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"Old Filth"

(Reviewed by Mary Whipple NOV 16, 2006)

"Betty and I were what is called 'Empire Orphans.'  We were handed over to foster parents at four or five and didn't see our parents for at least four years.  We had bad luck.  Betty's foster parents didn't like her, and mine…were chosen because they were cheap. If you've not been loved as a child, you don't know how to love a child.  You need prior knowledge…I was not loved after the age of four and a half.  Think of being a parent like that.'"

Sir Edward Feathers, known as "Old Filth," is, ironically, "spectacularly …ostentatiously clean."  His nickname derives from the fact that as a lawyer, he "Failed In London, Tried Hongkong."  A "Raj Orphan," Filth is a child of British civil servants of the Empire in Malaya.  Like other Raj children, he is sent back to England, alone, at the age of five or six, to begin school in a country he's never seen among people he does not know.  For Filth, the alienation is tripled--his mother died when he was born;  his father, suffering from shellshock and alcoholism, ignored him; and, living in the longhouse with the servants, he saw himself as Malay, more familiar with that language and culture than his own.

Gardam writes a powerful character study of this intriguing character whose fate it was "always to be left and forgotten."  Now in his early eighties and living in Dorset, his wife dead, he reminisces about the past and hints at some terrible event that took place when he was eight, living in Wales with Ma and Pa Dibbs, who took care of him and two young cousins.

The narrative moves gracefully between present and past, following the life of Filth as he attends school in England, becomes part of his best friend's family, gets caught between cultures when World War II breaks out, begins his London law career, and, eventually, "tries Hongkong."  Now, at the end of his life, he is in Dorset, aware that he has never really known love and has never had a home, and equally aware that he must now reach out, deal with his memories, and take control of his life if he is ever to find peace.

Gardam's supplementary characters appear and reappear throughout Filth's reminiscences—his wife Betty, more a friend than a lover;  his best friend Pat Ingoldby, whose family "adopted" him;  his two cousins, who survived Ma Dibbs with him;  his golf-obsessed aunts who ignore him; and Veneering, a man he and Betty knew in Malaya, who becomes his neighbor in Dorset.  Gradually, Filth reveals his secrets and his fears, while maintaining his elegant outward reserve, and the reader empathizes with this man, a product of his culture forced to fend for himself from the age of five.

Sophisticated and subtle, this novel, shortlisted for the Orange Prize in 2005, is also compulsively readable with its poignant scenes and ironic humor.  Filth, for all his class-consciousness, is likeable and often earnest, and he engages the reader's emotions from the outset.  His late-in-life questions about whether his life has had meaning resonates.

• Amazon readers rating: from 13 reviews

Read a chapter excerpt from Old Filth at the New York Times

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Bibliography: (with links to Amazon.com)

• Black Faces, White Faces: Stories (1975)
• Bilgewater (1977)
• God on the Rocks (1978)
• The Sidmouth Letters (1978; May 2001)
• Bridget and William (1981)
• Horse (1982)
• The Pangs of Love and Other Stories (1983)
• Crusoe's Daughter (1985)
• Swan (1986)
• Through the Doll's House Door (1987)
• Showing the Flag (1989)
• The Queen of the Tambourine (1991; September 2007)
• Going into a Dark House (1994)
• Faith Fox (1996; January 2005)
• Missing the Midnight: Hauntings & Grotesques (1997)
• The Green Man (1998)
• Ink Monkey (1999)
• The Flight of the Maidens (2000)
• Old Filth (2004)
• The People on Privilege Hill : Stories (August 2008)

Young Readers:

• Kit (1984)
• Kit in Boots (1985)
• A Few Fair Days : Stories (1971)
• A Long Way From Verona (1971)
• The Summer After the Funeral (1973)
• The Hollow Land (1981)
• Tufty Bear (1996)

Nonfiction:

• The Iron Coast (1994)

 

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Book Marks:

• British Council page on Jane Gardam
• Reading Guide for The Flight of the Maidens
• BookReporter.com review of The Flight of the Maidens
• The New York Times review of Old Filth
• The New Statesman review of Old Filth
• The Guardian review of Old Filth
• The Telegraph review of Old Filth

 

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About the Author:

Jane Gardam was born Jean Mary Pearson in Coatham, North Yorkshire, July 1928. She was educated at Saltburn High School for Girls, and won a scholarship to the University of London where she read English at Bedford College. In 1951 she worked as a Red Cross Travelling Librarian to Hospital Libraries, afterwards taking up editorial posts at Weldon Ladies Journal (sub-editor, 1952) and the literary weekly Time and Tide (Assistant Editor, 1952-4).

Gardam has won many awards including twice winning the Whitbread Award and most recently, her novel Old Filth won the 2005 Orange Prize. Her earlier novel God on the Rocks was short-listed for the 1978 Man Booker Prize, and later won the Prix Baudelaire in France in 1989. In 1999, she was awarded the Heywood Hill Literary Prize in recognition of a distinguished literary career. Jane is a member of PEN and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

She is married with three children and divides her time between East Kent and Yorkshire.