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About the author and blogger ...

Anne Goodwin’s drive to understand what makes people tick led to a career in clinical psychology. That same curiosity now powers her fiction.
A prize-winning short-story writer, she has published three novels and a short story collection with small independent press, Inspired Quill. Her debut novel, Sugar and Snails, was shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize.
Away from her desk, Anne guides book-loving walkers through the Derbyshire landscape that inspired Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
Subscribers to her newsletter can download a free e-book of award-winning short stories.

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Neutral to neutered? The Gustav Sonata by Rose Tremain

24/6/2016

8 Comments

 
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Fierce, astringent, profoundly tender, Rose Tremain’s beautifully orchestrated novel asks the question, what does it do to a person, or to a country, to pursue an eternal quest for neutrality, and self-mastery, while all life’s hopes and passions continually press upon the borders and beat upon the gate. I don’t often structure my reviews around the blurb (being generally far too fond of my own opinion) but, for the thirteenth novel by this award-winning author, I hoped it might help me explore whether The Gustav Sonata is even more than a jolly good read.
Five-year-old Gustav is perplexed when a new boy arrives at his nursery and stands crying by the door. He’s not pleased to be chosen by their teacher to befriend him, but he “masters himself” and “gets on with it”, and advises Anton to do the same. This is the beginning of a friendship that, despite differences in personality, background and ambition, and despite being occasionally put on hold, will continue at least until the novel’s final chapter when both men are sixty years old.

Like a sonata, the novel is in three differently-paced movements or parts (although, having consulted Wikipedia, it seems this isn’t always the case). The first shows Gustav and Anton as boys, cementing their friendship in Sunday afternoons at the ice rink and, on holiday with Anton’s parents in the health resort of Davos, in an abandoned sanatorium where their game of gifting life to some of their fantasy patients and death to others becomes an obsession, as well as raising the question of whether their relationship will go deeper, when they exchange their first kiss. The second movement backtracks to 1937, when twenty-year-old Emilie meets assistant policeman Erich Perle at the Schwingfest in the small Swiss town of Matzlingen, where most of the novel is set, and decides he’s the one to lift her out of poverty that is not only financial, but also of the soul. In the third movement we fast forward to 1992, when fifty-year-old Gustav is the proud owner of the best hotel in town, while Anton, having given up his childhood dream of becoming a concert pianist due to crippling performance anxiety, seems finally to have landed his big break. (For me, although it didn’t stop me turning the pages, this latter wasn’t as brilliant as the first two, partly because of leaving me wondering, not just where it was heading, but whether it was heading anywhere at all.)

On the sociopolitical level, The Gustav Sonata is the story of a country’s shame in closing its border to the Jews in 1938, a theme previously addressed on Annecdotal in my review of the novel, Jakob’s Colours. I’m indebted to Clare O’Dea’s review for the assurance that Rose Tremain gets Switzerland right, although she points out that it wasn’t the only country to deny safe passage to those in need. (You “could be reading a Swiss working translation”, according to Clare, though happily the author didn’t translate the word weltschmerz (p209) which had its debut on Annecdotal in my review of a German-translated novel.)  

I liked how, in the portrayal of Gustav’s parents – Erich who falsifies documents to save lives; Emilie who hates the Jews, and therefore Anton’s family, because of how the discovery of her husband’s moral but criminal act robs her of a decent income and a comfortable flat – both the heroism and cowardice are rendered ordinary. In other circumstances, each might have responded differently: Emilie might have been able to open her heart if she’d had a less deprived childhood and had she not been grieving a late miscarriage; Erich might have turned away his first petitioner had he not identified with the man’s desperation to support his wife and child. Erich’s anxiety at his transgression in a rule-bound culture is highly convincing, as is the collective fear of invasion by the Nazis that has brought about the Germany-appeasing law. But the question remains as to whether neutrality is possible in such circumstances, when a refusal to take sides equates with collusion in persecution. The traits that make Emilie cold and harsh could also be the personification of a culture of self-reliance and control.

What chance does Gustav have with such a mother? We’re told in the opening sentence that, like most neglected children, he loves her but, at fifty, he’s still waiting for that love to be reciprocated (p153-4):

he thought about his childhood very often. It always brought on the feeling of sadness which seemed absolute and complete – as though no future sorrow would ever touch him again in this way. The sadness gathered like a grey twilight around the idea of his own invisibility: the way the boy Gustav had kept on trying to push himself into the light so that his Mutti would see him better.


Gustav seems also to be waiting for Anton to notice him, and his loyalty to his childhood friend, especially when Anton comes to him asking for help, is as much a torment as a pleasure, or would be if he could allow himself to feel. Unlike Anton, who has few inhibitions about expressing his emotional highs and lows, Gustav has been adept at self-mastery almost his entire life, exemplified in his attitude to his clumsy attempts at learning to skate at seven (p31):

He fell over frequently, but he never cried, though the ice was hard, the hardest surface his bones had ever met. He taught himself to laugh instead. Laughing was a bit like crying. It was a strange convulsion; it just came from a different bit of your mind.


His acceptance into Anton’s family, is probably the only thing that saves him yet, when, at ten, his mother is hospitalised, he stays alone in their flat, keeping it clean, as good an apprenticeship as any for his work as a hotelier, making things comfortable for others being the nearest he can come to being cared for himself. Rose Tremain shows that, when it comes to the impact of narcissistic mothers, it isn’t only the female children whose careers are shaped by caring for those who should have cared for them (as in this novel about an anthropologist and this about a translator). Anton, in contrast, although he seems destined not to fulfil his original potential, reminding me of another novel with a prodigious pianist, follows his passions, and not only in his musical career. While Anton has strings of lovers, Gustav seems asexual, neutered by self-mastery.

In the middle section, we clearly see the roots of Gustav’s personality in his mother’s response to him as a baby. Exhausted and depressed, partly through the deprivations she felt herself as a child, she cannot create the conditions in which he’ll grow to feel secure (p146):

Sometimes, she lets him scream. She’s so tired, she can doze through the horrible noise. She tells herself that nothing bad is happening to him; he’s just a bit hungry, or wet, or just plain bad-tempered … She imagined motherhood would cure the sorrows of the past and make her contented and proud. But it isn’t like that. She nurtures the terrible thought that this Gustav is the
wrong Gustav; the baby she lost was the rightful son, with whom she would have found a thrilling maternal bond.

The Gustav Sonata
works beautifully as a study of insecure attachment – or the requirement for self-mastery before one has had the experience of others mastering emotions on one’s behalf – and of the limitations of a country’s neutral stance. The experience of the fatherless boy with an emotionally absent mother is also explored in my next novel, Underneath. What I can’t quite make up my mind about is how much the neutrality of a country maps onto the neutrality and self-mastery of a person – but I’ve probably already written more than enough (although I’ve wangled a way of revisiting this novel in my next post, which is in response to Charli’s latest flash fiction prompt). I envisage this one hoovering up the prizes, and I’d love to find the time to read it again. Thanks to Chatto & Windus for my review copy.
Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
8 Comments
Clare O'Dea link
24/6/2016 09:10:42 pm

Thanks for the mention Anne. You've analysed the novel in a very interesting way but I'm left with the feeling that you were not as carried away by this read as I was.
On the whole neutrality / self-mastery thing, I felt that Gustav's mother's message to the little boy about 'being like Switzerland' was a bit overplayed and I would have preferred that idea to come through in a more subtle way.
I didn't mind the slightly wandering third part but that's possibly because I had got it into my head that there was some connection between Anton's family and Gustav's father, that they were possibly one of the families he saved. So I was a little bit disappointed when the big reveal at the end, heartwarming though it turned out to be, was something completely different.

Reply
Annecdotist
27/6/2016 12:08:35 pm

Thanks, Clare, I DID enjoy it, but perhaps I’m being extra critical both as a way of teaching myself what I might emulate, and because it’s kind of a given that she’s a good writer (although, as I think I said on your blog, I wasn’t impressed by The Road Home which won her thick Orange prize) so I’m holding myself back to check whether she’s gone that extra mile!
Interesting that you thought the “being like Switzerland” overdone and we had different impressions of the wandering third part. I had wondered about that connection with Anton’s Jewish family earlier on, but decided it wasn’t going there when it turned out they were already Swiss residents. And I liked the ending, despite being a bit cheesy, as it made sense, for me, of that section.
But fascinating how readers read differently – I’m considering proposing this for my book group. I usually pick something I haven’t actually read, but given my last two choices were a disappointment to all of us, I maybe need to pick a winner.

Reply
Norah Colvin link
25/6/2016 07:08:20 am

Hi Anne, I really enjoyed this review. I love the way you entwine your background in psychology in developing understanding of the the characters and their motivations. It makes your review much more than simply a book review. It provides insights into the human condition.The excerpts that you have included so how well the author has done this too. The importance of those early years, especially the relationship between child and mother, can not be overstated. Interesting that you are going to refer to this book again in response to Charli's prompt. I intend to write about the importance of the early years and the mother-child relationship too! But I'm sure we'll approach it from different ways.

Reply
Annecdotist
27/6/2016 12:13:19 pm

Kind of you to say that, Norah, but I think the book manages to provide those insights into the human condition on its own!
And interesting to see how we’ll probably focus on different points in those important early years in responding to Charli’s prompt. I thought I might have had mine rated by now, but I’m finding it hard to focus when still reeling from the result of the EU referendum (probably won’t really have hit you in Australia, but it’s a bit like we’ve voted in our own version of Donald Trump).

Reply
Charli Mills link
25/6/2016 11:13:10 pm

I enjoyed this review, too giving such consideration to a master author. I'm in awe of how the author was able to write a novel as if a movement of music. That's definitely mastery of words and what they can evoke through a story!

Reply
Annecdotist
27/6/2016 12:00:14 pm

Your comment reminds me that, while it’s not uncommon to write a novel in “parts”, these parts don’t often reflect a change in mood. I often wonder when reading why the author has chosen that structure especially when they also have chapter headings. (Underneath is in 6 parts – now I have to wait to see whether readers think that’s appropriate!)

Reply
Caroline link
2/7/2016 12:36:20 pm

I have recently read this, admiring how Rose Tremain manages to come to grips with a new setting and new age with every book she writes. She also writes cracking good short stories.
However, I found the children in this novel unbelievable. They did not stand out as vividly as the mother, or their adult selves.
The theme of the book, control and containment seems to be especially pertinent in the week the UK voted to leave the EU. But I am not sure that it really comes off. But I enjoyed your review, Anne! So Thankyou.

Reply
Annecdotist
4/7/2016 05:48:23 pm

Thanks for reading and commenting, Caroline. I’m intrigued that you didn’t believe in the children as I did. Would be curious to know more.

Reply



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