"Someone at a Distance," by Dorothy Whipple

A few days ago (1/24/12) I wrote about my happy “discovery” of the English writer Dorothy Whipple, whose fiction had been popular in the mid-20th-century but fell out of fashion and was soon not easily accessible, until the wonderful Persephone Press republished her novels and stories in the past 15 or so years. In that post I wrote about Whipple’s short story collection, “The Closed Door.” Because I liked that book so much, I have now read one of her novels, her last one, titled “Someone at a Distance” (Persephone, 1999, but originally published by John Murray, 1953). This is a story of a happy marriage and family that is slowly and, it seems, inexorably destroyed by a snake in the garden in the form of a young French woman who has come to stay with the family, ostensibly to tutor the daughter in French. As readers, we watch with dismay as this beautiful but utterly selfish young woman, with no conscience whatsoever, takes what (and whom) she wants, with no regard for the devastation she leaves behind. The contrast between the original paradise and the ruins that follow is positively Biblical. The main character, Ellen, is a typical 1950s wife and mother, who happily builds her life around her husband, children, home, and garden. She is quite selfless and also quite naïve and unsuspecting that anyone could consciously come into her home and steal her husband and happiness. As a reader, I couldn’t help but like and admire Ellen very much, and feel sorry for her. I also admired that even after the ruin of her marriage, she managed to pick herself up and stay strong for the children and for her future. It is an old, old story, of course: the conniving female interloper, the husband who is too vulnerable to an attractive female’s paying attention to him, and the resultant drama and upheavals. But somehow Whipple manages to keep us interested and caring about how the characters live and how the story will turn out; she rewards us with a few twists and turns toward the end of the novel that are ambiguous but somewhat positive. As in the short story collection, the writing here is deceptively simple but lovely, and the insights into human motivations and behavior are “spot on,” as the British say, or at least used to say! I will definitely be reading more of Whipple’s fiction.

"An Angle of Vision," edited by Lorraine M. Lopez

I have written before, both on this blog and in my academic publications, of my interest in issues of social class. “An Angle of Vision: Women Writers on Their Poor and Working-Class Roots” (University of Michigan Press, 2009), edited by Lorraine M. Lopez, is a fascinating collection of essays. It speaks to my interest in women’s lives, writers’ lives, and social class issues as they are lived out by real people. The authors of these memoiristic essays are very generous in sharing their experiences and feelings, even when doing so is obviously very painful for them. As several of them remark, even though they know intellectually that it shouldn’t be so, they have often felt shame and secrecy about their class backgrounds and the poverty that many of them lived through. Now these women are established as writers and often as academics, but they never forget the legacy of their pasts. A common issue too is that many of them feel torn between two worlds: by virtue of their education and increasingly middle class lives now, they feel there are barriers between them and their families and past lives, yet they still don’t feel they truly “belong” in their current academic and writing lives, in their middle class lives. They often feel that in both situations they are just barely “passing,” and are imposters in both worlds. Some of these stories of childhood (especially), family, college years, and early careers are wrenching, even heartbreaking. Although reading these essays saddened and in some cases shocked me, I was grateful to the writers for allowing us readers these windows into their lives, and into the reality of the lives of so many in the United States, lives that are often forgotten, as the media and other venues prefer to present the façade that most Americans are middle-class and at least reasonably comfortable.

"The Odds: A Love Story," by Stewart O'Nan

At first I thought the plot of Stewart O'Nan's (author of the wonderful "Emily, Alone," which I posted about here on 5/17/11) new novel was too contrived, and I found the main plot device almost annoying. The premise of this novel, "The Odds: A Love Story," is that Art and Marion, a married couple, are both about to divorce (fairly amicably) and about to go bankrupt, so in a desperate last hurrah, they revisit the scene of their honeymoon, Niagara Falls, with their last wad of money, planning to gamble it all at the casinos there in hopes of recouping enough to save their house. This plot device is reinforced by each chapter’s beginning with an “odds” “fact”; some of these may be real and accurate, but others are fanciful (e.g., “Odds of being served breakfast in bed on Valentine’s Day: 1 in 4). Some of these “odds” statements connect directly to the plot, others only peripherally. But once I got past these premises and stylistic devices, the story of these all too human but ultimately understandable and likable characters caught me up and kept me reading with interest and sympathy. The best thing about this short novel is its very realistic portrayal of a marriage, with all its ups and downs, hurts, happy moments, arguments, near-arguments, memories, sensitivities, sudden changes in mood and alliances, connections “for the kids” and because of history together, and more. This marriage has survived some major problems and is currently in serious trouble, yet there is much surviving affection. Art hopes against hope that the marriage can be preserved; Marion doesn’t think it can, but succumbs to some hopeful moments. A major “character” in the novel is the Niagara Falls area itself, in its unnerving mixture of grandeur and touristy tackiness. The constant presence of weddings and honeymooning couples, along with the exhilarating and depressing casinos, combine to make a disorienting backdrop for Art’s and Marion’s story. A larger background is the economic recession and the burst housing bubble, which have brought Art and Marion to this drastic point in their lives, and precipitated this trip. Their case shows how nice, ordinary people, even those such as Art who are educated in finance, could get caught up in overextending themselves on their house, and then be bewildered by their downfall. This intense (all in the period of about three days) story distills the story of a marriage and of the inside and outside forces that affect it; it does so realistically and compellingly, in O’Nan’s trademark style of close attention to the details of human lives and relationships.

"The Closed Door," by Dorothy Whipple

What a joy it is to discover a “new” author (for me), even if that author was actually writing in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. Where has Dorothy Whipple been my whole life? I am not sure how I completely missed her fiction until now. An acquaintance happened to mention liking her, and I was glad to find that my university library carried several of her books. I started with “The Closed Door and Other Stories” (Persephone, 2007), a collection of Whipple’s stories originally published in much earlier decades. Persephone, by the way, is one of the wonderful presses that have rediscovered and republished women authors who might otherwise be out of print and forgotten. I wrote about other such presses on 2/17/10 (Virago Press) and 7/17/11 (The Feminist Press), and I am most grateful to these publishers for “saving” many women writers from oblivion. Persephone has recently reprinted several of Whipple’s books, which although they were popular in the early-to-mid-20th century, were mostly out of print until Persephone revived them. But back to “The Closed Door”: These stories are mostly about women characters who, because they lack power in the world, try to exert power in their family and romantic lives in various ways. These characters find inventive, resourceful, and understandable, if not always completely laudable, ways of dealing with a difficult, male-oriented world. The stories are full of intriguing characters, relationships, and surprises. Some stories are just a wee bit schematic, but compelling nevertheless. The characters are closely observed and realistic. The stories are enjoyable to read, although they remind us of the limitations on women’s lives. The pleasure of reading this book is enhanced by the beautiful production of this volume, with a lovely light grey cover; clear, easy to read pages; and, notably, gorgeous colorful endpapers “taken from a 1930s dress fabric.” I now look forward to reading more fiction by Whipple.

(An "anniversary" note: I started this blog two years ago today. I have enjoyed writing it, and hope you have enjoyed reading it.)

"In Zanesville," by Jo Ann Beard

Although “In Zanesville” (Little, Brown, 2011), by Jo Ann Beard, is about a 14-year-old girl, it is not a “young adult” novel. It is perhaps the early side of a “coming of age” novel, but this sounds too grand for the way the novel captures the life of a young, smart, adventurous teen, special in some ways but very normal in others. The setting of the story in “a factory town, Zanesville, Illinois, the farm implement capital of the world,” seems to emphasize the middle-America average aspect of the story, but the narrator, named for Jo in “Little Women,” has her own spunky individual personality. Her growing up is portrayed through a series of episodes, such as a disastrous night of babysitting, an ambivalent relationship with her membership in the school marching band, unexpected positive attention from the popular girls in her school, ups and downs in her friendship with her best friend Phyllis, dealing with and worrying about her father’s drinking too much and his mental health, her first kiss, moving in and out of the gifted math class, and much more. Although the concept of the book sounds similar to that of hundreds of other books, the author manages to make this novel original, and to make us care about the narrator. This novel is by no means a “must-read,” but if the above description sounds interesting, you will find “In Zanesville” worth the time it takes to read.

Books Long and Short

Although I, like all readers, read books greatly varying in length, from thick tomes to slim volumes, I have particularly noticed this contrast in the past couple of months. Although I am a fairly fast reader, it took me a while to get through, for example, Jeffrey Eugenides’s “The Marriage Plot,” and, especially, Alan Hollinghurst’s “The Stranger’s Child.” Then, without consciously looking for shorter books, I found myself reading a series of very small books, including Julian Barnes’ “The Sense of an Ending,” Michelle Latiolais’ “Widow,” Alan Bennett’s “Smut,” and Anita Desai’s “The Artist of Disappearance.” (I have posted on all of these recently.) Long and short -- each has its advantages. I can “settle in” to a long novel with the feeling of really getting to know the characters and settings, and of becoming almost an inhabitant of the world the author has created. If the novel is wonderful, I relish being in that world, and am reluctant to leave it when I finish the book. This is part of the appeal of the great Victorian novels that I treasure, such as those by Eliot, Dickens, and Gaskell, and of the novels of a slightly later age by James and Wharton. If the novel is less engaging, or particularly difficult to navigate for various reasons, I may feel at times that reading it is a bit of a slog. On the other hand, short books are easy to carry around (I can even put them into my capacious handbag for easy availability when there is a break in my day, or a wait in line), and there is the satisfaction of either finishing it quickly, or savoring it slowly but still not taking forever to read it. Sometimes short novels are dense and intense, and therefore satisfying; at other times they feel a bit incomplete, a little insubstantial. Clearly these are all broad generalizations. And obviously the length of the book is only a very small factor in deciding what to read, in whether the book is “good” or not, and in whether I enjoy it. But it is one factor, and the experience of reading a book is subtly influenced by its length.

"How It All Began," by Penelope Lively

Penelope Lively was one of the very first authors I wrote about here (1/25/10), and she is one of my favorite living writers. Just a few of the reasons, in no particular order, that I loved reading her new novel, “How It All Began” (Viking, 2011):
1. Lively is simply one of the very best writers writing today, so a new novel by her is an occasion.
2. Lively understands human nature, human relationships, and especially human families, better than almost any other writer.
3. Lively’s fiction is realistic. It focuses on everyday events, not on shocking or farfetched happenings. Lively has the gift of making readers really care about those everyday events.
4. Lively’s writing is very readable.
5. Lively writes about people of all ages, including middle-aged and older people, which is most welcome to those of us no longer young.
6. This novel takes place in London.
7. Some of the characters in this novel misbehave a bit, but most of them are basically good people. Some of them know that sometimes one doesn’t get to have what one wants, because it isn’t the right thing, and are willing to “do the right thing,” even at great personal cost.
8. There is an intellectual thread throughout the novel: the idea that one small, random event can start a chain of events, with a ripple effect of sometimes surprising consequences. This concept adds to the interest of the novel, but is not insisted on, and doesn’t overwhelm the plot/character aspects of the novel.
9. Lively’s main character often talks about what she is reading, why, and why she feels like reading different books at different times, depending on what is happening in her own life. Some of her favorites are some of mine as well (e.g., Edith Wharton, Henry James, Rosamond Lehmann).
10. The main character is a volunteer tutor, and when she tutors an Eastern European immigrant in reading English, she appeals to his love of “story,” starting with reading children’s books, including the wonderful “Charlotte’s Web.”
11. Lively writes so very well, yet makes it look easy. Her writing is not flashy, just very, very good.
I could go on and on, giving more and more reasons, but the bottom line is: read this novel, and then read more novels by this wonderful author, Penelope Lively!