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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January 17, 2025 · 11:57 am

Vain Shadow: Jane Hervey (1963)

“What a terrible thing it was when love turned to indifference–or worse.”

Jane Hervey’s novel, Vain Shadow begins with the news that the family patriarch is dead. Colonel Winthorpe died during the night with only his nurse present, and while the family had a good idea that the end was nigh, they all opted, with a range of excuses, to stay out of his bedroom. During the course of the novel, it’s clear that although the patriarch is dead, and therefore never present, he still casts a heavy shadow over the family. While some servants loved him, most of his family lived in repression and dread of his ever-present displeasure. His widow is, of course, the most suppressed of the lot and when the servant delivers the news that the Colonel is dead, Mrs Winthorpe can barely conceal the relief she feels:

Never again to have to kiss him goodnight! After fifty-three years of having to kiss him. ….What a blessing it was all over! (A blessing for him, she meant, of course!) All over! Sickness. Health. Till death us do part.

The Colonel had three sons: Jack (the eldest), Brian and then Harry. Jack married a much younger actress, the avaricious immature, Laurine and it’s quite obvious that she knows how to manipulate her husband. Following the marriage, the Colonel threatened to cut Jack from the will and so Jack is eager to know if any money is coming his way. Brian is married to Elizabeth and that seems to be a happy marriage but there are hints of other women. Harry, fussy and peevish is thrilled to take over the estate management, and it becomes clear that while Mrs Winthorpe has lost one controlling presence, Harry is ready to step into that role. When Mrs Winthorpe complains of the cold and wants the temperature in the house raised, Harry nastily and pettily “confiscate{s]” the thermometer.

The Winthorpes also had a daughter, Sylvia, who is dead, and from the way Harry speaks of her, it’s as if her ‘wildness’ brought about her demise. Sylvia’s adult daughter, Joanna arrives at the house. She’s married to the slick psycho Tony. She had a taste of brief freedom with lover, Andrew, but Joanna lacked the courage to break free of Tony–partially as he’s run a campaign to undermine her independence and sense of self-worth. Tony presents a facile, polished front to the world, and his flattery and attention fools Mrs Winthorpe. Brian sniffs a rat but Harry is alarmed by any idea of divorce in the family and finds it more convenient to think that Tony is amazing to put up with Joanna.

The author sharply observes the minutea of family dynamics–the pettiness, the rivalry, and the snide remarks as the narrative moves brilliantly from one mind to another. The novel explores the vast dissonance of how one is supposed to act after the death of a so-called loved one, and the reality of thoughts that cannot be expressed. Harry, for example, is more worried about his boiled egg being cooked properly than his father’s death. Then there’s Jack who just wants to get to the money:

Oh God! How much longer? thought Jack.

This slowness of getting from pillar to post was driving him crazy. It seemed to hinder the process, hold things up–so that they would never get to the funeral and never, never get to the reading of the will.

There are glimpses into Mrs Winthorpe’s mind of the Colonel’s romantic courtship all worn out by 53 years of bombastic, controlling behaviour. Joanna, who suffers from a brand of her own domestic tyranny, understands her grandmother and observes:

The complaints, the displeasure, threats not always veiled, which had closed in on her day by day, month by month, year by year, throughout that long, long marriage, had gradually stifled even the faint tentative fluttering she might once have had made towards freedom, while she had been young, enough and strong enough to escape. Now, she was beaten.

There’s the sense that with the Colonel’s death a vast period of history has slid away, The house is still grand but it’s a lifestyle, complete with lifelong servants, that is slipping away. The subject of death accompanied as it is in this novel by no grief–rather the sense of prison doors that swing open–is a sobering one, but there are moments of humour: when the funeral procession speeds towards the crematorium, the divvying of the spoils of the Colonel’s cabinet, and Laurine pestering Jack to buy insurance in case he dies and she’s left without a penny.

Highly recommended. Vain Shadow is Jane Hervey’s only published novel,

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December 15, 2024 · 9:25 am

Here One Moment: Liane Moriarty

“But the older you get, the less linear the memories, and the more everything seems to circle back to something else.”

Liane Moriarty’s novel, Here One Moment, explores the aftermath of a psychic’s predictions. The first section of the book opens on board a Hobart to Sydeny domestic flight that is delayed. Forty-five minutes into the flight, a middle-aged woman, named Cherry, stands up and begins moving through the plane delivering predictions to the passengers. The predictions have a specific format: Cherry, who is a psychic, later known as the “Death Lady” in the media, systematically delivers the cause of death and the age of death of many passengers. Some people receive “good” predictions: death at 100 years old for example, while others are told their time is short.

Some passengers, especially those with a far-off predicted death, are able to laugh off the incident, but several passengers are emotionally devastated by the experience. The book then follows how these passengers react to these predictions: There’s workaholic Leo Vodnik whose predicted cause of death is a stroke, Ethan, age 29 who is told he’ll die in an assualt at age 30, Paula who is told that her infant son will drown at age 7, Sue whose predicted death at age 66 is uncomfortably close, and Allegra, a flight attendant who is told her death will be self-harm at age 28. And guess what, she’s 28 on the day of the flight.

One theme in books and film is the idea that if you are given a second chance at life (a near death experience let’s say) what would you do? Would you improve your life? Appreciate each day more? Be nicer to people? Here One Moment is that sort of book–except that people are given warnings and some of the passengers try to alter what they see as their fate. No matter how these characters try to minimize the experience on the plane, the predictions are always in their heads, and it’s a heavy burden.

The book goes back and forth between the characters and we also learn about Cherry’s turbulent life. The book is wordy and repetitive in the beginning, and some chopping could have been done. I’ll bet this will become a TV series along with the other author’s books. I’ve enjoyed several of her books and have seen some of the TV adaptations too. Moriarty’s work adapts well to the screen and Here One Moment, an easy, light read, is perfect TV material.

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November 23, 2024 · 10:53 am

Where’s Wanda?: German TV series

“No one in their right minds wears leather vests!”

Yes! It’s German Literature Month hosted by that intrepid duo: Caroline (Beauty is a Sleeping Cat) and Lizzie () My first contribution to GLM is a German TV series: Where’s Wanda? And here’s a plot synopsis in a nutshell:

It’s the annual Nuppelwocken Festival in the small sleepy German town of Sundersheim. Local legend has it that the Nuppelwocken, a gargantuan, hideous, horned monster, emerges from the forest and snatches maidens. It’s a bit ‘beauty and the beast’ except that there never seems to have been a happy ending for those who were snatched. So here’s the annual festival. That means that the sleepy little town in which nothing ever happens comes alive with tourists and merrymaking. There’s a parade and all the locals seize the chance to don costumes. Wanda (Lea Drinda), the rebellious, mouthy teen daughter of Dedo (Axel Stein) and Karlotta Klatt (Heike Makatsch) has a brief skirmish with her mum and then dashes off on her moped, in costume, to attend the parade. Except she never arrives, She simply disappears. …

Where’s Wanda? is a comedy series, and it’s difficult to imagine a comedy about a missing teenage girl, but this series is funny. Quirky funny. The series starts with Wanda’s disappearance and how the frantic parents react. Dedo and Karlotta, frustrated with the police, feeling that they have to do something, and believing that Wanda is being kept captive in the town, begin to spy on the neighbours with hilarious consequences. It seems as though all the neighbours have dirty secrets, something to hide, and the Klatts, with the help of their deaf, gay son, unintentionally dig up and expose that dirt: a man keeping his wife doped up and a prisoner while he sports with his shallow avaricious mistress, a kinky therapist, a neo-nazi bunker, and the illegal trading of exotic animals. Add to this that the bungling Dedo, suddenly unemployed but hiding that from his wife, feels that he must prove himself. Karlotta’s delightfully weirdo brother, Rudiger (Devid Striesow) my favourite character, is hilarious, and all the characters are well cast. The episodes go back and forth in time showing Wanda’s disappearance and fast forwarding to the current investigation, and while the series occasionally veers into silliness, it’s all good fun. Serious social commentary runs beneath the humour–the vampire media eager for emotional meltdowns, the eagerness of others to connect themselves to the tragedy and the staggering level of insensitivity manifested in a vigil–the Wanda Fest.

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November 6, 2024 · 10:12 am

Time of the Flies: Claudia Piñeiro

“Work beats tattered undies.”

In Claudia Piñeiro’s novel, Time of the Flies, Inés is out of prison after a 15 year sentence for murdering her husband, Ernesto’s lover, Charo. Is Inés a reformed woman? Does she feel bad for her crime? No, but she’s done 15 years, now sees how foolish she was, and she’s ready to move on with the rest of her life. She lost everything: a husband who wasn’t worth a tear, a daughter who refuses to see her, and she also lost her home:

Inés was a different person then, someone who believed that her husband’s lover had stolen something that belonged to her. She now understands that the thing she thought was taken from her had actually been lost long before.

Inés has started a business, FFF, with another former prisoner, Manca. Together they own and operate FFF-Females, Fumigation and Flies which is part pest control and part detective agency. Inés, who is obsessed with flies, handles the fumigation side of the business while Manca runs the detective agency. They are friends, and while Manca would like that relationship to evolve into more-than-friends, she doesn’t push Inés.

For these two women, it’s not a great life but it’s a decent one, and Inés, who lost everything when she committed the crime, just wants peace and quiet. One day, a well-do-to client Susana Bonar asks Inés to procure a large amount of poison so she can rid herself of her husband’s lover. Seems that Ms. Bonar knows all about Inés past…

It’s not hard to sniff a rat here. Susana Bonar is a new client who happens to live in the same neighbourhood that Inés lived in pre-prison. And the whole, hey I know you murdered your husband’s lover, so won’t you help me do the same? sounds a bit …. off. But Inés needs money and so she agrees.

It’s the feeling that there’s something fluttering around her head that she can’t catch, that there’s something right in front of her eyes she can’t see.

Manca, concerned about her friend, decides to investigate, and guess what? Ines’s estranged daughter, Laura is a frequent visitor to the Bonar house. …

This is a novel about second chances. The novel ruminates on the lives of flies, tying in to impulsivity, and also there are meaty feminist quotes included. The quotes were interesting but after a while, this felt like padding. The novel lacked the bite I initially expected and the actual murder of Charo remains a bit murky–Ernesto was somehow involved and I wished this had been explained. I liked this, but it’s not my favourite Piñeiro novel.

But every pain is different. They should come up with different names for them. The pain of being left, the pain of being lied to, the pain of losing a child, the pain of losing your job, the pain of being told you’re going to prison for fifteen years. One word can’t be expected to encompass all the pains of the world.

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October 15, 2024 · 5:57 pm

The Conditions of Unconditional Love: Alexander McCall Smith

The Conditions of Unconditional Love from Alexander McCall Smith is number 15 in the Isabel Dalhousie series. This is the first I’ve read in the series and while I no doubt ‘missed’ a lot, it was easy to keep up with the characters. Edinburgh based Isabel Dalhousie, a philosopher, is married to bassoonist Jamie, and is a mother to two young boys. She’s the owner and editor of The Review of Applied Ethics, and she’s also an amateur detective. The philosopher part comes out in every single aspect of Isabel’s life. She questions and ponders, and I began to have the sense that perhaps it’s not easy being Isabel. She questions everything, and chews over her opinions, motives and decisions.

She realised how out of date she must sound to those who lived their lives on social media, who disclosed to the world every detail of what they did and what happened to them. It was a curious attitude, she thought because it amounted to living in a glass box, a show to any passer-by. Such people led their lives in front of an open window, she imagined, and those who looked in were voyeurs. Or was that too extreme? she asked herself. It was. It was not unnatural to want to share your life with others.

Various dilemmas emerge in the novel: Jamie feels sorry for another member of the orchestra, a young woman named Dawn who, through her bad taste in men, has become homeless, and so Isabel and Jamie offer Dawn a place to stay. On the professional front, Isabel must deal with the obnoxious Professor Robert Lettuce. In Isabel’s opinion, Lettuce is an “inveterate plotter–of schemes that were somehow always to his advantage.” In this instance, Lettuce wants to host a conference, and this scheme involves money from a charitable trust–money Lettuce wants to divert inappropriately. This is an amusing light read, with many entertaining characters, but I still prefer the 44 Scotland Street series,

As for Unconditional Love–as far as humans go, I don’t believe in it. This is my opinion and it’s free but IMO if you believe in Unconditional Love, you just haven’t been pushed far enough. Now when it comes to dogs, it’s an entirely different matter: they are capable of it, and I’ve had some smashers in my time. Current companionship with my Uber Hund is a case in point. His sole ‘flaw’ is that he’s a bed-hog

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October 4, 2024 · 3:48 pm

The Haters: Robyn Harding

In Robyn Harding’s novel, The Haters, high school counselor Camryn Lane has just had her first novel, Burnt Orchid, published. Camryn is divorced and shares custody of her daughter Liza with her X. Camryn also has a younger lover, Theo, and feels that she’s on top of the world…. until a nasty email from a woman who calls herself Ingrid Wandry accuses Camryn of exploiting the “psyches and crises of your vulnerable public school students to make a few bucks.” Yet Camryn insists (to her editor, agent, and basically anyone who will listen) that the book is fiction and is concerning homeless kids living on the mean streets of LA. Then a scathing review written by “I.W.” turns up, and things go downhill from there.

The story is told partially by Camryn but it includes excerpts of her novel. The “novel” is not exactly well written so perhaps the nasty reviews are spot on. But hey.. let’s go with the flow here: Camryn is a first time author. She has no fan base yet so readers and more importantly potential readers see the flood of nasty reviews and there goes Camryn’s new career. While her agent tells her that the reviews are no biggie and these things happen, Camryn decides to sleuth this on her own, and of course things go from bad to worse. Convinced that this is personal, Camryn gets advice from other writers and begins to distrust those around her.

Although Camryn is a victim here, I did not find her character appealing. She’s a little too smug and toyboy Theo is living proof of that. It’s obvious that she’s hiding something and that the review vendetta is personal. As a reader, I find it easy to sympathize with an author who feels defenseless against armchair critics/readers, and in these days of social media, where privacy no longer exists, Camryn finds that it’s just not her book that’s under attack–it’s her personal life too. But in spite of the high stakes for Camryn, I never engaged with her dilemma or felt much beyond mild interest. I seem to be in the minority here as most readers loved the book.

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September 23, 2024 · 2:56 pm

Villa des Roses: Willem Elsschott (1913)

Willem Elsschot’s wickedly funny Villa de Roses explores the messy lives of the inhabitants of a grubby Parisian boarding house. The landlady is Madame Brulot, and she advertises lodgings in her “first-class family boarding house,” complete with “modern conveniences” and “lunch and dinner extra.” There’s an assortment of guests and diners:

Madame Brulot and her husband, an accountant who is 20 years older.

The most financially rewarding guest is 92-year-old Madame Gendron:

She is “the financial mainstay of the Villa de Roses.” There are rumours that she’s wealthy, but now whatever money she has is managed for her son, a doctor by a businessman in Paris. “For some reason or other, it was impossible for Dr Gendron to have his mother at home with him,” but he visits “at irregular intervals,” and “sometimes he would stay for a whole hour.” The fees for Madame Gendron at the Villa de Roses have risen in tandem with her age. She is supposed to have extra care–a daily wash, for example, but this has shrunk down to twice a week. “There was an army of bedbugs in Madame Gendron’s room,” and the elderly lady, now quite potty, has turned into a rabid kleptomaniac.

Another boarding house mainstay is Madame Dumoulin: She is a middle-aged a widow who imagines she is the pinnacle of culture, and her once unhappy marriage has finally morphed into a generous pension.

The quietest guest is Aasgaard, a young Norwegian man. He’s a lawyer who has come to Paris to learn French.

On the seedy side of the guest list is M. Martin (and two Polish women). M. Martin is a French businessman. He was a guest at the Villa des Roses for just a few weeks “and had made an excellent impression,” but then he departed. He was gone from the boarding house for about six months but then returned with 2 polish women in tow:

This time he had brought with him a plump Polish lady of about fifty and also the latter’s mother. After the joy of reunion had abated somewhat, he had paid 3 months in advance, not only for himself, but also for the 2 ladies.

Madame Brulot isn’t thrilled about M. Martin’s domestic arrangements, but money overrules all other considerations, and so she allows M. Martin to live with his “wife” and her mother.

Another long-term guest is Jeanne de Kerros, a young woman with some sort of skin condition. Madame Brulot would love to have empty seats at the dining table on either side of Jeanne, but that seems a little too obvious, so she decides to put Jeanne next to Aasgaard who won’t complain, and on the other side sof Jeanne, she sets an empty place to give the impression that another guest is arriving any second.

A major character is Grünewald, a young German office worker.

‘Please pass the wine to Monsieur Grünewald,’ Brulot would say, when there were already a couple of bottle within reach of the German. At the beginning, Grünewald had occasionally been in two minds, and one could see there was an inward struggle between good manners and a taste for wine, with the latter, however, invariably gaining the upper hand. But by now he seemed to have overcome his scruples once and for all.

M. Knidelius is a Dutchman whose years in the jungle have created some rather odd manners.

There are also 3 Hungarian women whose questionable livelihood pays the rent:

They went out walking every day, received lots of mail and ate more chocolate than meat and bread. They were irregular payers, at times a day early or at others a week late, but they did pay, and in the most varies assortment of currencies; mostly, though, with American notes or English pounds.

There are two regular diners: M. Colbert: a “joker.” Brizard, a man “subject to depression.”

Two maids: Aline and Louise.

Chico: Madame Brulot’s pet monkey who sleeps between the married couple.

The bottom line for Madame Brulot is money, and she is always looking for ways to get more. One of her more successful and creative schemes is Madame Dumoulin’s birthday party. It always follows the same script. M. Brulot toasts Madame Dumoulin and then Colbert “would spontaneously treat” everyone to a bottle of champagne. While this champagne appears to be Colbert’s gift, it’s all arranged by Madame Brulot, and then:

The other gentlemen were morally obliged to follow Colbert’s example and once that had got going everything went swimmingly. Madame paid three francs a bottle for the champagne and charged it at seven.

The novel is funny, but at the same time there’s a dark thread snaking through the humour. Madame Gendron, for example, left in filth and neglected, could be a figure of sympathy, but Elsschot gives this character a vicious streak. Madame Gendron, in her dementia, interprets situations in hilarious ways and strikes back. Madame Brulot would appear to hold the winning hand in terms of money, but she walks the perimeter of respectability and poverty looms. She scrimps on every penny while trying desperately to maintain the facade that this is a modern, elegant boarding house. This is a harsh world: the elderly are put out to pasture, and those who cannot afford a roof over their heads are out on the street. There’s one episode involving a dead diner who must be kept at the house overnight. I don’t want to add spoilers, but the corpse is stuffed into someone’s bed, and this macabre scene is hilarious. Villa des Roses should be read by those who love boarding house/hotel novels. My copy of Dutch author Willem Elsschot’s (real name: Alfons Jozef de Ridder1882-1960) Villa des Roses includes an introduction from the translator, Paul Vincent. Villa des Roses easily makes my Best-of-Year list. Translated by Paul Vincent. (FYI Chico comes to a bad end)

Amazon is currently offering a kindle version for 99c.

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September 2, 2024 · 1:02 pm

An Ordinary Lunacy: Jessica Anderson

“But character is an unstable element; character was prone to show itself different from day to day.”

Jessica Anderson’s novel An Ordinary Lunacy is an examination of the murky relationship between the Sydney-based, stuffy, successful barrister David Byfield and a British woman, Isobel Purdy. David first spies Isobel at a party and he’s immediately attracted to her. Isobel is married, and according to David’s former lover Myra, Isobel is married to a “vile man,” Richard Purdy. David thinks it’s a “darned shame” that Isobel is married to Richard, and he’s intrigued and also somewhat repelled:

David could see how the light, striking through monstera leaves, laid grotesque and shifting shadows on one cheek, and a band of shadow, like a domino, across her luminous eyes. And the total, odd effect of her, of slovenliness and beauty, of poverty and insolence, an effect that placed her outside all known categories, so tantalized him that though he knew Myra to be irritated by his questions, he could not help asking, ‘Why does she put up with him? A woman like that!’

Richard and Isobel have been married for 10 years, and Richard has a horrible reputation. At one point during the party, Isobel appears to be “lurk[ing] behind those potplants” and staring out into the garden at her husband.

But David thought he knew why she had come. He had met women like her before. Nursemaids and watchdogs to wild and drunken husbands, they hid humiliation behind poker faces and were stiff, pitiable, and unapproachable. In spite of her extraordinary beauty, he now felt her to be of reduced value. He decided not to go near her again.

David, 35 years-old, “still lived with his mother in a small but much-admired harbourside house.” His mother, 60-year-old Daisy Byfield, an interior designer “was zestful and gay,” but she also has an unpleasant side which is shown to those who have a lesser social position, and that includes Possie, Daisy’s much-put upon cousin, whose position hovers between servant and companion, shop employee Willie, and artist Hal. Terrible ongoing dental pain doesn’t help Daisy’s temperament. Born into poverty, Daisy “hated and feared failure,” and that’s the main reason she didn’t care for David’s former lover, Myra.

While David and his mother have, at times, a decent relationship, it’s fundamentally unhealthy and he occasionally strains to escape the leash. This happens when Richard is found dead–at first it’s a case of suicide, but then Isobel is accused of murder, and David, much to his mother’s dismay decides to defend Isobel. Then when David brings Isobel to their home, Daisy decides she must intervene in her son’s relationship with Isobel as “she is one of those women who drift with the tide.” A golddigger to boot.

This was an interesting read but yet somewhat unsatisfying too–a lot is left unexplored. These are mainly unpleasant people whose knives come out when they feel threatened, in a bad mood or dealing with those over whom they have power. Poor Possie, for example, is mistreated and she hints at getting another position, hoping for better treatment. Myra, David’s former lover is the most humane character in the novel. She chose love over respectability and now pays the price: you win some and you lose some. On the other hand, stuffy pompous David has a hard, cold side which is temporarily derailed by desire for Isobel. Even though Daisy doubts that David’s interest will hold, she is cruel in her efforts to break David apart from Isobel:

“I believe I can place you now,” she said. “Yes, the coffee shops and clubs and pubs of cheaper Chelsea. That classless and really quite interesting scum. Artists, racing motorists, theatricals. Some of them quite clever but none in the first rank.”

Isobel remains a blank and she is one of those people, a shape-shifter, who appears to be different things to different people. She is also extremely passive–as if all the fight has gone out of her. Is she a tragic heroine or a murderess? Or both? Men desire her and yet when they try to possess her, she vanishes into vapour–as if there’s nothing there.

It was more than his usual worldly caution that now made him attempt to gather himself up, to retreat from her into his safe world of known boundaries.

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August 23, 2024 · 4:23 pm

Often I Am Happy: Jens Christian Grøndahl

“It’s the wife’s family that gets to be in the good books,” she said, “and they are the ones whom the husband becomes attached to.”

The narrator of Danish author Jens Christian Grønhold’s novel, Often I Am Happy, is 70-year-old, recently widowed Ellinor. Her husband Georg died suddenly after collapsing in the shower. Ellinor is left with their home and two somewhat disgruntled adult stepsons, Stefan and Morten. The novel is addressed to Anna, Georg’s first wife–a woman who was killed in a skiing accident 40 years earlier along with Ellinor’s husband Henning. After the accident, Georg told Ellinor that Henning and Anna were having an affair, so it’s was a double blow to Ellinor as Anna was her best friend.

I thought of the years we’d known each other, all the hours we’d spent together. I had trusted that they were being kept within both of us like linen in a drawer, ironed and folded, one set of them for each of us. It dawned on me only now how I’d believed that memory could be something to be had in common.

Georg and Ellinor, bound in grief, eventually married, and they raised Georg and Anna’s twin sons together. Following Georg’s death, Ellinor’s relationship with her stepsons goes downhill. Stefan, an investment banker is married to Mie and they have 2 children. They live in a “gigantic” house and go on “exotic vacations.” Stefan is completely dominated by the stridently status conscious Mie. Stefan’s personality, if he ever had one, is now absorbed into Mie’s much stronger psyche.

It was the first time I noticed that the words coming out of his mouth weren’t always his [Stefan’s] own.

Visits to Morten and Stefan used to underscore Ellinor and Georg’s superfluous position in the lives of the younger generation, but that is accentuated now that Georg is dead. During visits, Ellinor finds herself sitting there and keeping her mouth shut. After Ellinor decides to sell the family home and move back to the old humble neighbourhood of her childhood, hostilities from the stepsons increase, and she wonders “when did I become a stranger again? Was I one all along?” In one scene Ellinor realises that she’s supposed to “put on a timid smile” to satisfy “the power balance” in Stefan’s marriage, and eventually Ellinor receives a patronising lecture from the snooty Mie. Criticism goes both ways, so if one is going to give, one should also be prepared to receive. “There is nothing like a conflict to do the difficult work for you.” With Georg dead, there’s a shift within the family and suddenly Ellinor decides not to just take it anymore. So much for family.

I had come to love them, and in time they answered my love, but I haven’t always found it easy to love the grown men who’ve come out of it. I realized as much when I heard them exchange anecdotes about Georg. As I sat there attending their cozy mourning session, I became aware that my love for them is something that was. It is the recollection of a feeling, not the feeling itself.

The scenes with the stepsons underscore the ephemeral nature of relationships and how relationships exists because we agree to them on some level–our assigned positions, the accepted narratives of the past, the unspoken rules and the power balance.

You must pick the more suitable pain, and I was never one to look back.

There are many profound truths in this novel, and Often I Am Happy easily makes my best of year list.

Georg never understood why I didn’t feel like traveling. I’m afraid he missed a good deal because of me. I tried to explain to him that I felt alien enough where I was, even though I spoke the language, but I didn’t develop the subject any further. I could sense from his look that I risked hurting him. If I was asked at dinner parties I would reciprocate by asking people what they thought they might get out of it. Sights are in any event more beautiful when photographed, and if you make do with pictures, you spare yourself the risk of bad weather and the trouble of finding a place where you can pee. Once you penetrate the exotic surface, everyday life in foreign lands has a disappointing resemblance to life at home. And if you stay in the surface for the sake of romance, you make yourself dumber than you need to be vis-a-vis the people you’re romanticising about. Besides you become melancholy from standing there as an outsider, spying on lives you’ll never share.

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