being like them.”.

Eileen never had much time for boyfriends in Belfast–all they seem to want was a grope prior to an aborted wrestle for sex. So here she is in London, a virgin, imagining what it would be like to live and work in London–imagining the choices she might have in another life–a normal social life without British occupation. While Eileen has the daydreams of a young girl, the McAuleys hatch plans. Both Bernard and Mona objectify Eileen for their own purposes. For Bernard, Eileen is an obsession. For Mona, Eileen is a tool to prop up her marriage to Bernard. The McAuleys don’t understand Eileen’s stubborn (as they see it) refusal to comply. Here’s Bernard and Eileen:

“You see, not all of us have your moral fortitude.”

“I don’t have moral fortitude.”

“Oh, yes, you do. I suppose I should say I admire that, but I don’t. You’re just another example of a wee girl who is taught, ‘This is right and that is wrong’ and who believes it without thinking, simply because some priest says it’s so. Or the nuns. The nuns in Ballycastle. That’s where you went to school wasn’t it? Ballycastle convent.”

Marriages are impenetrable to outsiders and to Eileen, an innocent 20 year old, the McAuleys’ relationship is both unfathomable and toxic. Brian Moore depicts Eileen’s plight with a deft hand. Eileen doesn’t ‘resist with “moral fortitude” as Bernard states, she resist because she wants her freedom. Alone in London, without her mother’s advice, Eileen must make some difficult choices

In many ways The Temptation of Eileen Hughes reminds me of minds William Trevor’s novel Felicia’s Journey. Both Eileen and Felicia are young, innocent Irish girls alone in London. Eileen is subject to temptation and must make moral choices while Felicia ends up with a serial killer.

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February 9, 2026 · 1:57 pm

Waiting for Matindi: Helen Hodgman

“I was just making coffee when Theresa knocked on the door. She looked as you’d expect a woman to look who’d been nearly all the way to Mortdale and back again, siphoning up every drop of dreg in every pub and club and rubbish bin along the way.”

The narrator of Helen Hodgman’s delightfully quirky novel Waiting for Matindi is a woman who is “recovering from an illness.” She’s living in a small Australian town two hours from Sydney with her lover. The narrator is “in love” but it’s quite obvious that the relationship is far from perfect. There’s a distance between the two women.

My lover had asked me once if I was interested in having a baby because she would like one. I suggested we rent one so if it didn’t work out we could return it.

Makes sense to me.

The lover works long hours in the studio area of the house while the narrator tries to keep busy. Is there much of a relationship there?

Not for the first time I asked myself what I thought I was doing here, although I knew the answers anyway. I was recovering from an illness. I had no money. I was in love with the busy occupant of the studio. None of these conditions would last forever. I was lucky. I told myself this. I was living in a pleasant place. I had my lover to myself for the first time in a long time, a state of affairs I had yearned for when it wasn’t possible. I could read all day if I wanted to. something I had not had the freedom to do for years. Obviously I should count my blessings and get on mowing the lawn, so I did and ran over the cord, cut it clean in two. I wasn’t looking and I certainly wasn’t paying attention. Silence from the studio, so at least I hadn’t caused her to go crashing through the worldwide web immediately. While I was thinking about how to break the bad news I put the mower away in the shed.

The narrator drives to Sydney and runs into Theresa, a bouncily exuberant woman she hasn’t seen for a long time. Theresa “used to live in a dark flat beside the fish-and-chip shop. Then she’d disappeared. No one knew where.” Theresa had “been clinging to the wagon” for over three years.

Theresa has put on a great deal of weight.

Her dress sense hadn’t improved either. Thongs. K-mart gray track pants topped, this morning, by a vast T-shirt where a gaudy rhino charged undaunted across the mountains of her breasts. Her hair was dull with salt, still spiky from a swim.

Theresa has just returned from Kenya and a romance with a Kenyan woman named Matindi.. According to Theresa, Matindi is moving to Australia to live with Theresa. …

Change is in the air. The narrator and her lover must find a new place to live. The narrator heads back to Sydney and Bondi Beach to find a new place while the lover takes off solo for an extended Xmas trip to visit family. Once the narrator returns, the lover has an accident, and so fate takes a hand in this insipid relationship. Theresa moves to Sydney while her lover (ex?) recuperates, and so with increased proximity to the drama, the narrator follows Theresa’s murky relationship with the mysterious Matindi.

Matindi has incredible bad luck when it comes to making arrangements to move to Australia. Her bus is hijacked. Her passport is stolen and she is robbed. Then her child is ill. She has to support her mother and sisters and support one of the sister’s children. Matindi’s nose is broken. ….

Delay after delay and Theresa keeps sending money until there is no more money to send. In fact she can’t even pay for a cup of coffee.

“I’m not rich, you know.”

“I know.”

“But I’m afraid it might seem like I am, to her. Anyway, all my savings have gone now, but she doesn’t know that.”

This was the first time I’d heard Teresa to talk sense. I didn’t like it much. I preferred the madder, more amusing version.

So Theresa waits for Matindi to arrive and in the meantime the Legend of Matindi grows. Then she actually arrives

Matindi bounced about, a cartoon figure forever assaulted, having her things stolen, her nose broken, being set light to–and a shameful thought I wished I wasn’t having and wish I’d never had–which was of Matindi crushed nightly under the not inconsiderable weight of Theresa and still managing to bounce back every time.

The plot of Waiting for Matindi underscores the idea that one writer creates tragedy and another comedy. In this case, the narrator’s spiky, transgressive voice creates comedy. The narrator’s life is in turmoil: health issues, relationship issues and there’s nothing quite like distracting yourself from your own issues by concentrating on the disasters in the lives of others. And Theresa isn’t the only one with plagued with problems. There’s “Doug and Sunshine (not her real name”) the narrator’s neighbours, or they were neighbours “until Sunshine fell in love with a big Dutch drug dealer who spirited her away to live with him in Amsterdam, leaving Doug holding the baby, or the four-year-old to be exact.” And then there’s Annette who “was having trouble with her life and the men in it.” She’s married but “in lust” with another man named Duncan whose main appeal is that he “doesn’t even try to be a responsible adult.” Everyone’s life seems to be falling apart.

When did I step over the line dividing a world in which everything sorted itself out somehow into a world in which everything depended on me? At what stage and at what age does that happen? The obvious answer is when you leave home and realize that someone, usually though not necessarily your mother, has been stocking shelves and putting the necessities of life inside the bathroom cupboards shoveling food into the refrigerator, and so on. But that’s not right. For a longtime after you are responsible for such things, you just don’t care. You don’t care if the cat’s out of cat food and most of the lightbulbs need replacing. There is a time when all you care about is, or was in my own case, books, clothes, music, and a particular shade of red lipstick I just never think about anymore and come to think of it, I have not seen it on anyone’s lips lately, which is a pity.

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January 26, 2026 · 9:57 pm

The Sequel: Jean Hanff Korelitz

The Plot from author Jean Hanff Korelitz concerned Jake, a creative writing professor who wrote one successful book, another that sank without trace and has several unpublished novels gathering dust. He loathes his job at Ripley College. He finds the students tedious and if life isn’t humiliating enough, one semester, Evan Parker takes his class. Evan is an unappealing student: crass and arrogant, he brags that he has a fantastic plot and has a surefire blockbuster on his hands. After learning of Evan’s death, Jake eventually takes that orphaned plot and makes it his own, but his success is plagued by anonymous accusations of plagiarism. That’s as far as I’ll go with The Plot.

So here we have The Sequel. The Sequel concerns (spoiler alert) Jake’s widow Anna Williams Bonner who writes her own book, The Afterword. With her weepy yet plucky story she is a great media success until… yes the spectre of Evan’s book appears on the horizon. It appears that Jake’s stalker is back. … or is there a second stalker ???

The Plot was fun, but The Sequel, although it picked up where The Plot left off, was retreading old ground–although of course, the back story is now told by Anna and not Jake. Both novels concern discovering the identity of the stalker(s)–Jake’s stalker, Anna’s stalker, but the path is the same. I’m glad I read The Sequel and I doubt anything would have deterred me, but The Sequel wasn’t as much fun. Anna’s voice is delightfully nasty, and the novel unfolds with information that contradicts Jake’s version (Evan’s version), but it’s retread. That said, I would hazard a guess that both books would make great mini-series.

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January 7, 2026 · 9:22 am

The Plot : Jean Hanff Korelitz

I read The Gerts’ review of Jean Hanff Korelitz’s The Plot and, as a sucker for campus novels (or professorial life), I knew this was the sort of book I’d like. The Plot concerns Jacob Finch Bonner (Jake) a creative writing professor at the third rate private university, Ripley College. Jake’s fame as a writer was brief but seductive; he wrote one bestseller, another which sank without a trace, and a number of unpublished novels now gathering dust. Jake is unable to produce anything close to The Invention of Wonder, and his brief glittering writing success, which at this point he’d prefer not to be mentioned, is in the rear view mirror. He’s bitter, so imagine then, his frustration and resentment at having to read abominable stories and first chapters written by his students. Working with eager students who deliriously imagine a writing career was “going to suck his soul.”

If that isn’t bad enough, he also has to deal with various types. His workshop contained not one but two women who cited Elizabeth Gilbert as their inspiration, another who hoped to write a series of mysteries organized around “numerical principles,” a man who already had 600 pages of a novel based on his life (he was only up to his adolescence) and a gentleman from Montana who seemed to be writing a new version of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, albeit with Victor Hugo’s “mistakes” corrected.

But there’s another student Evan Parker (he’d already pissed off Jake at a BBQ the night before). Evan is a smug, arrogant young man, big, brawny, blonde, convinced that no one can teach creative writing and so Jake’s class is hence irrelevant and a complete waste of time. Evan gets under Jake’s skin immediately–and it’s no wonder. The teaching gig is the last shred of Jake’s dignity and here is Evan ripping Jake’s fragile ego-band-aid away. Evan is rude in class, bragging up his book and yet strangely cagey to share it. Immediately there’s a whiff of threatened plagiarism in the air. At first Jake sees Evan as an arrogant bore incapable of writing anything decent but then Evan’s succinct comment begins to make Jake think.

Either it’s a good plot or it isn’t. And if it’s a good plot, the best writing isn’t going to help. and if it is, the worst writing isn’t going to hurt it.

A very skeptical Jake reads a sample of Evan’s novel, and Jake is forced to admit that Evan is a “natural writer.” Evan is sure he has a best-seller, and eventually he tells Jake the plot. Jake is stunned by the twists and turns of the plot and reluctantly acknowledges to himself that yes, Evan has a best-seller on his hands.

Fast forward two and a half years, and Jake is now eking out a humiliating living as a freelance editor; he’s even further down the rung of creative writing. One day, spurred by curiosity, he looks up Evan on the internet and discovers that Evan died. Evan’s parents and sister are also dead. Jake can’t resist using Evan’s plot to create a novel, and so Crib is born, and Jake becomes a bestselling author with tours, an Oprah endorsement, and a movie version in the works. Jake seems to be on the top of the world and then anonymous emails begin to emerge accusing him of stealing Crib. The anonymous messages begin to appear on social media and eventually Jake, at the height of his success, is in the middle of a full-blown scandal.

Initially The Plot seemed to be taking me to some familiar places–an author stalked by some psycho, but The Plot is much cleverer than that, and so I was delighted when Korelitz pulled me into … I’m going to say it … Highsmith territory. Korelitz is quite aware of the Highsmith connection–Jake teaches at Ripley College and the anonymous email author calls himself “Talented Tom.”

Gradually Korelitz reveals Evan Parker’s plot through chapters of Crib. The Plot is a great mystery but it also raises questions regarding plagiarism. Jake ‘stole’ Evan Parker’s idea for a plot but as he explains “the migration of a story is something we recognise and we respect. Works of art can overlap, or they can sort of chime with one another.” Adding “Jane Smiley stole A Thousand Acres from Shakespeare [or] Charles Frazier stole Cold Mountain from Homer.“

All too often a fictional book within a fiction book is drab, but in this case, the tension, pace and mystery are intense. That said, I did guess the BIG MAIN PUZZLE, but then I read a lot of crime books so my mind is twisted.

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December 3, 2025 · 8:47 am

Leaving the World: Douglas Kennedy

“We can never really determine the truth behind the unspoken. A gesture can have any meaning you wish to impose on it. Just as the truth behind an accident will never be fully understood. Just as embracing ambiguity can shield you from so much. […] If you confess to nothing, you provide those around you only with supposition”

Douglas Kennedy’s novel Leaving the World follows the many trials and tribulations of Jane Howard, a woman whose childhood was stained by her parents’ miserable marriage–a marriage which inevitably collapsed but with the unique twist that Jane became the convenient scapegoat excuse. This is a childhood scar which Jane carries forward–a scar which shapes her adult decisions. When the novel opens, Jane is a Harvard PhD student (American Literature) who is having an affair with her doctoral advisor, David. Jane, who worships David, thinks the affair is a well-kept secret but of course everyone on campus knows about the relationship. And possibly, just possibly, David’s wife knows too.

Middle-aged David (late 50s) is a well of misery. And this is a very good argument why a young woman (whose life is still the open road ahead) shouldn’t get mixed up with a married man whose life is a train wreck. David hasn’t written a book in years, his only son ran off at 17 and David spent “over a quarter of a million dollars (‘my entire inheritance from my father’) trying to find him.” The son, who was eventually found, was diagnosed as schizophrenic and now lives in a “managed care facility.” That leaves David’s wife, Polly. According to David his wife, Polly is suicidal, bipolar and has been institutionalized in the past. Polly’s (supposed) refusal to give him sex justifies (to David) his many affairs. Of course, Jane, after hearing about David’s tsunami of personal problems, demands next to nothing from their four-year-long affair. She soothes the many wounds (boo hoo) he carries from his professorial, artistic and lives, and tut tuts over his many woes.

Jane comes up with the brilliant idea of telling Polly that the extra time David spends on affair absences can be explained due to his renewed interest in writing. The lie becomes a truth as David labours over a new novel, and Jane can’t wait to read it. David is hesitant to let Jane read it but then finally agrees:

To say that it was a curious experience reading David’s novel would be to engage in an understatement. You think you know someone so well. Through all your conversations about life and art and the stuff that matters and the stuff that doesn’t matter–and through the intimacies of love–you think you’re pretty darn certain what is churning around in his head; how he reacts to things and the world. And then…then… he turns around and writes something so defiantly weird and unsettling.

David’s novel is bad. It’s the story of a writer/professor in “late middle-age,” he has a wife he “no longer loves,” and he’s having an affair with a young writer/professor. Oh dear.

Jane gives her opinion about the novel and David is hostile–particularly since “Polly thinks it’s a masterpiece.” Yes, David, the man who claimed his wife ‘didn’t understand him’ gave the book to Polly to read first. There’s a shift in Jane’s relationship with David. In Jane’s opinion David should not publish the book, but David prefers the domestic strokes and flattery to Jane’s criticism/ opinion (hmmm.. what was that affair really about) and he publishes.

It’s in Jane’s relationship with David and the decisions she makes after the publication that we begin to see the core elements of her character: Self destruction, flight from trauma, a certain (annoying) passivity with the men in her life, and a far too generous nature (especially with money).

God, how we are all prisoners of our own baggage. Why can we never really free ourselves from its malignant weight and the way it so dictates the way our lives are mapped out?

Following the end of the affair with David, Jane moves (read: edged out with kid gloves) from Harvard to another university job, but instead she enters the financial world (which I struggled with, but for the purposes of following Jane’s character to the end, I decided to shelve my disbelief). It’s in the world of finance that her father, a con-man/felon on the run, slithers back into Jane’s life. Jane connects the world of high finance to her education in early American Literature. Here she is comparing her new boss at the finance company:

Yes, it was crass, but there was something weirdly refreshing about such blatant mercantilism. He was an updated version of the sort of swaggering capitalist buccaneer who peopled so many of the naturalist novels I’d studied: a wholly American construct, with a ferocious energy for the combustible engine that was pure capitalism.

If I had to retitle the novel (it’s a game I play) then I would call it My Life is Shit. With David we see Jane’s self-destructive pattern, and every time she manages to recuperate her life, it all goes to … well … shit. Much of this is her own doing. She has a lot of good luck which is consumed by bad luck (and bad choices). But Jane is resilient. She keeps bouncing back–she also has many lucky breaks that help cushion the impact of the tragedies that swirl through her life.

We lose things and we choose things.

I loved parts of the book but was frustrated by Jane. I wanted to pull her back from the abysses she created and then leapt into. At least I was not an indifferent reader, and Jane’s choices kept me turning the page. The ending is OTT btw.

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November 20, 2025 · 2:58 pm

If Only: Vigdis Hjorth

“You can be aware of your capacity for love before you meet your beloved. Sense your potential for passion before you experience passion itself.”

Will and Testament from Norwegian author Vigdis Hjorth made my Best-of Year list in 2023, and so I was delighted to discover If Only. I love “Will and Inheritance” plots, so Will and Testament checked a lot of boxes for me. It’s a story of siblings fighting over property, but as the plot rolls out, the tale becomes one of rancid familial politics and clashing narratives. If Only is also, like Will and Testament, an intense read, but this is a story of obsession, and just how far an obsession can take someone down the road to ruin. Now that makes it sound as though If Only is a moral tale, and it’s a moral tale as in “wtf were you thinking.” It’s a grim, grueling read and I loved it.

In If Only Ida, a married woman in her thirties, a mother of 2, writes radio plays and edits a magazine, meets Arnold. He’s a translator on his way to a professorship. He’s also a COLOSSAL TWAT. They meet at a seminar and begin an affair which is an off-on-thing over a number of years. Arnold, in his 40s, is married to a much younger wife. He is “a well-established academic “who “critiques contemporary drama. She writes it.”

Arnold sets the boundaries of the relationship with Ida on their second meeting. While Ida, who lives in Oslo is “heading for a divorce,” Arnold, who lives in Trondheim and is on his third marriage says he “can’t handle another breakup.” When Arnold learns that Ida’s marriage is on the rocks and that there’s a scent of divorce in the air, he claims he’s nervous about their involvement. The affair cools but Arnold “keeps[s] her on the rack” always emphasizing that he made no promises and that he can’t handle (yet) another divorce. At one point, the relationship seems to end, and there are drought years when Ida doesn’t see Arnold. She can’t stop thinking about him and ends up in therapy. Ida’s obsession with Arnold is boring to outsiders, and shocking to people who know and care about Ida. Even Ida’s therapist finds her obsession with Arnold boring–he wants to find another subject to discuss. Two and a half years of therapy later and she still isn’t over Arnold.

Something has broken and can’t be mended. Unbearable anxiety trades places with unbearable pain.

During the periods when Arnold cuts Ida off, he dangles himself in front of her, teasing her. For her part, she’s so desperate for news of this dickhead, she finds excuses to create seemingly random conversations about him. She exhausts her friends and family with her Arnold-info seeking behaviour, and so she has to cast her net wider:

She seeks out new environments where they know A [Arnold} and his work. She mentions, casually, a play he has reviewed, an article he has written, a topic he has recently covered on the radio in the hopes that the person she is talking to will mention his name. If she doesn’t get a bite in this way, she will herself bring up the article or the review:

“I read an article the other day, about one of Brecht’s early plays, written by, oh what is his name?”

“Who?”

“The Brecht guy.”

And at this point her interlocuter will usually mention his name, the beloved name: “Arnold Bush?”

“Yes, that’s him.”

And if they don’t, she will introduce it herself: “Something beginning with A. Arnold something or other.”

Of course in the meantime, in a state of limerence, she neglects her children as she becomes consumed with Arnold, thoughts of Arnold and who else he’s having sex with. At one point she begins reading his newspaper horoscope “to find out how he is.” She even calls the creator of the horoscope when the meaning of a sentence is cryptic. When Ida’s toxic relationship with Arnold resumes in an almost lackadaisical way, it’s an Endgame. Arnold is incredibly cruel so theirs is a sado-masochistic relationship. Not in the sense of ‘chains and whips, chips and dips’ but in the sense that he treats her very badly, and she keeps coming back for more. He’s terminally unfaithful and Ida gets into revenge sex.

Ida begins a slide into moral ruin. This is a painful, grueling read … and I loved it for its intensity and unsparing examination of obsession. While the story appears to be written in the immediacy of the present, there are moments that show that this is a retrospective tale with Ida somehow on the other side looking back at this period of madness, obsessive love and moral degradation.

If this all sounds too bleak, it isn’t. There’s a strange, dark humor in the tale’s matter of-fact approach to the craziness as Ida uncovers Arnold’s countless infidelities and violently, vehemently rejects the endless humiliations of their relationship. There’s humour here in Ida’s tirades against Arnold’s excesses. Humour in the awful play they write together (mostly while drunk.) And there’s humour here in Arnold’s petulant, blind arrogance. At one point he has an affair with a student and then lectures her as he doesn’t (oh, the horror!) want to be known as a professor who sleeps with his students. Numerous times, with splendid and righteous passion Ida explodes against Arnold’s behavior only to return and take more and more. When she discovers he’s having sex with a student, she writes an anonymous letter, “drives to the post office and posts the letter before she has second thoughts.”

SHAGGER, SLEEPING WITH YOUR STUDENTS, YOU ABSOLUTE SHIT. I NEVER WANT TO SEE YOU AGAIN

It’s telling that Arnold doesn’t immediately guess the identity of the anonymous letter writer. In his typically blind arrogance, Arnold lectures and reproaches the student who is the sex object du jour. He “summons” her to his office “and talks to her in a professorial voice.”

He “doesn’t want a reputation of being somebody who sleeps with his students He doesn’t want to be the kind of person he is, so please shut up.“

So back to Arnold as an object of obsession. Yes, he’s an academic, yes, so presumably there’s intelligence there, but we see nothing attractive about Arnold. Petulant, selfish and immature, his only interesting and arguably redeeming quality is his sexual stamina, and even that potentially promising facet of his life is negated by his persistent in pursuing any vagina in his sphere.

There’s the implicit idea that Arnold can’t fathom what a shit he is while Ida recognizes his basic worthlessness, but in spite of this, she ploughs on as the relationship peaks and sputters in Arnold’s flagging attempts to create novelty and drama in the rat trap of their toxic domesticity.

Obviously many women fell for the cheap tinsel charm of this lothario which simply encourages him in his inflated idea of his own worth, but in Ida’s case, even she occasionally wonders why she is so obsessed with this unworthy man. Ida is intelligent, has a good career and is attractive, yet she becomes obsessed with a revolving, banal man who seems intent on making them both as miserable as possible. She has other relationships with other (nicer) men (not hard as the Arnold bar is a sub-zero level) using the relationships as distractions or revenge and so the men are simply penis-tools she uses along the way. I suspect most readers can think of a relationship that dragged on–relationships, which in hindsight, they now see as self-destructive, time-wasting, tedious dalliances or associations (legal or otherwise) that should have been severed before things turned as ugly as they did, so in that sense the book is relatable.

If Only asks just how far one woman can lose herself in a destructive relationship. Arnold is mediocre–balding, “with a pot belly” and skinny legs. There’s nothing whatsoever extraordinary about this intensely selfish, immature man. This plays to my personal belief that love is independent of the love object. I’m not a therapist (hats off to those who are) but I see Ida and Arnold as a lock and key. She was rational and grounded before Arnold. She asks herself:

Did he open up an old wound so that the infection could pour out, be released at last so that the wound could be cleansed, rinsed repeatedly with disinfectant, with stinging fluid, right down to the bloody, open sore, the pus drained , no matter how much it hurt so that love could finally die?”

I’ve seen the book described as a tale of romantic love/obsession. I’d take the word ‘Love” out of it. There’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to love, but whatever exists between Ida and Arnold, love it is not. Some people open doors in our psyche–doors we didn’t know existed. In my entirely unprofessional opinion, that’s what happened with Ida.

Translated by Charlotte Barslund

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November 9, 2025 · 5:45 pm

Phineas Redux: Anthony Trollope (1873)

In a literary series, it’s always a pleasure to revisit much loved characters and to see how their lives have progressed. Phineas Redux is volume 4 in the Palliser series. We first met Phineas in volume 2 of the series: Phineas Finn; he’s a young, energetic Irish lawyer who sets his sights on a political career. As the son of a doctor, several unmarried sisters, and no independent income, Finn is taking a huge chance by running for parliament. It’s not a cheap endeavour. In London, Lady Laura Standish, who as a woman is allowed no political life, lives vicariously through dinner parties in which politics are discussed. She takes a fancy to Phineas, and while ostensibly she claims to just want to further his career, there is more afoot. Phineas falls in love with Lady Laura and proposes, but she accepts the hand of Robert Kennedy, a wealthy, dour Scottish landowner. Lady Laura believes she is making the sensible choice, plus she needs to bail out her brother, Lord Chiltern from his many debts. A disappointed Phineas then proceeds to fall in love with heiress Violet Effingham. The problem with this potential match is that Violet has been in love with Lord Chiltern for years (and the feeling is mutual). Phineas naively confesses his love for Violet to the now very unhappily married Lady Laura, and that sends that her into a tailspin. Phineas, while friends with the wild Lord Chiltern, crosses the boundaries of that relationship when he goes for Violet and the two men end up fighting a duel.

Phineas is a chick magnet, and at one point in the novel the eccentric wealthy widow Madame Max Goesler, who replaces Lady Laura as Phineas’s confidante, proposes marriage to Phineas with the idea that her wealth can further his career, but Phineas rejects the offer, and he resigns his political office due to ideological differences (the Tenant Right Bill). The novel, of course, has many sub-plots, but the conclusion of Phineas Finn finds Phineas back in Ireland and reunited with the childhood sweetheart he’d left behind.

But back to Phineas Redux which finds our titular character a widower–his wife died giving birth to their child (who also died), so Phineas is at loose ends.

Phineas is lured back to London with the promise of an easily won seat. Thanks to the dirty tactics of the other candidate, he doesn’t win, but recent political reform at least gives him an avenue to contest the loss. Phineas finds his reentry into London society disorienting. He has experienced terrible loss in the years since he left London, and there has been no contact with any of his old circle. They all welcome him back as if he had just stepped out the door yesterday. Violet is now very happily married to Chiltern who has settled into perpetual foxhunting. Lady Laura, separated from her miserable husband, lives in Dresden, and Madame Max Goesler has become the constant companion of the Duke of Omnium (the uncle of Plantagenet Palliser.

Phineas Redux has elements of the sensation novel: election fraud, bigamy, insanity, murder and a sensational trial. Add to the fray the return of the fickle Lizzie Eustace from The Eustace Diamonds. Poor Robert Kennedy (we met him in Phineas Finn) has gone completely bonkers and his wife, Lady Laura, unable to bear his puritanical control lives in Dresden in fear that he will somehow force her, by legal means, to return to their home. Kennedy is convinced that Lady Laura and Phineas are lovers and a newspaper campaign against Phineas taints his political career. While the ladies love Phineas (that becomes more obvious as the book continues) he has many male enemies. The juicy gossip about Phineas and Lady Laura gives Phineas’s enemies grist to damage his career, and when Phineas’s most outspoken enemy is murdered, the blame falls on Phineas.

Phineas Redux is an incredible read and it’s a great argument for Trollope’s delightful female characters who always seem so much more interesting than the males, and as we see in many Trollope novels, marriage is a hot topic (how women get the short end of the stick). We see two wives trying to escape their husbands: Lady Laura and Lady Eustace–both women whose fortunes are challenged by their husbands. Lady Laura lives in poverty as her dowry is in the hands of the insane Kennedy and Lady Eustace is hounded by her scoundrel of a husband. Of course in Lady Eustache’s case, it serves her right. Also there’s Adelaide Palliser, who has a mere 4 thousand pounds. She should ‘marry for money’ and there’s a suitor who has money: Spooner of Spoon Hall, but Adelaide falls for Gerard Maule, also penniless… well penniless for his class–he lives on an allowance of 800 pounds a year. There’s a lot of humour surrounding Spooner’s earnest, dogged and clumsy pursuit of Adelaide. Poor Spooner seems to throw women and horses into the same category when it comes to understanding behaviour. Spooner hangs around Adelaide, and his clumsy courtship results in Adelaide refusing to walk with him. Spooner, a long time bachelor, lives with his fellow bachelor cousin, Ned Spooner, who gives him advice. “As far as Ned knew the world, ladies always required to be asked a second or third time.”

“She was as hard as nails, you know.” (Mr Spooner)

“I don’t know that that means much. Horace’s filly kicked a few, no doubt.”

“She told me that if I’d go one way, she’d go the other.”

“They always say the hardest things that come to their tongues. They don’t curse or swear as we do, or there’d be no bearing them. If you really like her….”

“She’s such a well-built creature! There’s a look of blood about her I don’t see in any of ’em. That sort of breeding is what one wants to get through the mud with.”

But of all the splendid female characters in Phineas Redux, the superb Madame Max Goesler is my favourite.

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