Galley Beggar Ghost Stories – The Signalman by Charles Dickens and The Old Nurse’s Story by Elizabeth Gaskell

20 Replies

Back in winter 2024, the independent publisher Gallery Beggar Press issued a small bundle of ghost stories called Pocket Ghosts, comprising three beautifully produced slim volumes, each containing a classic ghost story by a well-known writer: The Signalman by Charles Dickens, The Leaf-Sweeper by Muriel Spark and The Old Nurse’s Story by Elizabeth Gaskell. While ghost stories are often associated with Christmas, these excellent, eerie tales can be enjoyed at any time of the year, especially by readers who love the genre.

I’m going to cover these stories in a couple of posts, starting today with The Signalman, which is easily the best-known of the three, and The Old Nurse’s Story, my first experience of Mrs Gaskell’s supernatural fiction, but hopefully not my last. (Thoughts on The Leaf-Sweeper will follow, probably later this year, as I’ve yet to read it.)

The Signalman by Charles Dickens (1866)

Famously adapted for TV as part of the BBC’s Ghost Story for Christmas series, this chilling tale is thought to have been partly inspired by an accident involving a train on which Dickens was travelling in the late 19th century. The Staplehurst rail derailment in 1865 resulted in multiple fatalities and injuries, as did the Clayton Tunnel rail crash, which took place four years earlier in 1861.

In Dickens’ story, a narrator tells of his encounters with a troubled signalman, whom he visits at night in a signal box near a railway tunnel. On the second night, the signalman reveals he is haunted by strange, inexplicable occurrences – the ringing of a bell that no one else can hear and the appearance of a ghostly figure that no one else can see. On two previous occasions, these events were swiftly followed by fatal incidents in the tunnel – firstly, a horrific train crash, in which many people died, while others were seriously injured, and secondly, the sudden death of a beautiful woman, glimpsed by the signalman as she writhed in agony on the passing train. Consequently, the signalman is convinced that the bell and ghostly figure are prophecies of impending doom – eerie augurs of a forthcoming tragedy.

‘That very day, as a train came out of the tunnel, I noticed, at a carriage window on my side, what looked like a confusion of hands and heads, and something waved. I saw it just in time to signal the driver, Stop! He shut off, and put his brake on, but the train drifted past here a hundred and fifty yards or more. I ran after it, and, as I went along, heard terrible screams and cries. A beautiful young lady had died instantaneously in one of the compartments, and was brought in here, and laid down on this floor between us.’ (p. 30)

With this foreshadowing groundwork in place, the reader knows that another dreadful incident will almost certainly occur, especially once the signalman reveals a recent sighting of the figure accompanied by the ringing bell. The question is, will the signalman be able to prevent another tragedy in the tunnel, or is he powerless against whatever terrifying supernatural forces are at play?

His pain of mind was most pitiable to see. It was the mental torture of a conscientious man, oppressed beyond endurance by an unintelligible responsibility involving life. (pp. 35–36)

This story feels so atmospheric, partly because Dickens infuses it with a creeping sense of dread. Alongside the haunting symbols of the bell and the spectral figure, Dickens creates an air of mystery about the narrator himself as we never really learn who he is – or indeed, how reliable he might be. One might even wonder whether he is also a phantom, especially given the mirroring between his initial greeting to the signalman and the words uttered by the ghostly figure when he appears by the tunnel. Either way, it’s a very unsettling tale, ideal for a chilly, windswept night.

So little sunlight ever found its way to this spot, that it had an earthy, deadly smell; and so much cold wind rushed through it, that it struck chill to me, as if I had left the natural world. (p. 13)

The Signalman has been adapted many times, but the most famous version was written by Andrew Davies for the BBC’s Ghost Story at Christmas TV series. This excellent adaptation, starring Denholm Elliot as the titular signalman, was first broadcast in December 1976 and remains a favourite for many fans of the format.  

The Old Nurse’s Story by Elizabeth Gaskell

This spooky, suspenseful story features many of the classic elements of the best Gothic literature, from an orphaned child sent to live with a distant, elderly relative in the country, to a cold, stately manor house with a mysterious wing that remains off-limits to new arrivals.

The story is narrated by Hester, the young nanny who accompanies her charge, five-year-old Rosamond, to their new home at Furnivall Manor in the Northumberland fells. This vast, foreboding house is so close to the surrounding forest that it is at risk of being overshadowed by trees, their branches stretching out like gnarled and wizened fingers. The eerie atmosphere is enhanced by the sound of an old organ being played on stormy nights, even though the old footman, James, and his kindly wife, Dorothy, try to pass it off as the wind whistling through the trees. Meanwhile, elderly Miss Furnivall, who is virtually deaf, and her companion, Mrs Stark, eke out their days making tapestries in the drawing room, ensconced in the lonely, melancholic aura that permeates this disquieting house.

Sitting with her, working at the same great piece of tapestry, was Mrs Stark, her maid and companion, and almost as old as she was. She had lived with Miss Furnivall ever since they both were young, and now she seemed more like a friend than a servant; she looked so cold, and grey, and stony, as if she had never loved or cared for anyone; and I don’t suppose she did care for anyone, except her mistress; and, owing to the great deafness of the latter, Mrs. Stark treated her very much as if she were a child. (p. 17)

Where Gaskell really excels here is by slowly ratcheting up the suspense as her story unfolds. The house and its inhabitants are harbouring secrets, information that Hester and Rosamond are not privy to, even though the former is disturbed by various frightening occurrences. As this unnerving tale spins towards its dramatic denouement, powerful supernatural forces threaten Rosamond’s safety, prompting Hester to be on the alert for the appearance of a ghostly figure or two intent on luring the child onto the sinister fells…

I turned towards the long narrow windows, and there, sure enough, I saw a little girl, less than my Miss Rosamond – dressed all unfit to be out-of-doors such a bitter night – crying, and beating against the window-panes, as if she wanted to be let in. She seemed to sob and wail, till Miss Rosamond could bear it no longer, and was flying to the door to open it, when all of a sudden, and close upon us, the great organ peeled out so loud and thundering, it fairly made me tremble; and all the more, when I remembered me that, even in the stillness of that dead-cold weather, I had heard no sound of little battering hands upon the window-glass, although the phantom child had seemed to put forth all its force… (p. 42)

As in The Signalman, foreshadowing plays a key role in this haunting story, tapping into themes of jealousy, sibling rivalry and terrible family secrets, all cloaked in the snowy atmosphere of winter to ramp up the chilly mood.

The Galley Beggar Pocket Ghosts are still available from the publisher’s website – link here – and their stylish covers make them ideal as gifts. Highly recommended, particularly for fans of the genre.

The Stepdaughter by Caroline Blackwood

25 Replies

Born into an aristocratic Anglo-Irish family, Lady Caroline Blackwood was, for many years, largely known as a socialite and muse. Her marriages to the artist Lucian Freud, the pianist Israel Citkowitz and the poet Robert Lowell were all widely reported at the time. Nevertheless, later in life, Blackwood turned her attention to writing – and with great success. Her debut novel, The Stepdaughter won the David Higham Prize for best first novel, while her second, Great Granny Webster, was shortlisted for the Booker. Last year I read and loved Blackwood’s third novel, The Fate of Mary Rose, a brilliant exploration of our collective fascination with gruesome true crimes and how sometimes we can become emotionally invested in a media story we have no personal connection to. While The Stepdaughter shares some of Mary Rose’s qualities – more specifically, its darkness and unflinching pursuit of a singular vision – it’s a book I admire rather than love; nevertheless, there is something horribly compelling about this one, even though I found it an intense and claustrophobic read.

First published in 1976 and recently reissued by McNally Editions and Virago Press, The Stepdaughter is a short, sharp shock of a novel, a psychologically astute portrayal of resentment, self-loathing and projection as the reader bears witness to a stepmother’s unravelling and the impact of this nightmare on those who are under her care. The book is narrated by J, a married woman in her mid-thirties, who now finds herself superseded in her husband’s eyes by a younger, more beautiful lover. In  short, Arnold, a wealthy and successful international lawyer, has installed J, their four-year-old daughter, Sally Ann, and an au pair, Monique, in a luxury penthouse apartment with beautiful views of Manhattan. However, there is a catch; implicit in this set-up is the unspoken agreement that J must continue to take care of Renata, Arnold’s teenage daughter from his first marriage, as the girl’s mother has been confined to a mental institution for the past two years. Meanwhile, Arnold has moved to Paris to be with his new lover. The trouble is, J loathes Renata, whom she considers lazy, grossly overweight and unwilling to communicate. In essence, the girl is a burden and an embarrassment to her.

I find Renata very ugly. I am therefore in no way jealous of her beauty, but in other ways my attitude towards her is much too horribly like the evil stepmother of Snow White. The girl obsesses me. All the anger I should feel for Arnold I feel for Renata. If Arnold’s letter from Paris was a shock to me—the thing that I found by far the most shocking about it was that he made absolutely no mention of any future plans to remove his hefty, damaged daughter from under my roof. Is Arnold going insane? Or is he being very cunning? Does Arnold really think that he can leave this fat neurotic girl in my apartment just as if she was some inanimate object like an umbrella that he happened to leave behind? (p. 9)

The book is written as a sequence of letters to an unnamed, imaginary recipient, which J duly composes in her head. None of these letters will ever be sent; rather, they simply exist in J’s mind.

As this fractured narrative unfolds, we see how J is projecting all her self-loathing and disgust at Armold’s behaviour onto Renata. Monique and Sally Ann are also on the receiving end of some of J’s contempt, but it is Renata who must bear the brunt.

She [Renata] had the pathos of those hopelessly flawed objects which one often sees being put up for sale in junk shops. She gave the immediate impression of having something vitally important missing. She reminded me of some tea-pot with a missing spout, a compass that had lost its hands, an old-fashioned record that had had all its grooves badly scratched. She had a tense, half- apologetic, half-defiant expression on her face, which made one think that she herself felt that she had some kind of vital deficiency which made it unlikely that anyone would ever want her. The thing that Renata lacked so painfully was the very smallest grain of either physical or personal charm. (p. 12)

There are signs too that J resents Renata for not embodying or showing any interest in the socially acceptable conventions of femininity – a standpoint that seems to signal some of J’s own prejudices or insecurities about being dumped by Arnold. J finds Renata ugly, frumpy and hopelessly pathetic, a sort of grotesque, all-consuming monster who has invaded her home.

…one starts to loathe her for imposing this unvoiced and unwelcome pressure. By being so shy and vulnerable and giving out such a strong feeling of being hopelessly damaged, she invites a kind of cruelty. Renata’s problem seem so insoluble that one starts to feel such a fierce impatience with her that although I hate to admit it one often has a longing to try to damage her even more. (p. 18)

In reality, all Renata wants to do is to make instant cakes from packet mixes, which she then voraciously consumes without offering any to J, Monique or Sally Ann. Another annoying habit is Renata’s excessive use of toilet paper, which often clogs up the apartment’s loo to the point where the plumber must make regular visit to the flat to unblock the system. Meanwhile, J does nothing but sit around in her exquisitely furnished ‘human torture chamber’, staring blankly out of the apartment windows. It’s all very maddening as J reveals in her missives, which effectively act as an outlet for her furious thoughts.

Yours in a state of impotent, almost inexpressible, anger,

J. (p. 75)

While J appreciates that Renata may have been damaged by previous emotional turmoil, particularly given what has happened to her mother, J resents the implicit assumption that she who should be the one to support Arnold’s child.

If Renata can manage to irritate and upset me to a point that I feel quite unhinged by my disgust for my own lack of generosity towards her—the girl is bound to have a much deeper disruptive emotional effect upon Arnold. She comes from his ugly past—this ugly, untalented adolescent, whom no one wants, particularly her father. Renata does not come from my past. I see her as something even worse than my past: she is not only my present, she is also my future. That is why I find her presence in my apartment so intolerable. (pp. 28-29)

Everything we are presented with in the first half of this novella is filtered through the fractured lens of J’s resentful feelings towards Renata. By the midpoint, however, J comes to a decision about Renata’s future, and in the discussions that duly follow, a revelation comes to light which alters J’s view of the girl and Arnold’s decision to leave her in J’s care.

I am only now starting to grasp the fact that, in some complicated way, Arnold is oddly fond of Renata. Something in this unloved and down-trodden girl seems to bring out something protective in this man whom I can only see as fiercely unprotective and uncaring. (p. 80)

We also hear from Renata herself, which proves to be a breath of fresh air after the suffocating atmosphere of the previous section.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, there is no neat resolution in store here, but we do see a different, more human side of J’s character as the novel speeds towards its unsettling end.  

In some respects, The Stepdaughter is a domestic horror story, on paper the kind of psychological takedown of stereotypical images of motherhood and domesticity that fans of Shirley Jackson or Patricia Highsmith might enjoy; but in truth, I found it too intense and claustrophobic for my taste. A novella I respected for its skill but didn’t particularly enjoy despite the excellent writing and flashes of mordant humour. One of those books that might be best appreciated from a distance.

The Stepdaughter is published by McNally Editions and Virago Press; personal copy, which I read for Cathy’s Reading Ireland Month.

The Barracks by John McGahern

29 Replies

First published in 1963, The Barracks was John McGahern’s debut novel, written when he was in his late twenties. Now considered one of Ireland’s greatest authors, McGahern wrote about a world he knew very well, with The Barracks drawing on various experiences from his own childhood – particularly the early death of his mother, Susan, from cancer in 1944 and the years he spent living in the Cootehall Garda Barracks where his father, Frank, a Police sergeant, lived and worked. It’s a sad, beautifully observed novel that delves deep into character, which on paper ought to have been literary catnip for me; but in this instance, something stopped me from loving it as much as McGahern’s masterpiece, Amongst Women. Then again, maybe my expectations were unfairly high.

The Barracks revolves around Elizabeth, a housewife in her early forties who lives with her husband, Reegan, a sergeant in the Garda, and his three young children from a previous marriage. Once a nurse with a busy, independent life in London during the turmoil and uncertainty of the Blitz, Elizabeth has now settled for a quieter existence, one dictated by various domestic routines at the Garda barracks in rural Ireland where Reegan is based. Her family hadn’t wanted her to marry Reegan, a man they considered somewhat diffident and prone to flashes of temper, but Elizabeth was ready for a life of her own choosing, away from London and the painful memories it evoked.

She married Reegan. She was determined to grasp at a life of her own desiring, no longer content to drag through with her repetitive days, neither happy nor unhappy, merely passing them in the wearying spirit of service; and the more the calls of duty tried to tie her down to this life the more intolerably burdensome it became. (pp. 15–16)

The marriage is one of companionship, security and mutual dependency rather than love or desire. Nevertheless, Elizabeth seems resigned to this arrangement, finding solace in her contributions to the smooth running of the household and her familiar domestic routines.

…had she married Reegan because she had been simply sick of living at the time and forced to create some illusion of happiness about him so that she might be able to go on? She’d no child of her own now. She’d achieved no intimacy with Reegan. He was growing more and more restless. He, too, was sick, sick of authority and the police, sick of obeying orders, threatening to break up this life of theirs in the barracks, but did it matter so much now? Did it matter where they went, whether one thing happened more than another? It seemed to matter less and less. An hour ago she’d been on the brink of collapse and if she finally collapsed did anything matter? (pp. 49–50)

Early in the novel, it becomes clear that Elizabeth is likely living with undiagnosed breast cancer. She has found lumps in her breast but has done nothing to seek assistance from the doctor despite her earlier training as a nurse. Instead, she tries to focus on the myriad of small daily tasks that must be carried out to keep the household ticking along. Any spare time would only be filled by worries about her condition, and the thought of spiralling downwards is too frightening to bear.

This’d be the only time of the day she might get some grip and vision on the desperate activity of her life. She was Elizabeth Reegan: a woman in her forties: sitting in a chair with a book from the council library in her hand that she hadn’t opened: watching certain things like the sewing-machine and the vase of daffodils and a circle still white with frost under the shade of the sycamore tree between the house and the river: alive in this barrack kitchen, with Casey down in the dayroom: with a little time to herself before she’d have to get another meal ready: with a life on her hands that was losing the last vestiges of its purpose and meaning: with hard cysts within her breast she feared were cancer… (p. 49)

With her strength failing with every passing day, Elizabeth knows the time has come to face up to her condition by seeing the unit’s doctor – a task she has been delaying for fear of the probable diagnosis. (We are in 1950s Ireland here, a time when cancer was rarely discussed publicly – and possibly not even privately, depending on the patient’s character. There’s also a suggestion here that Elizabeth might not even be told that she has cancer, that maybe this fact will be withheld from her or shared only with Reegan, such was the conservative nature of Irish society back then.)

She knew she must see a doctor, but she’d known that months before, and she had done nothing. (…)

What the doctor would do was simple. He’d send her for a biopsy. She might be told the truth or she might not when they got the result back, depending on them and on herself. If she had cancer she’d be sent for treatment. She had been a nurse. She had no illusions about what would happen. (p. 34)

Essentially, the novel follows the Reegan family as they pussyfoot around this crisis. Elizabeth knows she is dying, a realisation that inevitably prompts reflection and the raking over of past regrets, of lives that might have been lived but were never realised.

What was her life? Was she ready to cry halt and leave? Had it achieved anything or been given any meaning? She was no more ready to die now than she had been twenty years ago. (p. 85)

Central to the novel is the question of whether Elizabeth has lived a meaningful and fulfilling life. In some respects, she has been dying inside long before the breast cancer started to destroy her physical strength and resilience. Her life at the barracks is mundane and narrow, a world away from the excitement she once experienced in London with her former lover, Michael Halliday, the dashing doctor she met through her work at the hospital. Despite being somewhat fickle, Michael broadened Elizabeth’s cultural horizons by giving her books and taking her to plays at the theatre. How might her life have turned out had their relationship been more stable? Would it have been more pleasurable, more fulfilling than the one she has experienced with Reegan? Sadly though, for various reasons that McGahern duly reveals, this affair with Michael was torrid and painfully short-lived.

He [Halliday] had changed everything in her life and solved nothing: the first rush of the excitement of discovery, and then the failure of love, contempt changing to self-contempt and final destruction, its futile ashes left in her own hands. (p. 209)

Meanwhile, Reegan is embroiled in his own longstanding battle at work, which McGahern depicts with a strong sense of authenticity. A former leader in the Irish War of Independence, Reegan is frustrated by the futile regulations he must conform to as a Garda sergeant, and an ongoing feud with Superintendent Quirke leaves him feeling bitter and resentful. In truth, Reegan would like nothing more than to tell Quirke where he can stick his routine patrols and duty logs as he dreams of saving enough money to buy a local farm. A side hustle of selling turf from the nearby bog consumes much of his spare time, but one wonders whether it’s a convenient excuse to break free from the constraints of the barracks.

Where this quietly devastating novel really excels though is in its portrayal of Elizabeth’s inner world as she struggles with her illness. While the book is written in the third person, McGahern holds us close to Elizabeth’s viewpoint – a noteworthy achievement for a male writer in his late twenties, especially with a debut novel of this nature. This is a world in which emotions are kept under wraps, where no one seems able to openly acknowledge that Elizabeth is terminally ill. McGahern also pays great attention to the daily rhythms and rituals of life in this close community: the importance of church and family, the devotion to prayer; the small gestures of friends and neighbours when Elizabeth’s illness becomes known; everything here is so well observed.

They came before Elizabeth had her packing finished, all the policemen’s wives, Mrs. Casey and Mrs Brennan and Mrs Mullins. They were excited, the intolerable vacuum of their own lives filled with speculation about the drama they already saw circling about this new wound. (p. 106)

Alongside the characterisation, there is some lovely descriptive writing here, capturing the small moments of beauty in Elizabeth’s world.

The whiteness was burning rapidly off the fields outside, brilliant and glittering on the short grass as it vanished; and the daffodils that yesterday she had arranged in the white vase on the sill were a wonder of yellowness in the sunshine, the heads massed together above the cold green stems disappearing into the mouth of the vase. (pp. 48–49)

Even though I didn’t find The Barracks quite as engaging or enjoyable as Amongst Women, it’s still a very accomplished novel. McGahern’s insights into coming to terms with death are especially perceptive, as are his portrayals of small-town life in rural Ireland at this time, replete with the burden these characters seem destined to bear. Recommended, especially for fans of William Trevor, Claire Keegan and Colm Tóibín. (I read this book for Cathy’s Reading Ireland event, which runs throughout March.)

Tea on Sunday by Lettice Cooper

21 Replies

While the British novelist and campaigner Lettice Cooper is probably best known for her literary novels, such as National Provincial (1938) and The New House (1936), both in print with Persephone Books, she also wrote some mysteries featuring DCI Corby, of which this is one. Recently republished by the British Library as part of their excellent Crime Classics series, Tea on Sunday is a very enjoyable ‘closed circle’ style vintage mystery in which the focus is very much on ‘whodunnit’ – i.e. the characters, their backstories and links to the murder victim – rather than ‘howdunnit’, i.e. the mechanics of the crime. The novel was first published in 1973; however, as series consultant Martin Edward points out in his introduction, it has the feel of a mystery from an earlier age – ideally suited to the BLCC imprint, which spotlights novels from the Golden Age of Crime.

Tea on Sunday opens with a brief prologue, in which Alberta Mansbridge, a lady of a certain age, is preparing to welcome eight guests to her London home for a tea party one Sunday afternoon. As she sets the cups on the tea tray, Alberta reflects briefly on her life, touching on some of the guests expected at 4pm. Nevertheless, at 3.30pm, the buzzer on her intercom can be heard, and it is clear from Alberta’s response that one of her guests has arrived early…

The novel then cuts to just after 4pm, when Alberta’s nephew, Anthony Seldon, arrives at his aunt’s house to find the other guests huddled around the doorstep, keen to escape the snowy weather. The trouble is, Alberta isn’t answering her doorbell despite repeated rings; even a phone call from a nearby kiosk fails to rouse her. Fearing a fall or accident of some kind, the guests contact the police, who break in to find Alberta’s dead body sitting at the desk.

The police quickly identify the cause of death as strangulation, but there are no signs of a break-in, pointing to the belief that Alberta must have known her killer (or had a good enough reason to admit them to the house that afternoon). The time of death is identified as sometime between 3 and 4pm, making it likely that one of the tea party guests had arrived early, swiftly committed the murder, then disappeared before the others turned up. The challenge facing DCI Corby and his colleague, Sergeant Newstead, is to establish which of the guests is the guilty party, a quest that involves some dogged detective work into Alberta’s history and her connections to each of the suspects.

The tea party guests are an interesting bunch, and Cooper spends some fruitful time fleshing out their personalities as the story unfolds. Corby’s interviews with each guest are especially illuminating here, providing valuable insights into each suspect’s relationship with Alberta and their thoughts on her attitudes to life. Firstly, there is Alberta’s nephew, Anthony, whom Alberta seemed to like despite his lack of interest in helping with the Mansbridge family business in Yorkshire. Alberta had a controlling share in the company and often visited the works, which now need urgent modernisation to survive. At present, Anthony is drifting somewhat, working as a sales assistant in a fashionable London boutique, but his heart isn’t it. He’s also troubled by the volatile nature of his marriage to Lisa, a flighty, plain-speaking glamour model whom Alberta disliked intensely. Anthony and Lisa travelled separately to the tea party and are therefore unable to confirm each other’s movements during the crucial period in question.

Then there is Myra Heseltine, Alberta’s former housemate until the pair fell out during the summer. Today’s tea party would have been their first meeting since that fateful quarrel when Myra moved out of Alberta’s home. Also attending are Alberta’s doctor, Ewan Musgrove, now happily married to his second wife; nevertheless, Corby can tell he is deeply troubled about something – what, though, is another matter. Two of Alberta’s business colleagues are also among the guests: Russell Holdsworth, a London-based businessman who manages the finances of the orphanage Alberta’s father established in Yorkshire, and John Armistead, Managing Director of the Mansbridge family firm. Rounding out the group are two of Alberta’s dubious ‘protégés’, Barry Slater, a coarse ex-convict whom Alberta had met during her work as a prison visitor, and Marcello, a smooth-talking Italian with plans to set up an industrial design business. Alberta was financing both of these men to various extents, much to the disdain of some of her friends and family, who thought she was being too liberal with her generosity. In many respects, Alberta was a sharp, uncompromising businesswoman, but her support for these chancers was something of an Achilles heel.

If they had given him [Corby] nothing significant about themselves they had given him a fairly full picture of Alberta Mansbridge. She was, they all agreed, a woman who could be irritating sometimes, but whom nobody would want to murder. But somebody had wanted to murder her—from fear of something she knew? For something they hoped to inherit? It would be necessary to find out about her will and their circumstances. Or was the reason further back in the past, in that early life in Yorkshire that had been dominated by Albert Mansbridge? (p. 106)

At first, Corby’s interviews with each suspect yield few clues, but gradually, various loose ends and points worthy of further investigation begin to emerge. Both Anthony Seldon and Myra Heseltine stand to gain substantially from Alberta’s will, but would this have been enough of a motive for either of them to commit murder? Corby is not entirely sure based on his assessment of their characters. Meanwhile, the state of Alberta’s business affairs certainly warrants a closer look, taking Corby to Yorkshire to rake over the victim’s past. As the Corby’s investigations begin to bear fruit, a clearer picture emerges, but to say any more would be a spoiler, I think.

In summary, then, Tea on Sunday is a very enjoyable vintage mystery featuring interesting, well-crafted characters and a believable solution to the crime. Cooper clearly knows how to flesh out a convincing character portrait without resorting to stock stereotypes or cliches. Anthony Seldon and his glamorous but rather fickle wife, Lisa, are excellent value in this respect, bringing moments of wry humour to the mix.

He {Anthony] had at the moment a job in a men’s boutique in Kensington. In his spare time he was writing a play, or had been until he married Lisa last April, since when he had been living in a whirlpool which hardly allowed him to breathe, let alone write. It was a dead failure, their marriage, a mistake; it couldn’t possibly last and he would be glad to be out of it—only the rest of life would be so horribly dull without her. (p. 27)

DCI Cosby is also very engaging, a thoughtful and humane detective with a sharp eye for detail – his discussions with Sergeant Newstead are a pleasure to read.

‘What did you make of Miss Heseltine?’

‘She seemed to be very upset; very jumpy, and trying not to show it.’

‘More jumpy, do you think, than that kind of woman would be after the sudden shock of losing her great friend?’

‘She’d quarrelled with her.’

‘I don’t think that would make losing her any easier. Rather otherwise, perhaps.’ (pp. 51-52)

All in all, another excellent addition to the British Library Crime Classics series, which continues to showcase these lesser-known mysteries.

(My thanks to the publisher for kindly providing a review copy which I read for Karen’s #ReadIndies.)

Freezing Point by Anders Bodelsen (tr. Joan Tate)

18 Replies

First published in Danish in 1969, Freezing Point is another thrilling entry in the Faber Editions series, an expertly curated selection of rediscovered gems dedicated to showcasing radical literary voices from the past that still speak to us today. Bodelsen made his mark with crime novels, including Think of a Number (1968), which was adapted for the screen as The Silent Partner, featuring Elliott Gould and Susannah York. In 1969, he took a bit of a departure with Freezing Point, a chilling dystopian nightmare shot through with absurdist, deadpan humour. The novella takes place at three different points in time: 1973 (which would have been the near future back then), 1995 and 2022. Reading this novella today makes many of its themes seem eerily prescient, but more of that later as we get into the story. In the meantime, it’s another knockout read from Faber Editions, an imprint that continues to go from strength to strength.  

Freezing Point revolves around Bruno, a thirty-two-year-old fiction editor who works for a weekly magazine. Bruno, who is single, has various authors on his books, and one of his main roles is to feed them ideas for stories which he can then edit and place in the magazine, assuming they are good enough to feature.

One morning in 1973, Bruno discovers a strange lump on his neck, which a biopsy confirms is malignant. Unfortunately, the cancer is incurable as it has already spread to Bruno’s liver; however, he is offered a tantalising opportunity by his physician. Recent developments in cryogenics mean that Bruno can choose to be ‘frozen down’ until such time when his cancer can be cured – maybe in twenty or thirty years’ time – or he can make the most of the few months that remain. It’s still early days for the freezing technology, and while Bruno wouldn’t be the first person to be frozen down, he’d still be something of a guinea pig for the new process. His single status and lack of close family make his participation in the experiment as simple as possible. Moreover, the researchers will cover all of Bruno’s expenses for the treatment, including the cost of storing his possessions until he is defrosted.

With the alternative being certain death within months, Bruno opts to be frozen down until a cure for his cancer can be found. But before the freezing procedure takes place, he has a one-night stand with Jenny Hollander, a lonely young ballet dancer he recently met at a dinner party, probably as a final fling. This initial section of the novella ends with Bruno being put under; then we fast-forward to 1995, when the time has come for our protagonist to be revived…

When Bruno is defrosted, his chronological age is fifty-four, but his biological age (the most important one in this new world) is still thirty-two, just as it was in 1973 when he was frozen down.

The defrosting process is bewildering and stressful for Bruno, giving rise to many questions, especially as all he can see is the inside of a hospital room and the limited view from its window. Why, for instance, is it sunny every day followed by rainfall at night? Why are there so few cars on the road? And what do those signs on nearby buildings mean? Slogans such as ONE-LIFE CO.; NOW-LIFE; and NATURAL LIFE–NATURAL DEATH? If he’s going to continue working as an editor, he really needs to understand the world around him…

Meanwhile, doctors and nurses maintain strict control over Bruno’s exposure to various elements, from his physical environment, medication and food to stimulants such as books, conversation and sex. Moreover, the medics have Bruno under constant surveillance via a camera in the ceiling of his room, monitoring his every movement for signs of stress.

Understandably, all this proves rather frustrating and frightening for Bruno, not least when he discovers that he’s been sterilised as a precautionary measure – a necessary step to arrest growth in the population, now that so many individuals are opting to live longer! Bruno’s kidneys were also ‘borrowed’ while he was under, a development that Bodelsen reveals in a deadpan tone, highlighting the absurdity of this crazy new world where body autonomy is a thing of the past.

[Doctor:] “In 1982, we had a catastrophic kidney shortage.”

[Bruno:] “A what?”

“A kidney shortage, lack of kidneys in store – it was a spare part that at that time was still indispensable. A law, a law with retroactive effect, an emergency law, allowed us to borrow kidneys from patients who were down and had no use for their kidneys. We borrowed your kidneys.”

“Did I get them back?”

“You got another pair when we found ourselves in the opposite situation – we had progressed to the synthetic computerised kidney and suddenly found ourselves with a kidney surplus.” (pp. 73–74)

Bruno also learns that Jenny Hollander is currently frozen down following a major injury to her spine. It might be another twenty years before spinal transplants will be possible, much to Bruno’s dismay.

Once Bruno and other recently defrosted patients have been ‘up’ for a few days, they learn that a new class divide has emerged. In short, society now consists of two classes: firstly, members of the ‘now-life’ class, who accept death when their first organ gives out; and secondly, members of the ‘immortal’ or ‘all-life’ class, who work hard to pay for their immortality. New organs, ‘freezing down’ and spells in hibernation all cost money, which means the immortals must work themselves to the bone to fund these expensive treatments.

Now Bruno and other recently defrosted individuals face a life-changing decision. Do they opt for a ‘natural’ (i.e. a reduced) lifespan of leisure in return for mortgaging their organs, thus keeping the immortals stocked with new hearts and other vital kit? Or do they choose immortality and accept an indefinite lifetime of hard work?  It’s the only way to pay for the organ transplants, recalcification treatments and ‘freezing down’ periods which will extend their existence forever.

There are other considerations, too. Technology is advancing at such a pace that synthetically manufactured organs are starting to replace ‘organically’ harvested equivalents, meaning the potential for now-lifers to subsidise their leisurely lifestyles is starting to fall. At some point in the future, immortality might be the only viable option.

According to another recently defrosted man Bruno meets at the medical facility, this nightmarish new society is already starting to crumble.

“…They’ve been so busy with their immortality that they haven’t had time to work at anything else at all. The whole thing’s disintegrating. And now they’re going to produce synthetic spare organs and there’ll be no use for now-life people any longer. And then there’ll be a to-do, believe me.” (p. 91)

While the freezing down process stops the decay of most organs, the brain cells continue to age naturally, leading to problems with senility in otherwise youthful individuals. It’s possible that a solution to this mental degeneration might be found in the future, but for now, the decay remains an issue. Severe depression is also rife, especially amongst the recently defrosted, as they try to come to terms with the new world order and the choices they must make.

At first, the doctors attempt to get Bruno to play along. As he was one of the initial guinea pigs for the freezing down process, all his treatments have been financed by the researchers. In effect, his life has been extended for free, so now he ‘owes’ society something in return. However, Bruno’s depression, his rebellion against being confined and his overwhelming desire to see Jenny again are so strong that the doctors finally agree to another period of freezing down. If all goes well, he will be frozen until such time as Jenny can be equipped with a brand-new spine.

So, in part three, the novel fast-forwards to 2022, when Bruno and Jenny can be simultaneously defrosted and reunited. However, rather than this being the panacea that Bruno has been hoping for, new, more complex issues swiftly intervene…

He kissed her again and it really did seem as if he were kissing a doll. They had done something to her, or she must always have been like that. Did he know her at all, or had she just been his pretext for going through with two freezings – his pretext for demanding his eternity? Had they made him into a doll too? (p. 172)

One of the most impressive things about this novella is the chilling, claustrophobic atmosphere Bodelsen creates while keeping most of the action focused within the walls of Bruno’s hospital room. This sense of confinement adds greatly to the novella’s sinister mood. As the story unfolds, Bruno and others begin to rebel against the system that is trapping them. For instance, Bruno keeps asking if he can see copies of weekly magazines, partly to check that they still exist; but despite being told that this will happen ‘soon’, these magazines never appear. Other key information is also withheld from view, only to be glimpsed through the window of his room or passed on through hearsay. There are signs of agitators demonstrating outside the facility, and at one point, a break-in occurs, but the true nature of the external world is never explicitly revealed. Naturally, this allows the reader’s imagination to come into play, filling that void with all manner of nightmarish scenarios and uncertainties.

Moreover, the novella nails the sense that everything pleasurable about life has been stripped away, especially for the immortals / all-life class. What is the point in living forever if one has to work incessantly and adopt an obsessively healthy regime to pay for it all? I couldn’t help but think of all those manic fitness gurus on TikTok who advocate extreme fasting, clean living, daily journalling and punishing fitness regimes to maintain the perfect body and mind. Where is the joy in that? It’s nowhere to be seen. While many of the world’s ‘problems’, such as variations in the weather, seem to have been solved, Bruno longs for the spontaneity and pleasures of his former life, one with rain, flowers, cigarettes, books, music and delicious meals – food that looks and tastes like real food, not the squishy cubes of carefully controlled body fuel and drugs he is given now.

Bodelsen also anticipates various technological and societal developments that are either imminent or have actually taken place since the novel was published in 1969. For instance, the introduction of driverless electric cars, the proliferation of wall-sized TVs, the decline of print media (particularly weekly magazines) and society’s obsession with living longer and looking younger.

The problem with automatic cars and wall-sized television is that the need for both is minimal. The all-life class is too busy earning money for their all-life and their various freezing downs to be able to invest in such things. And the now-life people are only interested in euphoria and other means of forgetting that one day they will die. (pp. 107–108)

Ongoing monitoring systems which automatically administer personalised medicines are also in existence in the novella’s 2022 timeline. The challenge of preventing dementia, or at least arresting its progression, is another pertinent issue which Bodelsen hints at, predicting perhaps one of the biggest challenges of our times.

As this excellent, thought-provoking novella draws to a close, Bodelsen reveals the true horror of a world where immortality seems to be the only option. It’s a terrifying, nightmarish finish to a thoroughly absorbing story. Very highly recommended indeed, especially to readers with an interest in dystopian fiction. Fans of Sven Holm’s Termush, also published by Faber Editions, would likely appreciate this one!

(My thanks to the publishers for kindly providing a review copy, which I read for Karen’s #ReadIndies.)

The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk (tr. Antonia Lloyd-Jones)

34 Replies

Inspired by Thomas Mann’s 1924 novel The Magic Mountain, which explores various philosophical ideas and the nature of European society in the run-up to the First World War, The Empusium is Olga Tokarczuk’s sly, clever and erudite response – a health resort horror story in which the true horrors are the misogynistic views of men, central to received wisdom and intellectual thinking at that time. It’s a dense, beautifully written novel that requires patience and concentration from readers, but the rewards are plentiful for those who persist. I found it oddly gripping and unsettling, the sort of book that really gets under your skin.

Tokarczuk’s main protagonist is Mieczysław Wojnicz, a young Polish student who travels to a health resort in the Silesian mountains in 1913 to seek treatment for his tuberculosis. The village of Göbersdorf is shielded from winds by the surrounding mountains, and this atmosphere, enhanced by a large underground lake, makes the valley air rich in oxygen. In other words, it’s the ideal location for those seeking relief from severe lung conditions.

Right from the start, Tokarczuk invests her story with an unsettling feel, a Gothic-like atmosphere that hints at the sinister developments to come.

But Wojnicz can see nothing beyond a dense wall of darkness that is heedlessly breaking free of the mountainsides in whole sheets. Once his eyes have grown used to it, a viaduct suddenly looms before them, under which they drive into a village; beyond it, the vast bulk of a red brick edifice comes into sight, followed by other smaller buildings, a street, and even two gas lamps. The brick edifice proves colossal as it emerges from the darkness, and the motion of the vehicle picks out rows of illuminated windows. The light in them is dingy yellow. Wojnicz cannot tear his eyes from this sudden, triumphal vision, and he looks back at it for a long time, until it sinks into the darkness like a huge steamship. (p. 18)

Like many other men under the care of the Kurhaus sanatorium, Wojnicz is staying at the nearby Guesthouse for Gentlemen, where he takes his evening meals after each day’s treatments.

Shortly after Wojnicz’s arrival at the Guesthouse, the owner’s wife, Frau Opitz, hangs herself, signalling an inauspicious start to the young student’s stay in the valley . More trouble duly follows as Wojnicz gets to know the other guests, who insist on conducting philosophical discussions over drinks and dinner. Every night, the men partake of Schwärmerei, an intoxicating concoction popular in the area, and insist on debating the great issues of the day. Each member of the group has their own personal affiliations to various movements, with discussions spanning the breadth of current thinking from the benefits of democracy vs the monarchy to the political situation among the Western powers. Nevertheless, irrespective of the starting point for each debate, the men soon turn their attentions to the failings of women, whom they consider inferior beings, frequently prone to hysteria and best relegated to the margins. God forbid that these emotional creatures should ever threaten the traditional order of their patriarchal world!

‘Women are more fragile and sensitive by nature,’ he [Lukas] said, ‘which is why they’re easily inclined towards ill-considered acts.’ (p. 55)

‘…Woman is like…’ – here he [Lukas] sought the right word – ‘an evolutionary laggard. While man has gone on ahead and acquired new capabilities, woman has stayed in her old place and does not develop. That is why a woman is often socially handicapped, incapable of coping on her own, and must always be reliant on a man. She has to make an impression on him – by manipulation, by smiling. The Mona Lisa’s smile symbolizes a woman’s entire evolutionary strategy for coping with life. Which is to seduce and manipulate.’ (p. 94)

In short, these men view women as social parasites incapable of rational or intellectual thought. Willi Opitz, the guesthouse owner, has had four wives, all of whom sucked the life out of him, either through their manipulative behaviour or various other weaknesses. Nevertheless, if appropriately managed and controlled, women can be allowed to perform tasks for the benefit of their menfolk, chiefly by acting as housekeepers, cooks, nursemaids and mothers, while also providing sexual services on demand. As one member of the group puts it, men shape a woman’s identity, and the church her spiritual guidance, with the state and society dictating her purpose and acceptable roles.

(At first, I wondered where Tokarczuk, who is known for her progressive thinking, was going with all of this, but everything slots into place with the Author’s Note at the end – a crucial afterword which illuminates a key aspect of Tokarczuk’s approach! I’d love to discuss the language in more detail, but it’s too much of a spoiler, I think.)

Wojnicz, for his part, finds these misogynistic discussions somewhat tiresome, partly because his mind is preoccupied with thoughts of his own. Despite feeling the benefits of the mountain air and the Kurhaus’ treatment regime, Wojnicz cannot shake a gnawing sense of anxiety running underneath his well-ordered existence in the valley. In other words, a sense of discomfort or unease has infiltrated his soul.

He [Wojnicz] left the table with relief, unable to ward off the nasty feeling that they were isolated here, that they had landed in Göbersdorf like a unit cut off from a great army, under siege. And although there were no gun barrels in sight, or signs of the presence of devious secret agents, Wojnicz felt as if he had unwittingly ended up in a war of some kind. Who was fighting whom he had no idea… (p. 59)

One night, a fellow patient, Thilo, pulls Wojnicz into his room, warning him of sinister occurrences in the area. ‘People get murdered here’, Thilo claims, as Göbersdorf is likely cursed. Every November, a young man is mutilated in the forest, and his remains are found scattered about the woods in haphazard fashion. Local men, typically shepherds or charcoal burners, were the first to be targeted; however, in recent years, the focus has shifted to patients at the Kurhaus sanatorium. Moreover, there seems to be a strange sense of acceptance of these deaths amongst the locals, almost as if they are destined to happen on the first full moon in November. In short, it’s as if the landscape demands an annual sacrifice from the menfolk, possibly as payback for earlier crimes.

At first, Wojnicz puts these fanciful claims down to the ramblings of a severely ill and troubled man, but the more time he spends in the guesthouse, the more concerned he becomes. Strange scuffling noises can be heard from the attic, but no rational explanation is forthcoming. Moreover, on investigating the attic area above his room, Wojnicz finds a chair with leather straps attached, presumably for restraining the sitter and restricting their movements – an instrument of torture, perhaps.

As this brilliant, cleverly constructed novel unfolds, Tokarczuk draws on threads from folklore and classical myths, weaving them into the fabric of her story to create a narrative that feels at once very early 20th century while also drawing on unsettling legends from previous eras. The novel’s title is significant here, signalling a link to the Empusa (or Empousa), a shape-shifting spectre from Greek mythology – I’ll hold off from saying more about these phantoms for fear of revealing spoilers!

While misogyny and the blinkered pontifications of arrogant men are Tokarczuk’s main targets here, the novel also finds time to highlight the folly of nationalism and parochial mindsets, signalling perhaps the inevitable consequences when these ideals are pursued to the extreme.

‘The concept of “nation” does not speak to me at all. Our emperor, yours and mine, says that only “peoples” exist, nations are an invention. The paradox lies in the fact that nation states are in desperate need of other nation states – a single nation state has no raison d’être, the essence of their existence is confrontation and being different. Sooner or later, it will lead to war.’ (pp. 111–112)

In summary then, The Empusium is a sly, thought-provoking exploration of the horrors of misogyny, a novel fizzing with ideas and opposing forces, all culminating in a haunting denouement worthy of Sylvia Townsend Warner or Barbara Comyns. While Tokarczuk might not be everyone’s taste, it’s hard not to acknowledge her skill as a visionary writer capable of tackling some of the central tensions and philosophical concerns of our world, even though she might well unnerve us in the cleverest of ways. I’ll finish with a final quote, one that seems to capture the unsettling atmosphere of this brilliant novel.

For a split second Mieczysław [Wojnicz] notices an incredible phenomenon – the light of magnesium bounces off the spruce trees and firs and returns to them, briefly coating their bodies in ash; it is as if in this split second he has glimpsed beneath the jackets and pullovers not just their bare white skin, but also their bones, the shape of their skeletons; it feels as if they are standing on a stage, as if this is the overture to an opera, and the spectators in this theatre are the trees, blueberry bushes, moss-coated stones and some fluid, ill-defined presence that is moving like streams of warmer air among the mighty trunks, boughs and branches. (p. 110)

The Empusium is published by Fitzcarraldo Editions; my thanks to the publisher for kindly providing a review copy, which I read for Karen’s Read Indies event.

Some of My Favourite Books from NYRB Classics

44 Replies

One of the most interesting literary trends in recent years has been the success of various imprints specialising in reissues – lesser-known or neglected books given a new lease of life by publishers with a flair for curation. Virago Press and Persephone Books have been doing sterling work in this area for many years by focusing almost exclusively on female writers; but with Karen’s Read Indies event currently in full swing, I’d like to highlight another leading indie publisher in this sphere, NYRB Classics.

The NYRB Classics series, which began in 1999 with the publication of Richard Hughes’ A High Wind in Jamaica, now comprises over 500 titles from novels and short stories to memoirs, travel writing, literary criticism and poetry. Each title comes with an introduction or afterword from a leading writer to set the book in context. Clearly, a lot of work has gone into curating this list, which is still directed by the imprint’s founder, Edwin Frank. There are so many gems in this series that it would be impossible to mention them all, but here are some of my favourites.

A View of the Harbour by Elizabeth Taylor (1947)

One of Taylor’s most absorbing novels, A View of the Harbour is a beautifully crafted story of the complications of life, love and family relationships, all set within a sleepy, down-at-heel harbour town a year or two after the end of World War II. It’s a wonderful ensemble piece, packed full of flawed and damaged characters who live in the kind of watchful environment where virtually everyone knows everyone else’s business. Into this community comes Bertram Hemingway, a retired Naval Officer who intends to spend his time painting the local scenery – ideally a magnificent view of the harbour which he hopes to leave behind as a memento of his visit. Slowly but surely, Bertram comes into contact with virtually all of the town’s inhabitants, affecting their lives in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Fans of Penelope Fitzgerald’s The Bookshop will likely enjoy this one!

Our Spoons Came from Woolworths by Barbara Comyns (1950)

One of my favourite novels featuring a highly distinctive female narrator – in this case, Sophia, a young woman who is looking back on her unhappy marriage to a rather feckless artist by the name of Charles. In writing this book, Comyns has drawn heavily on experiences from her own life. It is, by all accounts, a lightly fictionalised version of her first marriage, a relationship characterised by tensions over money worries and various infidelities on her husband’s part. Sophia and Charles’ hardscrabble bohemian lifestyle and North London flat are vividly evoked. Although it took me a couple of chapters to gel with Sophia’s unassuming conversational style, I really warmed to her character, particularly as the true horror of her story became apparent – her experiences of the insensitive nature of maternity care in 1930s London were especially disturbing to read. This is a wonderful book, by turns humorous, sad, shocking and heart-warming.

The Expendable Man by Dorothy B. Hughes (1963)

If I had to pick just one of these books as a must-read NYRB Classic, The Expendable Man would probably be it. A young doctor picks up a dishevelled teenage girl on a deserted highway while driving to a family wedding in Arizona. What could possibly go wrong? Well, pretty much everything, as it turns out, in this remarkably gripping novel set in 1960s America. There’s a crucial ‘reveal’ at a certain point in the story, something that might cause you to question some of your assumptions and maybe expose a few subconscious prejudices as well. The Expendable Man was a big hit with my book group, along with another of Hughes’ novels, the equally compelling In a Lonely Place, also reissued by NYRB.  

More Was Lost by Eleanor Perényi (1946)

This remarkable memoir by the American-born writer Eleanor Perényi deserves to be much better known. In essence, More Was Lost covers the early years of Eleanor’s marriage to Zsiga Perényi, a relatively poor Hungarian baron whom she meets while visiting Europe with her parents in 1937. Following the couple’s wedding, Eleanor moves to Zsiga’s charming but dilapidated estate on the shifting borders between Hungary and Czechoslovakia. It’s a gem of a book, both charming and poignant in its depiction of a vanishing and unstable world, all but destroyed by the ravages of war. There is a sense of lives being swept up in the devastating impact of broader events as the uncertainty of the political situation in  Europe begins to escalate. By turns beautiful, illuminating, elegiac and sad, it’s the type of book that feels expansive in scope but intimate in detail.

Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker (1962)

One of the first NYRB Classics I read, and it remains a firm favourite. Baker’s novel revolves around Cassandra, a graduate student at Berkeley, who is heading home to her family’s ranch for her identical twin sister’s wedding, which she seems hell-bent on derailing. Cassandra is a fascinating yet very complex character – possibly one of the most complicated I have ever encountered in fiction. Yes, she’s intelligent and precise, and at times charming and loving, but she can also be domineering, manipulative, self-absorbed and cruel. Her thoughts and actions are full of contradictions, and there are instances when she tries to delude herself, possibly to avoid the truth. At heart, Cassandra is emotionally dependent on her twin, Judith, and deep down, her sister’s earlier departure to New York and imminent marriage to Jack feel like acts of betrayal. (Identity is a key theme here, particularly how it can limit our sense of self as well as define us.) And yet it’s very hard not to feel some sympathy for Cassandra despite her abominable behaviour. If you like complex characters with plenty of light and shade, this is the novel for you!

School for Love by Olivia Manning (1951)

Set in Jerusalem during the closing stages of World War II, this highly compelling coming-of-age story features a most distinctive character, quite unlike any other I’ve encountered, either in literature or in life itself. When Felix Latimater is orphaned following the death of his mother from typhoid, he is sent from Baghdad to Jerusalem to live with his late father’s adopted sister, the formidable Miss Bohun, until the war comes to an end. In Miss Bohun, Manning has created a fascinating individual who is sure to generate strong opinions either way. Is she a manipulative hypocrite, determined to seize any opportunity and exploit it for her own personal gain? Or is this woman simply deluded, acting on the belief that she is doing the morally upstanding thing in a changing and unstable world? You’ll have to read the book yourself to take a view…

Agostino by Alberto Moravia (tr. Michael F. Moore) (1944)

Another excellent novel about a young boy’s coming-of-age and loss of innocence – in this instance, the setting is an Italian seaside resort in the mid-1940s. Moravia’s protagonist is Agostino, a thirteen-year-old boy who is devoted to his widowed mother. When his mother falls into a dalliance with a handsome young man, Agostino feels uncomfortable and confused by her behaviour, emotions that quickly turn to revulsion as the summer unfolds. This short but powerful novel is full of strong, sometimes brutal imagery, with the murky, mysterious waters of the setting mirroring the cloudy undercurrent of emotions in Agostino’s mind. Ultimately, this is a story of a young boy’s transition from the innocence of boyhood to a new phase in his life. While this should be a happy and exciting time of discovery for Agostino, the summer is marked by a deep sense of pain and confusion. Another striking, evocative novella deserves to be much better known.

Grand Hotel by Vicki Baum (tr. Basil Creighton) (1929)

Set in the late 1920s, this engaging, cleverly constructed novel revolves around the experiences of six central characters as they cross parths in a Berlin hotel. There are moments of lightness and significant darkness here as Baum weaves her story together, moving from one figure to another with consummate ease – her sense of characterisation is remarkably vivid. At the centre of the novel is the idea that our lives can change direction in surprising ways through our interactions with others. We see fragments of these individuals’ lives as they come and go from the hotel. Some are on their way up and are altered for the better; others are on their way down and emerge much diminished. What appears to be chance and the luck of the draw may in fact turn out to be a case of cause and effect. In some ways, the hotel is a metaphor for life itself, complete with the great revolving door which governs our daily existence. All in all, it’s a wonderfully entertaining read.

A Month in the Country by J. L. Carr (1980)

A sublime, deeply affecting book about love, loss and the restorative power of art. Set in a small Yorkshire village in the heady summer of 1920, Carr’s novella is narrated by Tom Birkin, a young man still dealing with the effects of shell shock following the traumas of WWI. A Southerner by nature, Birkin has come to Oxgodby to restore a Medieval wall painting in the local church – much to the annoyance of the vicar, Reverend Keach, who resents the restorer’s presence in his domain. However, there is another purpose to Birkin’s visit: to find an escape or haven of sorts, an immersive distraction from the emotional scars of the past. Imbued with a strong sense of longing and nostalgia for an idyllic world, Carr’s novella also perfectly captures the ephemeral nature of time – the idea that our lives can turn on the tiniest of moments, the most fleeting of chances to be grasped before they are lost forever. In short, it’s a masterpiece in miniature, full of yearning and desire for times gone by. 

Do let me know your thoughts on these books if you’ve read any of them. Or maybe you have some favourite NYRB Classics of your own – if so, feel free to mention them in the comments below.

Stories for Mothers and Daughters – Maeve Brennan, A. S. Byatt, Jeanette Winterson & more!

25 Replies

Over the past few years, the British Library has been doing sterling work with its excellent Women Writers series, reissuing lesser-known 20th-century novels by female authors for modern-day readers to enjoy. Alongside the novels, the series includes a handful of carefully curated anthologies, one of which – Stories for Mothers and Daughters – I’m discussing here.

Sometimes, these types of collections can be a little uneven, but in this instance, almost all the entries are very good. Here we have stories that explore various facets of mother-daughter relationships, from headstrong, liberated daughters opposing the more traditional authority figures their mothers represent, to shy, uncertain girls being pushed into society with limited support. In other tales, we learn of the sacrifices some mothers are prepared to make for the benefit of their children. It’s a fascinating collection, spanning a variety of different styles and the full breadth of the 20th century in settings / timeframes. As is often the case, different stories will likely resonate with different readers depending on their tastes, but there really does appear to be something for everyone here, from humorous sketches to poignant pieces to dramatic stories of clashing ideals.

The collection opens with Week-End by Richmal Crompton, who is probably best known for her Just William books, which makes perfect sense given the protagonists in this tale. As the story opens, a widowed mother who values peace and quiet is preparing to welcome her three boisterous adult daughters and their friend, ‘Nibbles’, for the weekend. The girls duly arrive, sweeping through the country cottage in a whirlwind of noise, selfish behaviour and blatant disregard for their mother’s way of life, The crux of this story rests on illustrating how blinkered these daughters are to their mother’s true desires – in short, they assume their mother needs cheering up, while in actual fact, she’d much rather be on her own. However, Compton overdoes it in the execution of this tale, portraying these girls as spoilt ten-year-olds rather than working women in their twenties or late teens. I loved the concept behind this one but couldn’t buy the girls’ behaviour, which included sliding down bannisters and surfing on tea trays when the weather turned foul!

Clashing priorities of a different kind feature in Inez Holden’s excellent story, The Value of Being Seen, in which Mrs Ascot is determined to launch her daughter Daphne into London society. Every preparation has been made, from ‘polishing’ Daphne at a Parisian finishing school and taking a house in London for the debutante season to instructing the girl on the importance of being seen and making a good impression. And yet, Daphne, who is shy and retiring at heart, finds the endless whirl of society dances terribly intimidating. As the interminable season unfolds, Daphne finds herself fading into the background to the point of becoming invisible to those around her.

Daphne’s existence went on. There were more dances, tea meetings, Lord’s, Goodwood, helping with plays for good causes; the unending putting on of dresses and having pictures taken; Daphne went about in a group of other débutantes all the time. They had nothing of any interest to say to one another—only cries of approval, foolish little laughs, and accounts of dancers fixed for the future. There was not a quiet minute, and through it all no one seemed to see Daphne. She was unconscious of herself, and she went on being unseen. (p. 22)

It’s a very striking story – sad, dark and beautifully executed.

I also loved A. S. Byatt’s evocative story Rose-Coloured Teacups, my first experience of this writer’s work. When Veronica’s daughter, Jane, breaks her mother’s sewing machine – a treasured family heirloom – Veronica is filled with rage at the girl’s behaviour. But the incident also prompts Veronica to recall a similar experience from her student days when she broke several rose-coloured teacups – a gift she detested at the time. Just like the sewing machine, the rose-coloured tea-cups were a treasured possession, passed from one generation to the next in an emotionally charged gesture. When the terrible breakage was discovered, Veronica’s mother was outraged by her daughter’s carelessness, not only at the destruction of the cups themselves but also as a howl of anguish at being trapped by the restrictions of marriage, motherhood and domesticity in general.

The teacups had been given by her mother’s old college friend, to take back a new generation to the college. She had not liked the teacups. She did not like pink, and the floral shape of the saucers was most unfashionable. She and her friends drank Nescafe from stone mugs or plain cylinders in primary colours. She had left folded in her drawer the tablecloth embroidered for her by her grandmother, whose style of embroidery was now exemplified by the cloth, so stiff and clean and brilliant, in the visionary teaparty she had taken to imagining since her mother died. It was a curious form of mourning, but compulsive, and partly comforting. It seemed to be all she was capable of. The force of her mother’s rage against the house and housewifery that trapped her and, by extension, against her clever daughters, who had all partly evaded that trap, precluded wholehearted mourning. (pp. 122–123)

Another excellent story, full of emotional truth. 

A clash of another sort is central to Mary Arden’s striking story The Stepmother,in which a former schoolmistress, Esther King, who prides herself on being able to understand young girls, finds herself struggling to form a bond with her teenage stepdaughter, Ella. Newly married to Ella’s middle-aged father, Esther tries every trick in her armamentarium to befriend Ella, who remains stubbornly polite yet distant and aloof.

In the days, in the weeks after Ella’s coming, Esther was not at all happy. She felt that she was always trying to be nice to Ella, and yet always her advances were met—no, not exactly coldly, and yet somehow not met at all. And still—utterly unlike the Miss King of former days—Esther simply had to go on being sweet to this obstinate creature who refused to respond to her charms. Sometimes she hated herself for it, sometimes there came a little twinge of hatred for Ella, but there was something about the child… (p. 190)

When an infatuated former pupil of Esther’s comes to stay during the holidays, the situation comes to a head, forcing a brutal showdown between Ella and her stepmother. It’s a crushing story culminating in a dramatic denouement.

Phyllis Bottome’s The Battle-Field is another standout example of a mother and daughter pulling in different directions, but in this instance, the mother’s behaviour poses a serious risk to her child’s health. Madeleine has always been a delicate young woman, prone to lung disease and other related conditions, which her mother has nursed. Nevertheless, when a new physician takes over Madeleine’s care, complete rest in a sanatorium is prescribed, which ultimately means no visits from her mother. As this excellent story plays out, the nature of the maternal bond is tested, emotional truths come to light and secrets are revealed, forcing Madeleine to reassess the true aim of her mother’s actions. Bottome paints a vivid picture of a toxic, co-dependent relationship in this dark, beautifully executed story that chills the soul.

Deceptions of a different kind are at the heart of Amy Bloom’s Love is Not a Pie, in which two grown-up sisters develop a deeper awareness of the tangled nature of their mother’s love life in the wake of her death. The significance of puzzling scenes from the girls’ childhoods now slots into place, revealing hard truths about a family friend and his complex relationships with both of their parents.

What was that, I thought, what did I see? I wanted to go back and take another look, to see it again, to make it disappear, to watch them carefully, until I understood. (p. 139)

This surprising story will take readers to some unexpected places, echoing perhaps the sexual freedoms of the ‘60s and ‘70s in its narrative arc.

Maeve Brennan’s The Shadow of Kindness is a bleak, melancholic gem, in which the absence of Delia Bagot’s two children – on holiday with their aunt and uncle in the country – throws the emptiness of Delia’s life into sharp relief. The most heartbreaking aspects of this story stem from the semi-estranged state of the Bagots’ marriage, now an emotional desert following the early death of their first child some ten years earlier.

She knew things were not as they should be between them, but while the children were at home she did not want to say anything for fear of a row that might frighten the children, and now that the children were away she found she was afraid to speak for fear of disturbing a silence that might, if broken, reveal any number of things that she did not want to see and that she was sure he did not want to see. Or perhaps he saw them and kept silent out of charity, or out of despair, or out of a hope that they would vanish if no one paid any attention to them. (p. 111)

This story appears in Brennan’s superb collection The Springs of Affection, which I would highly recommend if you haven’t read it already – it’s one of my all-time favourites!

Elsewhere, Jeanette Winterson has fun with her darkly humorous tale Psalms, whose fervently religious mother and sanguine daughter reminded me of Oranges are Not the Only Fruit. Janet Frame’s Pictures is particularly lovely – a touching story of a mother and daughter enjoying a trip to the cinema. There is no conflict here, just beauty and humanity, an escape from the lonely boarding house where the pair live.

It was a wonderful picture. It was the greatest love story ever told. It was Life and Love and Laughter, and Tenderness and Tears. (p. 49)

Tillie Olsen’s I Stand Here Ironing is another poignant one, highlighting the challenges faced by a poor single mother, raising a daughter during America’s Great Depression.

She was too vulnerable for that terrible world of youthful competition, of preening and parading, of constant measuring of yourself against every other, of envy… (p. 175)

This is a sad story of a child whose life is shaped by harsh circumstances, but there are glimmers of something more hopeful here, especially towards the end.

Finally, a mention for Winifred Holtby’s The Silver Cloak, one of my favourites in this delightful collection – a memorable story in which age and experience must give way to the freshness of youth, even when the mother is still relatively young (thirty-six!) and beautiful herself.

Annie stared at her daughter, and as she looked, the hot shame brought dark blushes to her own cheeks, bathing her neck in warm colour. “Why, Katie!” Katie was jealous. Jealous of her. She had been a thief. She had wanted to steal the pretty things and the attention and the fun which belonged to youth by right of birth. She had been greedy, usurping the girl’s place, because, through her own experience, she knew so much better than Katie what to say and do and wear. She saw the lovely relationship which had bound them so closely breaking down before her grasping desire for a good time. And all for a cloak, a silly silver cloak which wasn’t even very suitable. (pp. 62–63)

As ever with the BL’s Women Writers series, the book is beautifully produced and comes with an informative introduction – in this instance by Molly Thatcher and Simon Thomas. Highly recommended; my thanks to the publisher for kindly providing a review copy, which I read for Karen’s Read Indies event.

The Waterfall by Margaret Drabble

38 Replies

Alongside my ongoing aim of reading Anita Brookner’s novels in publication order, roughly one every six months, I’m trying to do the same with Margaret Drabble, albeit more slowly. Drabble’s first three books, A Summer Bird-Cage, The Garrick Year and The Millstone, all hit the spot for me, but her fourth, Jerusalem the Golden, seemed to lack a certain spark. This brings me to Drabble’s fifth, The Waterfall (1969), which at first glance might be at risk of being dismissed as simply another story of an extra-marital affair. Nevertheless, what makes this novel so fascinating to read is the way Drabble chooses to tellthe story – in other words, the book’s form, which oscillates between the third and first person as the story unfolds. I’m not entirely convinced that Drabble’s execution of this concept works; nevertheless, it’s a very intriguing way to examine an affair in detail, and I found the novel pretty compelling throughout.

Even when writing in the third person, Drabble remains focused on her protagonist, Jane Gray, a twenty-eight-year-old married woman whose husband, Malcolm, has recently left her. When we first meet Jane, a poet, she is about to give birth to her second child, which duly takes place at home as planned, aided by a midwife. Meanwhile, Jane and Malcolm’s young son, Laurie, is being looked after by her parents. While Jane is recovering at home, her cousin, Lucy, and the latter’s husband, James, take turns in supporting her, with Lucy covering the day shifts and James taking over at night when his wife leaves to look after their own children.

At first, Jane feels uncomfortable with James watching over her at night, but this unease soon disappears, and before we know it, they are sharing a bed, sparking an intense, deeply felt affair. In short, James seems to unlock something in Jane, tapping into feelings she has never experienced before. Her marriage to Malcolm was arid and unfulfilling, a stark contrast to the passion she feels for James.

She [Jane] began to live for his coming, submitting herself helplessly to the current, abandoning herself to it, knowing then at the beginning things that were to be obscured from her later by pain and desire – knowing it could not end well, because how else could it be, what good ends were there to such emotions? And she did not care: she foresaw and surrendered to the whole journey, she did not withhold herself, she kept nothing back. (p. 41)

As the days pass, Jane has less need for Lucy’s help around the house, but James continues to visit at night. What Lucy makes of all this is never mentioned, leaving us to wonder whether she actually knows where he is…

By now, we are 40 pages into this intense account of the affair, all written in the third person; but then, Drabble suddenly changes tack, switching to a first-person narrative that casts doubt on the veracity of what we have been reading.

It won’t, of course, do: as an account, I mean, of what took place. I tried, I tried for so long to reconcile, to find a style that would express it, to find a system that would excuse me, to construct a new meaning, having kicked the old one out, but I couldn’t do it, so here I am, resorting to that old broken medium. Don’t let me deceive myself, I see no virtue in confusion, I see true virtue in clarity, in consistency, in communication, in honesty. Or is that too no longer true? Do I stand judged by that sentence? I cannot judge myself, I cannot condemn myself, so what can I make that will admit me and encompass me? Nothing, it seems, but a broken and fragmented piece: an event seen from angles, where there used to be one event, and one way only of enduring it. (pp. 48–49)

There is a sense here that the third-person narrative is a selective account of the affair – not a lie as such, but an incomplete and carefully edited version of events. As first-person Jane says at one point, ‘this is dishonest, but not as dishonest as deliberate falsehood’ – a misrepresentation of sorts, but not a complete fabrication.

Drabble uses the first-person narrative to explore various aspects. Firstly, there is the meta element in which Drabble, via Jane, seems to be commenting on the writing process, i.e. the challenges of finding a form or style in which to convey this story.

I must make an effort to comprehend it. I will take it all to pieces, I will resolve it to its parts, and then I will put it together again, I will reconstitute it in a form that I can accept, a fictitious form: adding a little here, abstracting a little there, moving this arm half an inch that way, gently altering the dead angle of the head upon its neck. If I need a morality, I will create one: a new ladder, a new virtue. (p. 55)

Secondly, Jane analyses her thoughts and behaviour during the affair, searching perhaps for some justification for her illicit actions. Initially, she does not consider the potential impact on Lucy; nor does she consider her own husband, Malcom, whom she admits to neglecting before his departure. These considerations will come later, once unforeseen developments force her hand. Nevertheless, when Jane hears Malcolm’s voice on the radio (he is a singer), she is assailed by feelings of guilt.

…as she sat there waves of panic, so familiar to her, evoked by that disembodied voice, began to possess her – guilt, senselessness, terror, failure, betrayal. She could not make sense of where she was, of what she was, of what she was doing: she wanted to write poetry and she could not, she wanted this man [James] and she could not have him. (p. 77)

Drabble also uses the first-person narrative to flesh out Malcolm’s backstory, followed by Lucy’s. Winding back in time, we see how Jane meets Malcolm, a singer and classical guitarist, at a party. Following a period of courtship, Jane marries Malcolm (who comes from a lower middle-class background than her own), largely out of convenience. In short, he represents safety, dignity and companionship rather than passion or love; meanwhile, she has no idea what to expect from marriage itself – no knowledge of her own body, sexual desires or untapped depths.

At the time, Jane blames herself, but all too soon, she feels isolated in her marriage with Malcolm – a husband she does not love, partly because he seems to have no emotional need for her. Motherhood, too, leaves her feeling alienated and adrift.

…I felt all the comfort drain so quickly out of our relationship as it transformed itself into the very things I had sought to escape – loneliness, treachery, hardness of heart. I know now that the fault was partly his, because having got me he did not really want me: he did not want a woman at all. It took many me so many years to discover this that I felt oddly light-headed, to be able to write it down, simply, in an ordinary sentence, like that. (p. 106)

Drabble began writing at a time when more young women were going to university than ever before, opening up the possibility of interesting careers for many girls. But despite these developments, traditional societal expectations remained somewhat entrenched, isolating many women in marriage and motherhood despite their potential for personal growth. It’s a recurring theme in Drabble’s early novels, and it comes up again here.

The strange confidence with which I found myself able to handle a baby could, perhaps, have given me an identity, could have rescued me from inertia: I could have turned myself into one of those mother women who ignore their husbands and live through their children. But with me, this did not happen;  my ability to kiss and care for and feed and amuse a small child merely reinforced my sense of division – I felt split between the anxious, intelligent woman and the healthy and efficient mother – or perhaps less split than divided. (p. 110)

In the end, Jane admits to driving Malcolm away due to her detachment, poor housekeeping skills and lack of affection – so much so that he embarks on an affair with another woman, an infidelity that predates Jane’s infidelity with James.

Turning to Jane’s cousin, Lucy, for a moment, the two girls were close in early childhood, having been born within two weeks of one another. If anything, Lucy is more of a sister to Jane than her own younger sibling, Catherine, who happens to be their parents’ favourite.

By the time Lucy and Jane go to university – one to Cambridge, the other to Oxford – Lucy is popular and sexually voracious, working her way through a succession of eligible boys rather than studying for exams. On graduating with a mediocre grade, she finds a job with a publisher, where she meets James. Marriage soon follows, precipitated by her pregnancy with their first child.  

Does Jane have an affair with James simply because he belongs to Lucy, because deep down she wants to be Lucy? Jane asks herself this question at one point in her analysis, then quickly dismisses it as a possible reason. But once again, the reader might wonder whether there is a grain of truth in this hypothesis. More likely, perhaps, is a sense that past failures have conspired to throw Jane and James together, especially once we discover more about the fractured nature of James’ relationship with Lucy.

Inevitably, Jane and James’ affair comes to light – in this instance, when a dramatic development makes concealment no longer an option, taking this story in some surprising directions. It’s a striking denouement, foreshadowed by some of the fears Jane experiences as her reliance on James increases.

As this fascinating, complex novel draws to a close, Jane (in first-person mode) once again casts doubt on the truthfulness of the opening section of this account, which is written in the third person.

At the beginning of this book, I deliberately exaggerated my helplessness, my dislocation, as a plea for clemency. So that I should not be judged. Poor helpless Jane, abandoned, afraid, timid, frigid, bereft. What right had anyone to point an accusing finger? Poor Jane, lying in that bed with her newborn child, alone. Poor Jane, child of such monstrous parents. How could she not be mad? (p. 241)

As an aside, names seem to be significant here as Jane Gray might be a nod to Lady Jane Grey, the Nine Days Queen, beheaded for high treason. There are also references to Jane Eyre in the novel, hinting at possible parallels between James and Mr Rochester, particularly in the story’s closing sections.

The more I think about this novel, the more I like it, partly because it raises interesting questions about how we choose to frame and relate stories to one another, especially when infidelity and other complex feelings are involved. As readers, how can we trust what we are being told? Unreliable narrators are not uncommon in fiction, so it’s natural to be somewhat cautious about the veracity of a first-person narrative. But, conversely, how can we ‘trust’ what is presented to us in the third person? How selective or representative might it be? Sometimes, it’s hard to tell…and maybe that’s partly what Drabble is trying to illustrate here in this intriguing book.

In Farthest Seas by Lalla Romano (tr. Brian Robert Moore)

18 Replies

A couple of years ago, I read and thoroughly enjoyed A Silence Shared, a beautiful, enigmatic novel by the Italian writer, translator and artist Lalla Romano. First published in Italy in 1957, Tetto Murato (A Silence Shared) was translated by Brian Robert Moore and published by Pushkin Press in 2023. Now Moore and Pushkin have returned with an elegant English translation of another of Romano’s books, Nei mari estremi or In Farthest Seas, a profound, intimate and deeply moving elegy to Innocenzo (Cenzo) Monti, Romano’s husband of circa fifty years. If anything, I loved Seas even more than A Silence Shared, possibly because it reads like a work of autofiction. There is a genuine sense of honesty and vulnerability here, a palpable poignancy that cuts close to the bone.

Written as a series of crystalline vignettes, In Farthest Seas constructs an evocative portrait of the first four years of Lalla’s relationship with Cenzo (culminating in their wedding in the early 1930s), and the final four months they spent together before his death in the mid-1980s. In a candid Afterword, Lalla explains that she wrote the second part of the book (subtitled Four Months) first, with the first section (Four Years) following later to fill in the backstory of their burgeoning relationship. Nevertheless, looking back at that earlier time, the subtle premonitions of loss seem particularly noticeable.

A little earlier on the snowfield – we were at a distance from the group during the ascent, too – we made out before us, in the uniform white (in the shadows), as strand of black marks spaced apart, coming into focus as small pointed bodies: birds, swallows. Stuck in the snow. Seven of them. No doubt blinded, tricked by the white, they had missed the mark in their low flight. Or some impact, a sudden violence of the wind. The small tragic image was one of defeat, but also a transfiguration. (p. 30)

At times, Romano’s exquisite prose style is akin to a stream of consciousness, blending memories with personal reflections, ruminations on the nature of life and touchstones from the arts – paintings and works of literature are particularly significant here.

In Part One (Four Years), we see how Lalla and Cenzo meet during a hiking trip, quickly bonding over a shared fondness for Modigliani’s artworks. As they begin to spend more time together, a deep attraction develops between the pair.

It was November, we needed to light the wood stove. He chopped wood in a little clearing and grew warm from this exertion, so that, despite the cold, his shirt gleamed white in the twilight. There was something at once adventurous, exotic (in sense of far-away countries) and intimate in that image, as though already lived (or dreamed). It matched, or rather expressed all the risk and mystery there was in that cold light, in that solitude. In the stories by Lawrence that I had just read, I had found this; and for a moment I felt an attraction for him that was violent, secret, but I believe already tenaciously deep. It wasn’t an idea, it was a sensation; head-spinning, but not unsettling. Rather, familiar. (p. 18)

Lalla detests conventional role-based labels such as ‘wife, husband, mother-in-law, daughter-in-law, and the like’, indicating her reluctance to submit to traditional societal expectations and conventions. Nevertheless, when her relationship with Cenzo becomes serious, Lalla’s family make it known that the two are engaged, partly to maintain a sense of respectability. Cenzo’s family, however, are less happy about the match as they consider Lalla a step down from their social position, particularly with Cenzo’s father’s position as a Colonel. But despite these barriers, the couple do marry, albeit in a quiet ceremony in Boves, where they have spent previous summers.

In Part Two (Four Months), the tone of voice becomes more poignant, highlighting Lalla’s fears over the forthcoming loss and the grief she will inevitably feel. References to distance and absence recur, offering painful contrasts to the closeness and presence she has shared with Cenzo.

It was not in illnesses that I feared losing him; but in absences, in distance. To die is to move off into the distance: I’d find this out later. (p. 58)

He had always loved departures. In airports, upon arrival, he’d turn to look at the planes ready to leave, and say: ‘I’d like to board another one!’

Back then, a departure meant a beginning. More than departing, now it seemed to mean distancing, ‘moving off’. To be dead is to be absent. To die is to set out towards absence. (p. 128)

Oftentimes, it’s the smallest things that hit the hardest for Lalla – a noticeable pallor in Cenzo’s face, an uncharacteristic slowness in his walk, a persistent pain in his back – all early warning signs that something might be amiss.

Interwoven with these meditations are thoughts of happier times, memories and reflections that illustrate the depth of their love for one another while also giving us insights into Cenzo’s character.

In my books Innocenzo is a virile character: rational, a protector; but he was also feminine: gentle, fanciful. Such that his face’s ‘manly’ beauty was not aggressive, but delicate, in its strong structure. That strength was granted by the prominence of his cheekbones: the ‘nomad’ structure (which I’d first discovered with Giovanni and which I always need). And manly beauty is more complete if it has something feminine. As with the spirit, in fact. (p. 92)

The publisher’s description likens In Farthest Seas to the work of Annie Ernaux and Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, presumably due to its rawness and emotional honesty. These are valid comparisons, for sure, but to my mind, Romano’s prose style is more poetic than either Didion’s or Ernaux’s. There is a graceful lyricism here, a stylistic approach that seems perfectly in tune with the subject matter, breathing life into Lalla’s emotions without ever over-dramatising them.

Life – ours – had reached a summit. The last loving breakfast at Piperno, in the small piazza. Between shade and light. Only the two of us, and a gentle wind blowing through the set and empty tables. Usually we went in the evening. For the first time I walked over to see, from up close, the old, dry fountain.

Tranquil happiness. Deluded – maybe I alone – by the bliss of that moment. His anaemia had been defeated by six transfusions. Delusion, I don’t think so. Knowing abandon – and not regrettable. Gratitude, actually. (p. 114)

Unsurprisingly, the poignancy steps up again in the final stages once it becomes clear that Cenzo has only a few weeks left to live. The darkness falls on Lalla as she attempts to slow down time – psychologically, at least.

Everything went dark. That was it, the true sentence. In that moment I lost him, I knew I had lost him.

Suddenly time had been cut frighteningly short; like for a person plummeting  who sees moving towards her the ground where she’ll be crushed. (p. 125)

As I mentioned earlier, various references to writers and artworks are woven through this text. From Marguerite Duras and Simone de Beauvoir to Rembrandt’s portraits and Bacon’s Triptychs, these touchstones add another dimension to Lalla and Cenzo’s story. In fact, Bacon’s paintings prove especially striking, resonating even more sharply as the spectre of death closes in. The loss of a loved one is always hard to bear, even when we know the end is coming, as is the case here.

Now the agony, the horror. No one has represented the torture of that final agony like Bacon. We’d gazed at it together for a long while, in London, many times. Especially that Triptych. The screaming, the fury, the disfigurement. And yet it is mercy. There is no mercy without mercilessness. (p.157)

Beautiful, candid and profoundly moving, In Farthest Seas is a kaleidoscopic elegy to a longstanding love and a loss deeply felt. It’s a heartfelt, melancholic read, and yet there is genuine beauty here too, while also encouraging us to reflect on our own mortality. I loved this book and hope to find a place for it in my 2026 highlights, even though we’re barely into the new year. (My thanks to the publishers for kind providing a review copy.)