A severe cold has meant very little writing in the last few days, but a copious amount of reading (completing my reading “challenge” of 100 books in the year), albeit with not a great amount of depth. These three short reviews of novels about three very different women’s quests for a life, and a mind, of their own is part of the result.
I was more convinced by Dorothy’s romance with Veronica than with Bertie, although that might reflect the imposition of my own values on the pair’s disregard of the feelings of her friend and his wife. Yet the author had good reason for dwelling more on the former relationship, as the characters are based on significant figures in the literary world (although, I’m not generally enamoured of fiction about writers). Bertie – or HG Wells as he is more commonly known – I was aware of as the pioneer of science fiction and, according to my mother, a distant relative of ours (quite probably via one of his other extramarital affairs). But Dorothy Richardson was hitherto unknown to me so it was interesting to learn about this peer of Virginia Woolf and innovator of stream of consciousness writing, and poignant to witness a gradual sexual and authorial awakening within the novel while aware that, in the real world, she’d soon be forgotten.
In an afterword, Louise Treger tells us that she stumbled on Dorothy Richardson by accident while searching for a new angle on Virginia Woolf for her PhD thesis. I received my copy via her New York publisher, St Martin’s Press.
In an afterword, Louise Treger tells us that she stumbled on Dorothy Richardson by accident while searching for a new angle on Virginia Woolf for her PhD thesis. I received my copy via her New York publisher, St Martin’s Press.
Perhaps because of the element of magic realism, I didn’t find it so easy to connect with this novel as I did with others from Sandstone Press (e.g. The Zoo; The Insect Rosary; The Spice Box Letters; The Surfacing). Despite my interest in this historical period, which formed the basis of my short story “Elementary Mechanics”, I probably missed some of the nuances of the parallels between the in-the-house story and the political upheaval of the time. I was also curious about the author’s own story of political activism which led to her having to flee the country across the mountains with her two-year-old son, but maybe I need to check whether she’s fictionalised that elsewhere.
This moving, deceptively simple, novel opens with Addie Moore, a seventy-year-old widow, inviting her neighbour, Louis Waters, to stay the night. Once he’s got over his initial shock, he agrees to the proposition, and a couple embark on a deeply satisfying friendship that, nevertheless, scandalises their adult children and neighbours in the small town of Holt, Colorado. It takes great skill to write about ordinary happiness, but Kent Haruf has it in spades (or did have; he died in 2014 and this novel was published posthumously), with an emotional depth below the surface simplicity somewhat reminiscent of Anne Tyler. Under the bed clothes, the couple review their pasts, acknowledging the unrealised, or even unidentified, ambition that characterises many lives, while, in the daytime, providing a safe haven from his feuding parents for Addie’s six-year-old grandson. Yet, while I’m not renowned for my optimism, I did wonder at the almost universal disapproval of their relationship (save for the more elderly neighbour in the house between theirs), and whether it was the author’s, or the characters’, failure of nerve that made Addie succumb to their spoiling envy. Until then, an uplifting tale that reminds us to make the best of the life we’ve got. Thanks to Picador Books for my review copy.
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