The End of the Affair

I read The End of the Affair in Hong Kong, so I’m afraid I wasn’t quite as focused as I should have been. Frequent pauses to gaze at the staggering view out of my friend’s balcony ensured progress was slow. Yet something about the humidity, and the serenity of the world outside - as ships breezed past the widening bay and the surrounding islands were shrouded in mist - threw this very English novel into sharp relief. The introspective and bitterly self-analytical nature of the narrator, and the passion of which he writes (one that could equally be of hatred or love) seemed to jump off the page into the sultry air, and smack me on the face.

Set in 1940, the intensity of the relationship between the narrator, Maurice Bendrix and Sarah effortless manages to eclipse the ferocious war in a way that hugely interests me. The Blitz was, of course, raging through London at the time, and whilst it plays in important role in the story, it is by no means the main character. It cemented my recent epiphany, realised after reading The Slaves of Solitude, that novels that spring from the ashes of war are not necessarily centred around the war itself. Indeed, at one point Bendrix notes carelessly, “I suppose Germany by this time had invaded the Low Countries…” showing perfectly the all-consuming nature of his affair with Sarah.

Despite Graham Greene being an extremely well-known and prolific author, I have read embarrassingly little of his work – not even Brighton Rock (although my mother did make me read Doctor Fischer of Geneva when I was fairly young – I think I am still traumatised). The End of the Affair is one of those novels that one is unsure as to whether one likes. There is a delicious twist to the story that is immensely satisfying, and yet the heavy debates on Catholicism, as well as the fact the narrator is not hugely likeable deadened my enjoyment somewhat. The knowledge that it is loosely autobiographical, however, piqued my interest. Boldly dedicated to ‘C’, this novel parallels Greene’s own affair with Lady Catherine Watson. As anyone with a remote interest in literature should know, it is a grave mistake to ever assume that the narrator is quite literally the voice of the author. However, it is interesting to note that the main character, Bendrix is a novelist, and comments clearly, and often coldly, on the process of writing. I wondered how similar Greene is to Bendrix, and whether he would really want to expose his soul on the cold pages of a novel, leaving me with the conclusion that Benedrix is like Greene, but is resolutely not Greene.

I found the characters rather fascinating, if not believable. The most likeable character has to be Henry, Sarah’s husband. He is kind and essentially a good man, yet he is dull and rather pathetic. He fulfills the clichéd position of the oblivious husband, and indeed, it seems to be his only role. I also found it difficult to wholly emphasise with Sarah. She is a fully-fledged character yet I found there was a curious two-dimensional quality to her in Bendrix’s narration. It could be that this is an artistic device in itself, she is, after all, full of vitality in her diary entries later on, as she agonises over her faith. Perhaps Greene deliberately ensures that Bendrix’s writings of her are inadequate and flat, reflecting the futility of the writing process, as one can never fully capture life in words. Or maybe he is commenting on the fact no one can every really know another person, something that is echoed in the plotline itself. Either way, it ensures the novel itself, while an excellent and engaging story, and quite amusing at times – seems very much to be written by a writer, if that makes any sense at all.

I am aware that this is not exactly a glowing (or coherent) review. Please do not misunderstand me: I genuinely admire this novel. The passion Bendrix feels for Sarah is tangible in every line, and the questions about life and God that are wrestled with by many of the characters are thought-provoking. However, it is also the kind of novel one needs frequent rests from; rests made all the more pressing by the presence of sunlight dancing on the waves outside the window.

The Slaves of Solitude

My stepfather, having done the unenviable task of reading all my literary reviews in one go (everyone else in my immediate family having managed to keep up to date, although possibly out of politeness rather than desire), has pointed out that I talk rather a lot about how long it’s taken me to read a particular novel. I would like to say, in my defence, that the speed or slowness with which I peruse a work of literature is often a good indicator as to how much I enjoyed it – but nevertheless, I will cease this somewhat unliterary gauge of excellence and try and rely solely on the content.

Patrick Hamilton is one of those authors that contemporary authors and clever people bemoan as being forgotten or underappreciated. I don’t know if I’m being very uncultured in saying that I hadn’t heard of him until a few months back, but he’s not exactly a household name. But, as Doris Lessing furiously asserts in the introduction in my copy, he deserves to be. I have come to agree wholeheartedly. The Slaves of Solitude is a bleak but unabashedly humorous (in a wry sort of way) novel, written between 1943 and 1946, and set in the war years. Although there is no description of battlefield action, and no bombs are dropped in the duration of the novel, the war pervades every page and seems to taint the action and characters with lethargy and bitterness.

The novel takes place in the small fictional town of Thames Lockdon, in a boarding house, The Rosamund Tea Rooms. The main character is Miss Roach, a pleasant, ordinary sort of woman, approaching middle age. Also living at the Tea Rooms are a couple of elderly women, the abrasive and bullying Mr. Thwaites, and a more ‘common’ man, who spends very little time there. Everything seems bland and dull; one has the impression that there are identical boarding houses, with identical occupants all over the country, all with the same stagnant atmosphere. Hamilton manages to convey the oppressive atmosphere beautifully, representing perfectly, with an acute but never cruel eye, the pettiness and banality of the characters. Things are shaken up a bit with the arrival of an American lieutenant, and further still when Miss Roach’s German friend, Vicki, moves into the boarding house, and the main storyline is wrapped around these two events.

Hamilton’s use of language is both damning of the British social pattern, and hideously amusing. I found myself laughing aloud at Mr. Thawaites’ grotesque attempts to talk eloquently – it all seemed so surreal, almost Pinteresque, yet so horribly imaginable. Similarly, Miss Roach’s indignant internal monologues seem so very real that they are both alarming and funny. The main storyline (a feud between the very English Miss Roach and the dangerously continental and loathsomely seductive Vicki) is at once ridiculous if the much more serious background of the war is taken into account, but Hamilton gives it a sense of vast importance, and deals with the fraught emotions of Miss Roach gently and sensitively.

As ever, I am reluctant to give away important plot details, so I will restrain myself. It’s odd, actually, in that there isn’t that much plot to speak of – the true beauty of this novel is that Hamilton’s genius shines through his exquisitely careful use of language, designed to be read in seriousness, yet able to evoke strange feelings of pity, amusement and disdain. His characters are crafted with the utmost care, and one sympathises deeply with Miss Roach, and wonders where the gradual crescendo of quiet events in the deathlike boarding house will take her.

Overall, therefore, an immensely satisfying read. I hope this review portrays a little of Hamilton’s extreme skill at minutely portraying human character – and that you have noted that not once have I said how long this book has taken me to finish...

The Fallen Blade

This has to be the most contemp-orary book I will ever write about – not only is it written by an author who is still alive and well, it hasn’t even been published yet! The Fallen Blade: Act 1 of the Assassini Trilogy by Jon Courtenay Grimwood will be available to buy in January 2011, and I assure you, it is well worth the wait. I managed to get my grubby paws on it purely because of my bloodline – the esteemed author is, in fact, my uncle. All bias aside, I am being perfectly honest when I say that I enjoyed it enormously. I wouldn’t exactly call myself a literary snob, (I have, after all, read the Twilight Saga), but, let’s just say, if I hadn’t liked this particular book, I wouldn’t have immediately texted Jon and asked whether I was legally allowed to write a review before its publication (for those of you wondering: I am.) Perhaps it was the recent overdose of Victorian depression and Romantic wimpiness, but this absorbing and energetic novel was a total shock to the system. To say I was hooked is an underestimate. To say I am eager for the next novel is also an underestimate. Despite always liking a good night’s sleep, I read this late into the night and bolted awake early (most unlike me) to resume the story.

For those of you mildly disgusted by the Twilight books – full of sparkly vampires, and lovestruck werewolves – then, rest assured, this is absolutely nothing like them. Set in the dingy streets and elegant palaces of fifteenth century Venice, the city is conjured up from the pages like a mirage. Grimwood’s (how odd it is to use my own surname!) language is capable of evoking every scene with utter clarity. The filth and grime of the sewer-strewn canal paths are described as evocatively as the insincerely polite scenes at court. Acts of indescribable violence are recorded in the same manner as a sudden realisation of love. It is this level undercurrent of Grimwood’s narrative voice that binds the novel together, and that made me race through it at such an unprecedented speed.

The novel (which, I am afraid, is one of those that requires a family tree and a dramatis personae at the beginning – although if my brain could cope with this, so can yours) centres around Lady Giulietta, a young Venetian noblewoman, whose hand in marriage has been promised to a brutal foreign king, for the sake of a political allegiance. One has the impression that this kind of political power is genuinely all that matters to the members of Giulietta’s family that are orchestrating this connection, and indeed, much of the aristocracy at the time. The corruption of the court seems to trickle down the social ladder to every walk of Venetian life - there is very little trust and rather a lot of fear. The other main character (although there are several characters of importance) is Tycho – an unspeakably beautiful boy with silver-bright hair and strange eyes. He arrives in Venice with only the faintest memories and no understanding as to how he got there. His remarkable speed and reflexes attract the attention of the Duke’s chief assassin, who then attempts to recruit him to his secretive and elite group of hired murderers - the assassini. Tycho and Giulietta’s respective plotlines slide past each other, crossing and recrossing. And towering above these two protagonists is arguably the true main character: the city herself. Venice is a deceitful city with a beautiful face, behind which lies treachery and corruption. These elements combine into a deadly poison, and escalate towards the novel’s gripping conclusion.

Sorry for the complete lack of detail – I am most definitely not allowed to disclose important plot points. Still, I hope it creates some form of curiosity that will last until January. I can tell you now, that it will be an excellent book to read by the fire in the chills of winter! A quick summary: Grimwood (hah!) delivers an absolutely inspired take on assassins, werewolves and vampires - topics we’d all thought had been done to death (no pun intended). But, for me, it is the elusive Venice that draws one close, intoxicates, and withdraws – leaving the reader absolutely burning for more.

The Time Machine

After my arduous experience of The Mysteries of Udolpho, and being wearied of its archaic and crying heroine, I naturally had to recover for an afternoon. It wasn’t long, however, before I reached for the shortest book I could find on my reading list, which also happens to be the most futuristic. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells is a tiny little thing – a mere 118 pages (at least, it is in my rather 1980s-style copy), following a basic story-within-a-story layout, in which the Victorians so delighted.

A discerning and pleasant young man narrates the frame of the story – we never find out his name or occupation, but we do know that every Thursday, he and a group of other men assemble for dinner and a masculine chat at the mysterious “Time Traveller’s” house. The Time Traveller begins by explaining his innovative theories on time – something at which I initially inwardly groaned, thinking I was going to drown in lengthy explanations, but really, it’s all fairly straightforward. I was going to paraphrase these ideas, but on second thoughts, decided against this - it would almost certainly put you off. Nevertheless, after this theoretical discussion, the men reconvene a week later, to find that the Time Traveller arrives an hour late to his own dinner party, bleeding, limping, haggard, exhausted and hungry. He washes, dresses, ravenously devours a plate of mutton, and then relates to his astonished friends a remarkable tale, that is to take up the next twelve chapters. He claims he has travelled forwards in time, to the year 802701 AD, where humanity has evolved (or degenerated – a popular theme with the more depressed Victorian writers) into a small, joyful, and idle race.

Without wanting to give too much away, what initially seems to be a paradise - “the Golden Age” - becomes increasingly sinister. Although it appears that amongst this new and beautiful race, there is no disease, crime or pain, it soon becomes evident that evolution has split, and branched into two strains of humankind – those who live in peace on the earth’s surface, and those who skulk and creep in the depths of the earth.

I am immediately tempted to say that I loved this novel – or novella, rather, as it really is extremely short. However, a closer inspection of my thoughts reveals a more indistinct opinion. You see, there’s not really that much in it to love. It is, in a way, a twisted version of Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, and I’ve no doubt that Wells drew inspiration from this Renaissance oeuvre. In a way similar to More, Wells presents the occurrences of this fictional alternate world as all too real. However, whereas it could be argued that More advocates the Utopians’ way of life (to a certain extent – but I won’t go into the long and boring explanation), Wells seems sickened to the very core by his bleak image of mankind’s future. He seems frightened of the direction humanity is going, both in this adventures in 802701 A.D. and when he goes even further into the future. In what was, for me, the most powerful passage in the novella, the Time Traveller narrates the earth’s death, millions and millions of years in the future, when there is barely any life on earth, and the huge, red, dying sun is obscured by blackness. It is a chilling image, and Wells’ writing seems to me to be particularly effective through the colloquial yet matter-of-fact way it is presented. It is utterly enthralling.

Well! There we have it. A short review for a short book. What interests me is whether Wells wants us to believe the Time Traveller is telling the truth or not. I’ve always been a bit of a fan of the unreliable narrator (and if you are too, two contemporary novels that spring to mind are try Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood, and the slightly more recent The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters). The knowledge that the ‘truth’ might not be strictly truthful can change your opinion of a novel in an instant, and ensure that you never read it the same way twice. The Time Traveller himself admits of his story that “most of it will sound like lying.” Indeed, several of the men witnessing his story don’t believe him at all. The young man who narrates the beginning and end of the book, however, seems decided it is true. Ambiguity, it would seem, is the order of the day. Choose what you will – either way, the novel itself is a bleak testimony to Wells’ sad and rather haunting vision of humanity.