Ice – Anna Kavan
An unnamed narrator undertakes an obsessive search for a
girl he has known. She is frail, timid, and thin and she has long white hair.
His pursuit puts him at odds with a man known only as the ‘warden’ whose
pursuit of the girl is equally obsessive. Between them they chase across a
dying landscape as ice coats the planet.
On the surface it does not sound too promising – a
sadomasochistic science fantasy of the sort that is all too common these days.
But this was written in the mid 1960s and it was written by Anna Kavan. The
actual story is a simple metaphor for all the obsessions and addictions that
our flesh is heir to, yet it is the telling of the story that elevates this
work. The language is simple, the forward narrative almost relentless with the
periods of calm enforced on the characters but never the reader.
Kavan was addicted to heroin for many years. She took it
originally to relieve the excrutiating pain of a spinal disease. In the end, it
took her. We should not imagine her as the frail woman of the book, hiding away
and waiting. Anna Kavan was active beyond her writing. But her inner world if
not directly portrayed here must surely have contributed. The encroaching ice –
seen both as a disaster and as a means of ending all troubles – is
psychological, it is the past catching up, it is metaphysical, it is the result
of passing that tipping point when the addict can do nothing to save
themselves.
It is a grim tale of dissolution and war, of cruelty and
destruction. Yet there are also acts of kindness struggling through the
suspicion, revelations that surprise yet which are entirely believable. And in
the end, there is a kind of peace, even if it is not the conventionally cosy
happy ending.
All of Kavan’s work is worth reading. It is poetic and
surreal and in that it is starkly simple and so real it hurts. There is nothing
fussy about her work. It is sharp and disturbing, yet it is entirely human and
there is always a real person beneath and behind the words. One could only have
wished she had been better regarded as a writer during her lifetime. One could
wish she were better regarded now.
The Kindness Of Women – J G Ballard
This book is a crucial turning point in Ballard’s writing.
It marks the point where he seems to realise that the real world now easily
outstrips his surreal imagination. There are those who claim this for Empire
of the Sun but that still contains many elements of his earlier works
(indeed it is an exposition of the source material of those works) and it is
only the setting that anchors it in the real world. For all the events are
‘real’ (that is, a fictional rendition of real events), the world is still seen
through the filter of a boy’s imagination.
In The Kindness of Women, Jim has grown up, gradually
leaving behind the trauma of his early life, slowly waking from the dream,
jolted on the way by very real and very personal events that begin chipping
away at the carapace. And whilst the book focuses on the more bizarre and
unsettling aspects of his life (some more thinly veiled than others, some
strangely changed), at heart is revealed a very ordinary man who has witnessed
extraordinary things and found a unique way of articulating how these have
skewed his vision of the world.
Anyone expecting the kind of writing Ballard used at his
most exploratory stage will be disappointed. This is fairly straightforward
narrative. But Ballard’s use of language is highly cinematic. There are cuts,
fades, flashbacks, close-ups, pans, and he can even go into slow motion. And it
is a novel. He has arranged real events to create a satisfying emergence of a
butterfly from its pupal stage, something that does not happen so readily in
the real world for humans.
It is also a mark of Ballard’s maturity as a writer that he
moves on, not just in terms of style, but also in terms of content. He never
completely leaves behind his major concerns, but he has learned enough as a
person to know that there are other and more relevant ways to express them as
he does in his later novels.
The Rising Of The Moon – Gladys Mitchell
Ostensibly a Mrs Bradley mystery this book centres on the
exploits of two young brothers (aged 11 and 13) when their town is visited by a
series of murders. It sounds clichéd now, but this example (from 1945) was an
early version of an a book for adults about children. It captures the two
central characters with great accuracy and affection, makes their exploits feel
believable, delivers a good crime novel (not much of an actual mystery as it is
fairly obvious who is doing the killing), and covers the psychological aspects
with Mitchell’s usual insight.
In addition this is wrtten through the eyes of the thirteen
year old and captures that slight formality one might expect from a youngster
tasked with telling the story as accurately as they could. And to leave her
great detective in little more than a cameo role was also a brave move. All in
all, Mitchell at her very best in which much is left unsaid and makes all the
more impact for it.
A Blink Of The Screen – Terry Pratchett
Collected shorter fiction and nothing much that anyone who
likes Pratchett’s work hasn’t seen before. Even his juvenilia is good, although
it is juvenilia. Sadly it feels like a tidying up of a life, especially the
extremely poignant photograph on the back flap.
The Inquisitory – Robert Pinget
A monumental work in which his fictional district of France
We learn of the goings-on amongst the landed gentry, the tax
evasion, sexual romps, and other less specified unpleasantnesses that those who
believe they are above the law get up to. And on a more subtle level we learn
of the lives of the ordinary working people and how they get caught up in the
nets of the wealthy. And at the heart are two parallel tragedies. At the very
centre is the death of the servant’s child and wife and the people he blames for
his loss. Running along side are three connected murders.
Throughout the inquisition we are left wondering just what
is being investigated. It has the hall marks of a detective novel, of a suspect
or witness being questioned, but in the end we know it is about an old man
reviewing his life, trying to make sense of things and realisng the absurdity
of it all.
The remarkable thing is that such a dense compendium with
pages and pages of minute description and listing can be so absorbing and
reveal so much about what is going on. Layers of things hidden are revealed,
layers of things that are important are discovered and ends with the truly
poignant dream of the old man of a world where he is reunited with wife and
child and can talk about the stars with an elusive resident and find peace and
rest. And so say we all.
The Innocence Of Father Brown – G K Chesterton
Chesterton liked detective stories. He wrote quite a few.
And he never much paid attention to the conventions (of the form or anything
else for that matter). Rather, he knew the conventions inside out and the
showed you could work outside them.
It is true that Father Brown is not a detective in the
modern sense of the word. He is an observer and makes intuitive leaps from what
he has seen to create solutions to enigmas. There is a moral edge to the
stories and they may have been the reason they were written, but Chesterton is
far too good and far too sensible a writer to hit his readers over the head
with that. Instead, he presents intriguing puzzles solved by an equally
intriguing character (who seems to have an awful lot of time on his hands for a
priest).
One of the attractions of the stories is their setting, not
just in time, but also in place. Why anyone would think that turning them into
sunny, 1950s, west country, feelgood tales enhances them is anyone’s guess.
Give me the grimy backstreets and the rough edges where poverty rubs up against
wealth. Indeed, if you have to update it for television, the present day would
be a far better setting.
That aside, these are the epitome of well-written,
intelligent entertainment. And having been prompted to read the first
collection, I have no doubt that GKC will be getting a major revisit this year.
We Didn’t Mean To Go To Sea – Arthur Ransome
I’ve been a fan of Arthur Ransome’s books ever since I was
acquainted with grasshopper’s kneecaps. So being objective is not easy. So I
won’t bother. I first read this at night, uner the blankets, with a torch, in a
friend’s house where I was staying for a week. Where he lived was something of
an adventure in itself – a flat behind the cinema (his father was chief
projectionist) that had all sorts of levels and an open space with a metal
bridge over a four storey light well.
In this, the Walker Stour and Orwell. Because of a mishap, the boat
slips its mooring in fog and drifts out to sea on the tide, minus its captain.
With a storm at their heels they guide the boat across the southern end of the North
Sea and end up in Flushing . There they meet
up with their father and sail back again.
It sounds boring when put like that, but this is pure
adventure all the way, with the Goblin (just a different name for
Ransome’s own boat the Nancy Blackett) a fifth character. There is
nothing fantastical here. Everything is realistic. Yet it is never boring and
we see the Walker
Everything works out in the end (and that’s no bad thing –
life isn’t all crises and misery), but there was a real sense of peril during
the story, and the satisfaction of getting to know his characters at a deeper
level. And even if none of that were true, it is still marvellous comfort
reading.
Lady Audley’s Secret – Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Being a Talboys, this is almost compulsory reading. It
wasn’t much to my taste when I first tried it many many years ago, but people
change. This time round I thoroughly enjoyed it. I suspect last time it was a
case of being told I ought to read it and I automatically take against books
I’m told I ought to read. It’s in my nature.
What struck me about this reading is that Mary Braddon has a
dry sense of humour. It’s like a fine white wine and acts as the perfect
accompaniment to this tale. Described as a novel of sensation, one can only
wonder at how sheltered the reading public must have been to class this book in
such a way. By today’s standards (putting the coincidences and occaisonal slips
of language aside) it is rather insightful work that succeeds to make a
sympathetic character out of a reprehensible villain. She is not evil, simply
using a particular strategy to survive and to avoid the kind of life her maid
ended with.
The sympathy evoked in the reader for Lady Audley makes
everyone else’s actions all the more difficult and credible. And whilst it is
not a novel that out and out condemns aspects of society that deserve
condemnation, it does raise a lot of questions about the status quo. In
addition to all that, it is a fascinating read and succeeds in moving the story
along with sufficient suspense to keep the reader to the very last page.
The Leavenworth
Published in 1878, this is one of the earliest detective
novels and is marked by its special attention to gathering sufficient evidence
for a legal case to be made (rather than relying on purely circumstantial
evidence). As a precursor to the police procedural (only a precursor because
the methods of the police and their organisation are not really touched on) it
also introduces other elements of crime fiction with which we are now all too
familiar.
There is a form of locked room mystery at the heart of the
story which itself is an isolated house mystery. However, the work of the
investigating lawyer begins to pick away at the stories offered by those
present in the house and the mystery of the missing servant becomes a sub-plot
of equal intrigue to the main. It is also the first of a series of books
featuring the same detectives, each with their idiosyncracies that lift them
above the normal.
None of which would be of much interest if the book itself
were not also lively and satisfying. Which rather sets up the question as to
why it and its sequels are not better known.
A Strange Disappearance – Anna Katharine Green
A little more melodramatic (with nods to the gothic) than
its predecessor, this is, nonetheless, an entertaining read. Although Gryce and
Q reappear from the previous book, this one is a tale of a case as told by Q to
some of his colleagues. With the shift in perspective, we have a different feel
to the tale and a different investment by the central character in the events
and outcome.
The story centres round a member of the household staff of a
wealthy New Yorker who goes missing, possibly abducted. Mystery surrounds her
and the circumstances of her disappearance and Gryce puts Q on the case. After
mch following of the principles and a hair-raising jaunt into the wilds of the
countryside, matters begin to fall into place.
If you can accept certain conventions of this type of tale
(which I cannot discuss without spoiling the book), it is a great book that
succeeds in painting more of a picture of life in the city than was the case in
the earlier book. Great fun.
