books
The Master by Colm Tóibín. Usually when reading historical novels about people I know little or nothing about, I don't feel like I need to know anything about them to judge the novel. With this I did find myself wondering how much was extrapolated with intuition and condensed with great skill, and how much was nicely rearranging of material that essentially already exists. Also, Tóibín commits a little of that "All books are about the writer's own life" sin, and I wanted to know how far it was justified. But anyway, it is well done and felt simple and solid and confident. Even the sin is used to good effect sometimes in that it shows how everyone has their own story they tell themselves about their place in the world and their relationships etc. I liked the mixture of present-day episodes, like James desperately wanting to be a popular playwright and failing, and he and his friends getting very ambvilently overinvested in Oscar Wilde's trial, and taking the path of least resistance and not getting rid of his drunk depressed servants until he really has to, and recollections of his family background. He lets people down by never going the extra mile when it comes to emotional commitment and responsibility, and while people are definitely important to him he doesn't actually want them in his life. The image of him drowning the clothes of his friend who committed suicide in Venice seemded intended to stick in the mind but I liked it anyway. I found it all interesting but quietly so; it was kind of soothing.
Miss Pym Disposes by Josephine Tey. Mystery from the forties. Lucy Pym, who accidentally wrote a popular psychology book, is invited by an old friend, Head of a College of Physical Education, to give a lecture at said college. (I was puzzled by this College; I doubt if there's a modern equivalent. Apparently you leave it as qualified to open a medical clinic as to become a gym teacher.) This is the third book I've read by Tey, and she is the writer of her type that has most struck me by the Englishness, in a way that is repugnant and intriguing. An almost unironic stiff upper lip, play the game, English sense of honour kind of thing, that comes with the racist and classist things one rather expects (The anti-Semitism in A Shilling for Candles was bad enough that it makes other novels look better-intentioned by comparison), and also a slightly ambivalent attitude to femininity. It's so sure it's right.
Anyway, with this one, nobody gets hurt until two thirds in. I think it helped build the tension. Tey seems quite good at pretending she's not actually writing a mystery, it's just a novel that got waylaid by somebody dying, and there's lots of details that are nice almost just because she didn't have to do them. I liked the middle-aged schoolteacher totally uninterested in the actor. Lucy ends up staying longer than she intended and getting quite invested in all the robust young women who work so hard and seem so simple and charming, while others tell her they're more unstable than they seem. The characters I ear-marked for involvement in suspicious events were Rouse, the hard-working, slightly shifty girl who cares too much about sucess and is therefore unpopular, Nashe, the good-looking, self-assured, pleasantly entitled wealthy girl and her friend Innes, who apparently has a great face with intriguing, impressive bone structure and eyebrows, the kind of face that builds history and which Lucy is shocked to find appears in Borgia portraits. She's also very highly-strung and burns inside at criticism. Lucy is very impressed by Innes' parents because their genes are so beautifully genteel (except I don't think genteel is a genteel word) and English, even though they're poor. I spotted the murderer at once (I used to be terrible at guessing them, but I think practice has made me better) but Tey did manage to fool me along the way. The title comes about because there's a moral dilemma at the end. It was a little creepy whichever way it went, which I guess it should be. It was one of those books that was still in my head like a wasp when I finished; I wanted more of the end.
Penhallow by Georgette Heyer. A tyrannical patriarch is murdered, but not for a long time. This book made me say wtf when I finished it. It does something I've never seen a book billed as a mystery do; we see the murderer commit the crime in real time. And there's no twist, they really are the murderer, though I guess at least something else happens afterwards. Any mystery is confined to the pages before the murder when you're wondering who's going to crack. I was too surprised to know whether I disapproved. I always think that mysteries tend to suddenly become twice as interesting when you discover who did it and a whole new set of dynamics are brought into play, but only for two minutes. I'd like something that took advantage of that interestingness, but I'm not sure this is quite what I meant. The other thing that's an obvious turn-off about this is the complete dearth of likeable characters. I usually don't mind much about that, but when Something Tragic happens and nobody really gives a shit I did think you heartless bastards and find it rather depressing. Depression is the end-note as crime doesn't pay and the Penhallows discover they're not quite as happy without the horrid dead man as they'd expected. Oh, and this features one of literature's most irritating camp characters.
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. Set in the American South in the late 1930's. A deaf man finds himself being talked at by various misfits. Polite and offering nothing of himself in return, he's the perfect blank slate for projection. This didn't work as well for me as The Member of the Wedding; I think the fanatic drunkard was responsible for quite a lot of that, and it just lacked the streamlined focus so I felt bogged-down halfway through. Mick, the teenage girl, is too much a dress rehearsal for Frankie in the later book. And it verged on being the kind of American book, usually historical but not always, that I feel weirdly incompatible with. I ended up liking it on the whole, though. Almost entirely crashingly depressing, about loneliness, passion and weariness. The only vague hope is in Mick, who finds herself working full-time at 14 or 15, with a mantle of femininity settling upon her after seeming like an androgynous child throughout, and her vague intentions to hold onto her musical ambitions. But I like the kind of sensuously depressing that this book is.