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The Hothouse by the East River by Muriel Spark

Polygon, 2018, 138 p, plus iv p Foreword by Alan Taylor and viii p Introduction by Ian Rankin. First published in 1973.

(I thought I’d posted this review a few weeks ago but it seems I hadn’t. As a result of that thought I deleted my pedant’s corner notes. I kept the review’s text, though, as I also post them on a private blog I follow and contribute to. So here it is.)

Another of Spark’s enigmatic novels, unusually this time set in 1970s New York. Paul and Elsa are a relatively well off British couple living in Manhattan with a view of the East River. Elsa’s behaviour is erratic and Paul wonders if she is mad. As an emblem of this, great play is made of the appearance of Elsa’s shadow which always falls wrongly, as if she is lit from a different direction. Her analyst, Garven, spends a lot with them and later takes on the job of butler.

Elsa tells Paul she has recognised an assistant in a shoe shop as Kiel, a former German POW whom they had dealings with during the Second World War. Paul insists this man would be too young and, in any case, believes Kiel died not long after their acquaintance. Paul and Elsa had been employed in the war to try to gain as much information from the POWs as possible to which end Elsa went on long walks with Kiel (and it is likely that significantly more happened between them.)

Among the surreal events which take place is the first night of a production of Peter Pan, overseen by Paul and Elsa’s son, with only old people as the cast, brought to a halt when Elsa pelts the actors with tomatoes causing a disturbance large enough to have the police called.

These are tedious people carrying on pointless activities. That they are people who seem in fact to be dead (or in the case of Paul and Elsa’s children never to have lived at all) perhaps explains it all, but that would be little more satisfactory than stating that it was all a dream, rendering the whole enterprise a bit meaningless. If they are dead what relevance do their interactions have to everyday life or to the human condition? What lesson can be drawn from them?

Kate Atkinson dealt much better with this kind of dilemma in A God in Ruins.

Sensitivity note: mentions Negroes.

Fludd by Hilary Mantel

Harper Perennial, 2005, 190 p. First published in 1989.

Father Angwin is a Roman Catholic priest in the remote parish of Fetherhoughton in 1956. There is a small convent affiliated to Angwin’s Church of St Thomas Aquinas. The convent and attached school is overseen by Mother Perpetua – called Purpit by just about everyone. She has a fierce grip both on the nuns and the children and a downer on just about everybody except the bishop. Her contempt is particularly strong for Irish people, which is bad news for Sister Philomena who as a consequence gets all the drudgerous jobs.

The bishop is a moderniser in favour of updating the mass by dropping Latin. Angwin, despite being a man who lost his faith years ago is against this, fearing his parishioners would stray. He tells the bishop his flock “aren’t Christians. These people are heathens and Catholics.” Without the statues and their superstitions they wouldn’t attend Church. The bishop, however, insists on the removal of most of the plaster statues of saints in the Church. Angwin’s only solution to this problem is to have the statues buried in the churchyard.

Soon after, a knock comes on the presbytery door. In walks Father Fludd, whom everyone assumes is the curate the bishop had promised/threatened. Fludd is a mysterious character who quickly manages to winkle out Angwin’s and Philomena’s reservations about their respective situations. In one of their conversations he tells Angwin, “‘Common sense has nothing to do with religion.’ It is on Philomena, though, that his influence is most profound.

Oddness and a hint of the supernatural accompany him. Though he drinks Angwin’s whisky, the level in the bottle does not seem to drop. He laments the congregation’s lack of appreciation of what they are saying in their responses – formaligh for foe malign, destrier for death’s dread. He is, he says, in the business of transformation. It is never spelled out as such, but the invitation is clearly there to see him as an incarnation of the Devil.

Fludd is a short novel, but says what it needs to – even if the treatment, a kind of distancing, an opacity (which reminded me a little of the writing of Muriel Spark,) renders it almost dream-like.

Aside: In a foreword, Mantel says the Catholic Church portrayed in this novel bears “some but not much resemblance” to the one in the real world.

Perhaps redolent of the times in which it is set it contains the dismissive phrase, “digging like an Irishman.”

Pedant’s corner:- medieval (mediæval, please, or at least mediaeval,) “the camphor smell of their Sunday clothes” (the smell of mothballs, presumably. Those were made of naphthalene, not camphor,) “alarum clock” (alarum is archaic,) “like genii let out of bottles” (like genies let out,) “Thomas à Beckett” (nowadays written ‘Thomas Becket’.) “‘I’m not afraid will they recognise me’” (I’m not afraid they will recognise me’.)

Not to Disturb by Muriel Spark

Polygon, 2018, 93 p, plus iv p General Foreword to this reprinting of Spark’s works and xii p Introduction by Dan Gunn. First published in 1971.

The events of this novella all take place over one night in the villa by Lake Leman in Switzerland owned by Baron and Baroness Klopstock.

Well, I say events, but the most significant happens off-stage, in the room where the Baron, the Baroness and their visitor, Victor Passerat, are closeted, with strict instructions not to be disturbed.

The butler, Lister, and all the servants seem to know what that event will be and act as if it is by force majeure, that there is nothing they can do to prevent it. Lister indeed insists that they must follow the script, as if they are acting in a film. In the meantime they are recording (onto a reel-to-reel tape recorder) their stories of the night.

Dan Gunn in his introduction says that the normal fear of the author of such things is in including spoilers is vitiated in this case by Spark herself having Lister tell his below stairs audience what will happen. “‘Let us not split hairs’” he says, “‘between the past, present and future tenses.’” Gunn goes on to ruminate on the difference between literature in French and English in this regard. The former has more or less dropped the preterite (the passé simple) in favour of the present perfect tense, whereas in English that can quickly become stilted and unsustainable. It is, he says, merely a heightened example of Spark’s eschewing of plain foreshadowing in favour of outright prolepsis, (see my comments on possible prolepsis in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie) the novel an example of meta-fiction before that term was coined.

Be that as it may, the result here, along with the distancing effect of the present tense narration, is to make the reader simply not care what happens. If there is no jeopardy, or the jeopardy cannot be combatted, why should we carry on reading? I would go so far as to say that adopting such an approach is a dereliction of duty on the part of the author.

This novel encapsulates my reservations about Spark’s writing, which I once described as reading through a layer of glass.  Make that opaque glass.

With the possible exception of the mad man in the attic the characters are fairly unconvincing and their manners of speech indistinguishable. No one in this book behaves in any rational way. It is simply unbelievable.

Spark does, though, does essay the punning observation “Klopstock and barrel.”

I had thought to read all of Spark’s fiction in time. The more I do the less I feel like doing so.

Pedant’s corner:- “routing among the vegetables” (rooting among,) a missing comma before a piece of direct speech, scyth (scythe.)

 

The Bachelors by Muriel Spark

Polygon, 2018, 238 p, plus iv p Foreword and vi p Introduction by James Campbell. First published in 1960.

The book starts in a low key, bouncing between the lives of various bachelors living in London and their equally varied reasons for not being or getting married. A note of jeopardy is soon introduced with a séance in which Patrick Seton – a supposedly accomplished spiritualist – performs his shtick for the group known as The Wider Infinity.

It turns out that Seton is facing prosecution for fraudulent conversion, in that group member Freda Flower gave him £2000 to invest in stocks and bonds and he misused it. Handwriting expert Ronald Bridges, who is an epileptic, has been asked by the police to examine a letter said to have been written by Freda to Seton allowing him to use the money for spiritual purposes.

Seton meanwhile has a pregnant girlfriend, Alice Dawes, a diabetic who believes he will marry her when his imminent divorce comes through. Her friend Elsie Forrest is of a different opinion and doesn’t believe he is married at all.

The Wider Infinity has a sub-group known as the Interior Spiral whose members conspire to affect Seton’s trial by colluding on their stories. Things are further complicated when Elsie gets to know Bridges has the letter and steals it from his home.

(Question: why would the police have released it to him? It is suggested in the book that the theft might invalidate Bridges’s subsequent testimony but surely it wouldn’t have happened at all? In any case the letter is returned to Bridges just before the trial.)

Seton is shown to be a thoroughly bad lot when he asks his doctor about the likely effects of relative under- and overdoses of insulin for Alice, whom he plans to take on holiday to an isolated chalet in Austria should he be found not guilty. The trial itself is described much as you might expect.

There is something about Sparks’s writing that just does not sit well with me. It has moments of insight and the occasional piece of sharp observation but here the story has too many characters and the text is laden down by an excess of dialogue and characters’ registers being virtually indistinguishable from each other.

Sensitivity note: One character refers to “Pimps and tarts and Jews.”

Pedant’s corner:- “could come to nought in the end” (come to naught,)  “nineteen tirty-two” (nineteen thirty-two. I don’t think Spark was trying to indicate Irish origin,)

 

The Mandelbaum Gate by Muriel Spark

Polygon, 2018, 376 p, plus iv p Foreword, ix p Introduction by Gabriel Josipovici and i p Contents. First published in 1965.

Spark’s eight’s novel is much longer than any of its predecessors (and successors.) It is set in Jerusalem during the Eichmann trial at a time when the city was divided between Israel (which the Arabs never name as such) and the Kingdom of Transjordan; the only transit point between them is the Mandelbaum Gate of the title.

The story is mainly concerned with the desire of Barbara Vaughan, a half-Jewish teacher from England, to visit the Holy sites in Jordan and also see her fiancé, Harry Clegg, an archaeologist excavating the Qumran scrolls sites. Since she will have to travel from Israel through the Gate to do this there is a danger she will be regarded by the Jordanians as spy. The first Chapter though – along with many others – is seen through the eyes of Freddy Hamilton, a British consular official who has a fascination with poetry (both in the abstract and in composing verse himself) and who frequently travels through the gate to see friends Joanna and Matt Cartwright.

Barbara’s firm Catholic faith means an annulment needs to be sought from Rome of Clegg’s previous (non-Catholic) marriage, a process which seems interminable and likely fruitless. The fact of her engagement would be a shock to her relations back home if they could have conceived of it and is, when she hears of it, a shock to her headmistress, Miss Rickward (Ricky,) who had assumed the pair of them would live together in perpetual harmony, though not necessarily sexually. Ricky’s pursuit of Barbara to Israel and Transjordan is, I think, meant to confer an element of humour onto the proceedings as is Barbara’s disguise beneath a chador as an Arab servant on her eventual trips to the Holy places.

Several times Spark tells of incidents which will be described more fully later in the narrative, promising potential confrontations which do not actually fully materialise. In his Introduction, Gabriel Josipovici dignifies this practice with the literary term prolepsis. It isn’t; it isn’t even legitimate foreshadowing; it’s just telling us things before their due time and is very irritating.

Freddy is more of a cipher than Barbara but with an impending tragedy to his overbearing mother in Harrogate lurking in the background, though his various contacts, a shopkeeper called Alexandros, a fixer and womaniser named Joe (Yosif) Ramdez, his son, Abdul, and daughter Suzi are important to the working out of the plot.

A bout of amnesia on Freddy’s part on a return from Israel after a visit to the Cartwrights’ at which Barbara was present is convenient to complicating the story, though not to Freddy. This helps to muddy the timescales as we are at various intervals drip fed Freddy’s recollections from when he recovers the memories.

Overall, though, the novel doesn’t seem to know quite what type of tale it wants to be, a comedy of manners, an examination of faith – and then, about three-quarters of the way through, it suddenly (with the only foreshadowing being some toing and froing about the diameter of the water pipes of an Israeli project) becomes a spy story.

Sensitivity note: contains the word “Wog” – not unheard of in 1965, but offensive just the same.

Pedant’s corner:- In the Introduction “‘I am that I am’” (in the novel’s text is ‘I am who I am’,) “Miss Rickwood” (in the text it’s Rickward.) Otherwise; “outside of” (just ‘outside’; no ‘of’,) nannie (nanny,) philaphel (usually spelled ‘falafel’.)

Robinson by Muriel Spark

Polygon, 2017, 176 p, plus i p Map of Robinson island, iv p Foreword by Alan Taylor and ix p Introduction by Candia McWilliam. First published 1958.

The novel is presented as the recollections of January Marlow, a passenger on an aeroplane which crashed on an island with only three survivors, herself, a man called Jimmie and another named Tom Wells. The island is the demesne of the mysterious and pernickety Robinson. (We note here a certain Crusoe, plus a Swiss family also marooned, not to mention the island of Prospero.) Robinson normally has few companions, a boy named Miguel – and a goat – though Jimmie had been on his way back to the island. Note too, that Wells’s surname evokes another island, that of H G of that ilk’s Doctor Moreau.

This all takes place at a time when communications were not as easy as they are now and the survivors worry about the effect their apparent disappearance will have on their lives back home. (They had in fact been declared dead.) The arrival of the annual pomegranate boat – that fruit is the island’s main produce – is awaited eagerly so that they can return to civilisation.

A small canvas such as this is of course a familiar staple of novelists even beyond the examples mentioned above and provides ample scope for interpersonal conflict. This is exacerbated when Robinson goes missing in suspicious circumstances halfway through the book and the rest suspect each other of killing him. Robinson’s mistrust of religion contrasts with January’s faith (and, of course, Spark’s.)

This was Spark’s second novel and has less opacity than many of her later works. This may be due to the use of a first-person narrator.

Pedant’s corner:- In the Introduction; Dr Benigno (in the text it’s Dr Benignus,) staunched (stanched.) Otherwise; a capital letter is used at the beginning of an unspoken thought expressed within a longer sentence. In those moments the typography therefore looks odd. “Anyway” beginning one sentence and, less than two lines later, “And anyway” begins another.

The Comforters by Muriel Spark

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,)

A Far Cry From Kensington by Muriel Spark

Polygon, 2017, 181 p, plus iv p Foreword and vii p Introduction by William Boyd. First published 1988.

These are the memories from much later in life of Mrs Hawkins, who in the early 1950s lived in 14 Church End Villas, South Kensington, a rooming house owned by Milly Sanders. The other occupants are childless married couple Basil and Eva Carlin, dressmaker and alterer Wanda Podolak, district nurse Kate Parker, young (and single) Isobel Lederer – a secretary who wants a job in publishing – and medical student William Todd. Mrs Hawkins – she is referred to as such by the other characters until very late into the book – had married during the war but her husband was killed at Arnhem. She does editing work in publishing, firstly at the beleaguered Ullswater Press, later with the more successful Mackintosh & Tooley, both of which jobs she loses because of the relationship of successful author Emma Loy with aspiring writer Hector Bartlett, a man for whom Mrs Hawkins has no time at all. Her considered opinion of his talents is that he is a pisseur de copie, a phrase which really requires no translation. Unfortunately she says that to his face, and repeats the assessment to her employers when asked. Of one particular example of Bartlett’s deathless prose which she had been asked to make publishable, she tells her boss, “‘I consider that it cannot be improved upon.’” A non-committal but barbed assessment. Later Mrs Hawkins is invited to work at the Highgate Review.

Describing herself as fat at the start of the book, Mrs Hawkins has begun to slim down; by the simple expedient of eating half what she did before. Even when eating out she will only have half a sandwich or half a cup of coffee etc.

At first an insignificant seeming character, Bartlett’s influence weaves in and out of Hawkins’s story. It is his baleful effect on Wanda Podolak which is the motor of the book’s plot though. He has persuaded her, most probably by blackmail, to operate a machine (known as the Box) for the propagation of radionics – to Mrs Hawkins an entirely spurious activity but one on which one of her employers is very keen – to undermine Mrs Hawkins’s health. Her apparent wasting away, though of course not due at all to the Box, distresses Wanda to the point of suicide.

Spark’s publishing experiences are mined fruitfully. The scenes in the various publishing houses bear the stamp of authenticity. A publisher opines, “The best author is a dead author,” and Mrs Hawkins gives us her advice to authors, “You are writing a letter to a friend ….. as if it was never going to be published.” Throughout, Spark, via Mrs Hawkins, never misses an opportunity to deliver the phrase pisseur de copie. And why not?

William Boyd’s introduction, as is usual with these things, reveals some of the plot. Do not read until after finishing the novel proper. His consideration that the portrayal of Bartlett is at odds with the rest of Mrs Hawkins’s generally kind character depictions is somewhat off the mark, though. Bartlett is not meant to be sympathetic and the text provides ample evidence of his iniquities. And that Bartlett is a thinly disguised depiction of someone whom Spark knew very well indeed in real life, whether A Far Cry from Kensington is a piece of revenge fiction or not, is of little relevance to the 2021 reader. It is his function in the book, and only that, which matters. And pisseur de copie is a wonderful description.

I generally find Spark frustrating to read, but this caught and held my interest. It is the best Spark novel I have read so far, by a long way. A far cry, even.

Note to the sensitive. A woman on a bus is referred to as a negress. (It was referring back to the 1950s.)

Pedant’s corner:- In the Introduction; “the The Sunday Times has an extraneous ‘the’,) Mrs Hawkins’ (several instances; Hawkins’s.) Otherwise; Sanders’ (Sanders’s,) “and I him in about Wanda” (and I filled him in,) paranoically (I would have thought this to be spelled ‘paranoiacally’ but it seems it can be both,) Hawkins’ (Hawkins’s,) “she was doing this with the idea of getting rid of him easier” (more easily.)

Aiding and Abetting by Muriel Spark

Penguin, 2001, 216 p

Aiding and Abetting cover

Hildegard Wolf is a psychiatrist in Paris. She has not one, but two clients who claim to be the fugitive Lord Lucan. One gives his name as Robert Walker, the other is known as Lucky. Between them though they have plotted to blackmail Wolf as in a former life she was the fake stigmatic Beate Pappenheim, still wanted for fraud. To avoid this she disappears herself, not even telling her lover Jean-Pierre Roget, where she has gone.

Spark leavens this pretty slim stuff with relatings of the details of Lucan’s murder of his child’s nanny and assault on his wife, his penchant for salmon and lamb chops (which the police could use to apprehend him if they ever got near,) mentions of his aiding and abetting by his friends, his frequent resorts to them for money. There is also a frankly unbelievable liaison between Lacey Twickenham, daughter of one of Lucan’s acquaintances and widower Joseph Murray, yet another who had known the earl, and accounts of their serial near-misses in confronting Lucky.

Spareness can be a virtue but here Spark is taking it to extremes. As in her later The Finishing School, she has given us a sketch for a novel rather than a rounded whole. I am really struggling to see why people hold her writing in high regard.

Pedant’s corner:- imposters (I prefer the spelling impostor,) “a nail-wound on each hand and foot, and a sword wound in the side” (this is a commonly held perception, but crucifixions were carried out by nailing the wrists and ankles, not the hands and feet. And wasn’t it a spear wound in the side?) a missing comma before a piece of direct speech. “One way and another” (One way or another is the usual – and more sensible – expression.) “Could that young woman in the department store in Oxford Street be really Ursula?” (What kind of syntax is this? ‘Could that young woman in the department store in Oxford Street really be Ursula?’ is the more natural way to say this.)

The Finishing School by Muriel Spark

Penguin, 2005, 158 p.

The Finishing School cover

On reading this I found my dissatisfaction with Spark’s writing beginning to crystallise. Clearly people find it engaging and worthwhile but to me there is something cold and detached about it, observational yes, but uninvolving. Her de haut en bas style renders her characters flat and merely going through whatever motions Spark intends for them. They don’t come alive. They certainly don’t leap off the page and into my mind.

This one all starts promisingly enough with a lecture on scene-setting in writing delivered by the joint owner of College Sunrise, the Finishing School of the title. He is Rowland Mahler who runs the place along with his wife Nina (who actually does most of the work.) One of the attendees, Chris, a seventeen year-old, is writing a novel where he speculates the death of Lord Darnley, second husband of Mary Queen of Scots, was instigated by a desire for revenge on the part of Jacopo, brother of David Rizzio in whose murder Darnley was deeply implicated. Rowland has aspirations to be a novelist himself but having read Chris’s first two chapters finds himself blocked and increasingly obsessed with Chris.

That first page is deceptive though and we are soon pitched into a narrative where too much is told, not shown; where information is dispensed to the reader in a way that is like reading author’s notes for characters rather than experiencing them behaving as themselves. They may have passions but we are not given the opportunity to feel them though Spark does find space to include a few sideswipes at the publishing industry.

There are some interesting ideas here but they are not fleshed out. In the end this is not so much a novel, more like a series of preliminary sketches for one. Or an extended outline.

Pedant’s corner:- wirey (the word is spelled ‘wiry’,) automatons (automata,) a missing comma before a quote (x2,) to-day (why the hyphen? It’s spelled ‘today’,) “on the grounds of imputed, activities unbefitting her one-time royal connections” (doesn’t need that comma after ‘imputed’,) “‘Is that it’s natural colour?’” (its.)

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