A Son of the Rock

Polygon, 2017, 222 p (plus iv p Foreword by Alan Taylor and x Introduction by Allan Massie.) First published in 1957.

This was Spark’s first novel and shows some of the characteristics also to the fore in her later work, in particular a kind of detachment in the writing style that has a tendency to make the characters opaque, but also a high quotient of telling not showing. As a result the characters do not really spark to life. Moreover there are other aspects of the third person narration that actively subvert suspension of the reader’s disbelief in them.

Laurence Manders is heir to the firm of Manders’ Figs in Syrup and a football commentator on the radio. Laurence is engaged to Caroline who makes a fair amount of her Catholicism, despite noting a tendency to self-pity in her co-religionists and another minority, “Catholics and Jews; the Chosen, infatuated with a tragic image of themselves.” We first meet Laurence at his grandmother’s house, where she, Louisa Jepp, is having a strange conversation with three men, one of whom, Andrew Hogarth, is paralysed. It later transpires Louisa is running a diamond smuggling ring with the help of the local baker, Mr Webster, and Andrew’s father.

Caroline begins to hear typing noises, and voices in her head reciting passages from a book; this book: the one we are reading. She tells her confessor, “‘It is as if a writer on another plane of existence was writing a story about us.’”

This aspect of the novel grew increasingly irritating the longer it went on. A bit later Spark tells us apropos of nothing, “At this point in the narrative, it might be as well to state that the characters in this novel are all fictitious, and do not refer to any persons whatsoever.”

Then we have Caroline saying “‘the author doesn’t know how to describe a hospital ward. This interlude in my life is not part of the book in consequence,’” followed immediately by the narrator adding, “It was by making exasperating remarks like this that Caroline Rose continued to interfere with the book,” but later still actually describing the hospital ward. Towards the conclusion Andrew Hogarth has visited Lourdes and subsequently begun to move his paralysed limb. Caroline says to Laurence, “‘It seems the sort of incident which winds up a plot and brings a book to a close.’” She resolves to write a novel, this novel, herself. Asked, “‘What is the novel to be about?’ Caroline answered, ‘Characters in a novel.’”

This is far too much self-referentiality to sustain itself. Disbelief in the narrative has by now been thoroughly reinforced. Caroline’s assumed madness, on which she comments, “‘Are we all courteous maniacs discreetly making allowances for everyone else’s derangement?’” is no extenuation. The characters have been utterly exposed as puppets of their creator and therefore not worthy of sympathy or engagement.

There is also a moment of casual bigotry when Caroline tells Laurence, suspicious of one of Mrs Hogarth’s accoutrements, “‘Stop peering at Eleanor’s cigarette case like an old Jew looking for the carat mark.’” Sixty-five years after initial publication this is a shocking phrase, not mitigated in any way by Spark’s Jewish ancestry.

I ought to add that on the level of sentence making Spark’s writing has nothing to apologise for. It is certainly serviceable. As to content, I am not sufficiently well-versed in the history of the novel as a whole to judge whether a book perhaps being written by one of its characters was an innovation on her part, but I suspect not. If I were charitable I would say that those sixty-five years may have done The Comforters a disservice in making it less believable than it might have been back then, but however and whenever such an endeavour is undertaken it surely has to be done better than this.

Spoiler warning:-
In this edition Allan Massie’s Introduction reveals plot details. Best to leave it till after the novel itself, as I did.

Pedant’s corner:- Manders’ (Manders’s,) “Pat it came out just as he had expected” (is syntactically awkward. ‘It came out pat’ is more organic,) “its body from which hangs the roots” (body is not the subject of the verb here, that would be ‘roots’, in the plural, therefore ‘from which hang the roots’,) “among her acquaintance” (acquaintance is used unusually in a plural sense here, there would be nothing wrong with ‘acquaintances’,) Lady Manders’ (Manders’s,) “He thought. How cunning of her” (why the full stop before ‘How’?) “Mervyn was hoping against time” (I have absolutely no idea what this meant,) week-end (weekend,) “using the financial reward as a bribery” (as a bribe,)