Finishing A Century of Books with Alice Thomas Ellis

My final slot on A Century of Books turned out to be 1990, and I decided to read The Inn at the Edge of the World by Alice Thomas Ellis, which I bought last year in the Lake District. When I chose it, I hadn’t realised that it is set at Christmas – but what a perfect book to take away for my Christmas break at my brother’s.

Eric and Mabel live unhappily together on a remote Scottish island, running an inn with bar and guesthouse that is largely despised by the locals and only infrequently occupied by visitors. Eric has the brainwave to place an advertisment for people who want to escape the Christmas season – where could be further from the busy commercialism of Christmas than an island where nobody goes outside the summer, bar a handful of permanent residents?

Mabel quickly abandons the island and her husband, and he is left to look after the five people who do decide to take up the offer. There is actor Jessica, best known for commericals; beautiful Jon, a less successful actor who follows her there; Anita, a dissatisfied shop worker; Harry, a depressed ex-military man, and Ronald, a self-important psychologist whose wife has recently left him. Each has their own reasons for going, and each is equal parts ready and tentative to form new connections.

Ever since I read And Then There Were None as a teenager, I’ve loved stories about random (or seemingly random) people coming together. The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim is another good example, but far happier than The Inn at the Edge of the World – though perhaps Alice Thomas Ellis has something in common with Elizabeth von Arnim when it comes to descriptions of her characters. Both authors love depicting self-deception, and undercutting their characters even while they try to reveal their natures. Here’s Alice Thomas Ellis on Ronald the psychologist.

Ronald was also travelling in second-class accommodation because his wife’s desertion had left him unconfident and fearful that he might, at any moment, find himself penniless. He rationalised his decision by telling himself that, these days, there was very little difference between first and second class. He was right, but he was, nevertheless, slipping unawares into an unfortunate trend towards self-deception.

She slips in such brilliant little moments in passing, helping us to instantly understand not only the people she’s created, but the worlds they inhabit. Jessica the actress, for instance, ‘had a large pleasant face, which she could, when called upon, make beautiful’.

I found much of the novel very drily funny. Alice Thomas Ellis spares nobody and nothing. Here she has the inn’s decor in her sights. (Finlay is the man-of-all-work who seems involved in everything on the island, and his sister-in-law is the totally silent, totally capable woman who gets everything done and looks with evident cynicism on it all.)

When Finlay had gone Eric went to take a final look at the rooms which he and Finlay’s sister-in-law had prepared. The previous owner had had a regrettable passion for stripes. The wallpaper, curtains and counterpanes had all been resolutely striped and several chairs had had tartan-covered cushions on them. Eric had removed all these in his first enthusiasm and replaced them with a pale and restrained chintz he had got cheap when a shop in Glasgow, which had been too pale and restrained for its own good, went out of business.

The Inn at the Edge of the World certainly isn’t going to end up as heartwarming as The Enchanted April, but nor does it feel bleak. An unlikely friendship strikes up between Jessica and Harry, with limits imposed by their dissimilar natures. Eric admires or loathes the guests in turn, sometimes the same person, while Anita sets out to marry Ronald with the singlemindedness of a middle-aged woman exactly the right mix of imaginative and unimaginative. All the while, we remain aware of the wildness of the island – the dangerous sea around it, the possibility of being stranded, and the strange mythologies that are never too far from the everyday.

This is my third book by Alice Thomas Ellis, and I wasn’t entirely sure what I thought about Unexplained Laughter and The Birds of the Air. I don’t have to think twice about this one: it is far and away the best book I’ve read by Alice Thomas Ellis. She is brilliantly witty and a little dark, quietly ridiculing her characters without dehumanising them. Her deep knowledge of human nature never wavers, and though there are elements of the surreal that felt slightly self-indulgent, they don’t seep into the form and logic of the novel as they did in the other two I’ve read.

I absolutely recommend The Inn at the Edge of the World – particularly at Christmas, but it would be a great read at any other time too. I’m so glad I finished A Century of Books on a high – and with a handful of days to go, too.