MostlyFiction Book Reviews » Jane Gardam We Love to Read! Wed, 14 May 2014 13:06:32 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=4.3 GOD ON THE ROCKS by Jane Gardam /2010/god-on-the-rocks-by-jane-gardam/ /2010/god-on-the-rocks-by-jane-gardam/#comments Wed, 27 Oct 2010 20:58:33 +0000 /?p=13189 Book Quote:

“Because the baby had come, special attention had to be given to Margaret, who was eight. On Wednesdays therefore she was to go out with Lydia the maid for the whole afternoon. […] Maybe to Eastkirk — and a nice walk about on the Front and down the woodland.”

Book Review:

Review by Roger Brunyate  (OCT 27, 2010)

And so begins the delightful 1978 novel by Jane Gardam, with an exquisitely described trip on a local train that “went slowly, see-sawing from side to side in the dusty coach with blinds with buttoned ends and a stiff leather strap arched like a tongue on the carriage door,” a pitch-perfect evocation of Britain between the Wars. What begins for Margaret Marsh is nothing less than the gradual opening of her eyes to the complexity of the adult world. For until the new baby provided a distraction, she had been protected from worldly things by her bank-manager father, a puritanical believer. “He and his wife were members of the Primal Saints and most of their free time was spent in the local Primal Hall down Turner Street — a very nasty street of plum and sandstone and silence.” Yet Margaret loves her father and has applied her considerable intelligence to acquiring a prodigious knowledge of Bible verses, all referred to by name and number, as in: “Her feet were on the earth and her life yielding fruit Genesis one eleven.” Or: “She wondered two Corinthians five one whether she had seen a home not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”

I admit that I may not be the most objective reviewer, since much of my enjoyment comes from the fact that this is MY world she is describing — a small seaside resort in Northern Britain, such as the one where I grew up. Instead of the dying sputters of the candle that fitfully illuminated the postwar austerity of my own childhood, Gardam moves her action back half a generation to the mid-thirties when there was ALWAYS a band in the bandstand, ices on the promenade, and pierrots on the pier. And preachers on the beach, with tambourines and trombones, tracts and hymn-singing — uplifting entertainments that flourished in the recession to form part of my childhood also.

Given the Saints’ prohibition on frivolity of all kinds, Margaret’s seaside excursions are like an entry into a different world. Accompanied by Lydia — a decidedly secular and sexual woman, although nominally also a Saint — her eyes are opened to more than mere seaside attractions. She stumbles upon a great house converted into a sanatorium for shell-shock victims, and then finds Lydia flirting rather physically with the gardener. One of the most enjoyable aspects of the book is watching the author gradually adjust the language from the child’s-eye view of the opening descriptions to a more adult perspective, as Margaret learns, albeit from a distance, the lineaments of denial and desire, dimly perceives the consequences of divisions in class, and discovers that her idols have feet of clay. The author’s focus gradually changes also to the older generations, exploring the frustrations of Margaret’s mother, the ripples caused by the return of some old childhood friends, and the machinations of a rich old lady dying in the big house.

In observing adult behavior through the eyes of a child, Gardam writes within an established tradition, as exemplified by Henry James’ What Maisie Knew or L. P. Hartley’s The Go-Between. But she has her own special flavor, whose simple storytelling hides considerable emotional complexity. Readers of her later books such as Old Filth and The Man with the Wooden Hat will know the mixture of pathos, humanity, sadness, and warm humor that she can create, and will not be surprised when everything connects up in somewhat hopeful fashion at the end — although I did feel that the postlude here was a little too obviously tacked on. All the same, this beautifully produced Europa reprint makes a fascinating piece of time-travel well worth taking, even for those who did not grow up in the atmosphere it describes.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 56 readers
PUBLISHER: Europa Editions (October 26, 2010)
REVIEWER: Roger Brunyate
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on Jane Gardam
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our reviews for:

Bibliography:

Old Filth Trilogy

Young Readers:

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

Nonfiction:

  • The Iron Coast (1994)
]]> /2010/god-on-the-rocks-by-jane-gardam/feed/ 0 THE MAN IN THE WOODEN HAT by Jane Gardam /2009/man-in-the-wooden-hat-by-jane-gardam/ /2009/man-in-the-wooden-hat-by-jane-gardam/#comments Wed, 16 Dec 2009 02:10:24 +0000 /?p=6832 Book Quote:

“All our parents suffered for an ideology. They believed it was good for us to be sent Home, while they went on with running the Empire. We were all damaged even though we became endurers.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage (DEC 15, 2009)

Several years ago, I read my first Jane Gardam novel, Flight of the Maidens, and I’ve been a fan ever since. The last Gardam novel I read was Old Filth, and so I was delighted to learn that Europa Editions recently published The Man in the Wooden Hat. While The Man in the Wooden Hat isn’t a sequel to Old Filth, it is a companion novel. Old Filth, which really should be read first, begins with the death of Betty, the wife of retired judge Sir Edward Feathers. Old Filth, inspired by Gardam’s exposure to the early life of Rudyard Kipling, focuses on Edward, while this novel explores the Feathers’ life together through Betty’s eyes.

This sweeping tale encompasses half a century and moves from post WWII Hong Kong to London and then eventually to the remote cottage the Feathers purchase in retirement. Edward and Betty, who both have a sense of displacement, are “Raj orphans”–children raised in the far-flung corners of the British Empire, shipped off to boarding school in England. Edward was sent from Malaya to England, but this part of the story is covered in Old Filth and only tangentially referred to in The Man with the Wooden Hat.

Betty (Elisabeth McIntosh), the protagonist of The Man in the Wooden Hat was born in China but raised in a Japanese internment camp, and the lasting result of her horrifying experiences seems to be an unspoken desire for a life devoid of trauma, indecisions, and risks. Perhaps this explains why she so wholeheartedly embraces the idea of marriage to the reliable, and eminently respectable Edward Feathers. He is, of course, a highly eligible young man, and with their similar backgrounds, surely Edward and Betty should be destined to lead the happiest of married lives. But do they?

The night that Betty accepts Edward’s marriage proposal is a presentiment of things to come, and as they travel to a party together, Betty finds herself thinking:

“It won’t be romantic but who wants that? It won’t be passion, but better without, probably.”

As the evening wears on, Betty experiences a definite feeling of disappointment even though she expected Edward to act precisely as he did–putting the excitement of their engagement second to work commitments. And so when temptation unexpectedly arrives, it takes Betty by storm:

“Only hours ago she had been all set to become the next reincarnation of a virtuous woman, like the one in the benevolent photograph. She had stood beside her man—and how her parents would have approved of Edward Feathers—watching the stars in the heavens, thinking that she would tell her children about how she said ‘I will’ and had meant it. She saw her mother’s face, imprisoned in the emptiness of Empire and diplomacy.”

As an exploration of the Feathers’ marriage from Betty’s viewpoint, The Man in the Wooden Hat begins with Edward’s proposal to the moment of physical separation that occurs with Betty’s death. Both Betty and Edward are both “endurers” and they approach marriage with the attitude that they will stick with the relationship. The novel charts the years they are together as they progress from newlyweds, to comfortable middle-age, and finally affectionate old age, and yet in spite of the years they spend together, how much does Edward understand about the woman he married? How well does he really know her? While the Feathers’ marriage appears to bear all the trappings of success, underneath the politeness and sacrifice to her husband’s stellar career, Betty remembers one night of illicit passion, and Edward also has his own deeply buried memories.

For those who loved Old Filth, The Man in the Wooden Hat is a welcome return to familiar characters. It takes a great deal of skill to re-tell a story without repeating old information, but Gardam deftly reintroduces her characters and then fills in their pasts once more–offering new information that adds further dimensions to Edward, Betty, Tony Veneering, Albert Ross and Isobel Ingoldby. Betty is seen as a vibrant woman who makes a predictable choice when she married Edward, and that choice isn’t about passion. It is about establishing the home she’d never had. As Betty ages, she has moments when she questions that choice, but disappointments merge into compensations, and her secret inner life is never suspected–at least not by Edward. Gardam subtly illustrates the complexity of human beings through her characters, and if readers gained a certain understanding of Edward and Betty in Old Filth, they will now find that they refine those opinions after reading The Man in the Wooden Hat.

* Edward Feathers also appear in Gardam’s The People on Privilege Hill and Other Stories

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0 from 16 readers
PUBLISHER: Europa Editions (October 27, 2009)
REVIEWER: Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on Jane Gardam
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

 

Bibliography:

Old Filth Trilogy

Young Readers:

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

Nonfiction:

  • The Iron Coast (1994)

 

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