1944club

The Shrimp and the Anemone by L.P. Hartley #1944Club

StuckinaBook All , , , 10 Comments

My second (and probably final) read for the 1944 Club was L.P. Hartley’s The Shrimp and the Anemone, which i am grateful I am typing, because I can never say that word. It’s the first book of the Eustace and Hilda trilogy, and covers about a year in the young lives of the brother and sister.

I bought the trilogy many years ago, and I think I also had this book separately until I realised that it was a duplicate. While I read The Go-Between a decade or so ago, it was only last year that I started to explore his other work – specifically The Boat, which was brilliant. And so I was pleased to see that one of my Hartleys could coincide with the 1944 Club, even if it meant lugging around the chunky book pictured above.

It opens at the beach, and we don’t have to wait long to see the shrimp and the anemone in question. Eustace is nine; his sister Hilda is four years older, and they are playing on the sands. Eustace is looking in a rockpool, and sees an anemone slowly swallowing a shrimp – he is a sensitive child, and is keen to save the shrimp. Hilda comes to help extricate it – but, in doing so, both the shrimp and the anemone are killed. It is rather a graphic depiction of a relationship that goes through the whole novel (and, I believe, the whole trilogy). Hilda is domineering and possessive; Eustace is anxious to please. It’s leaping ahead a bit, because this comes in the second half of the novel, but it crystallises their sibling relationship well:

For the first time, then, he obscurely felt that Hilda was treating him badly. She was a tyrant, and he was justified in resisting her. Nancy was right to taunt him with his dependence on her. His thoughts ran on. He was surrounded by tyrants who thought they had a right to order him about it was a conspiracy. He could not call his soul his own. In all his actions he was propitiating somebody. This must stop. His lot was not, he saw in a flash of illumination, the common lot of children. Like him they were obedient, perhaps, and punished for disobedience, but obedience had not got into their blood, it was not a habit of mind, it was detachable, like the clothes they put on and off. As far as they could, they did what they liked; they were not haunted, as he was, with the fear of not giving satisfaction to someone else.

A lot of the novel is simply about this fraught relationship – one filled with love, because Hilda is not trying to inflict pain; she believes she is doing the best thing for both of them, to the extent that she considers the question at all. I found it fascinating, because I’ve never quite got my head around what it must be like to have a sibling who is either younger or older than you. I know that’s the norm, but it seems to me like it must be quite odd – not being on the same footing, as it were. And Hartley captures that inequality well.

Into this world comes Miss Fothergill, an old lady who is largely alienated from the community by her disabilities. We see these through Eustace’s eyes, so I’m not sure exactly what they were – but they lead to her being in a wheelchair, and having deformities in her hands and face. Hilda forces Eustace to speak to her when they encounter her on a walk – and, unexpectedly, he (after some misadventures on a paperchase!) ends up visiting and befriending her – leading to various seismic changes in Eustace and Hilda’s lives towards the end of the novel.

I didn’t find this as wonderful as The Boat, possibly because it doesn’t try to have the humour of that novel. And I’ve found every novel about children that I’ve read since Alfred and Guinevere by James Schuyler somewhat deficient in dialogue, because Schuyler captures so well how young siblings talk. And if Hartley’s child characters lean towards the adult in how they converse, they are wonderfully realised in how they think and relate. Eustace’s anxieties are drawn perfectly, and their relationship rang very true. I’m not very good at carrying on with a series after I’ve started it, but I should move onto the next two before I forget the first of the trilogy – it will certainly be intriguing to see how this relationship develops as the brother and sister age.

Company in the Evening by Ursula Orange #1944Club

StuckinaBook All , , , , 7 Comments

I loved the first Ursula Orange novel I read (Tom Tiddler’s Ground) and was glad that the 1944 Club provided an opportunity to read another. Company in the Evening is one of the Furrowed Middlebrow reprints – extremely welcome, especially given how much Scott has made us all want to read Ursula Orange over the years. And, yes, it’s another really good’un.

The novel is from the perspective of Vicky, a woman who has recently divorced and is looking after her young daughter (born after the divorce) while also working at a literary agency. She is managing life rather well, but her mother can’t believe this is possible – and decides that Vicky should take in her sister-in-law. Rene has been living with Vicky’s mother, after being widowed (a very WW2 element to the story) – and she makes the move to Vicky’s household, fitting neither in the role of servant or relative. She will provide, Vicky’s mother optimistically hopes, ‘company in the evening’.

Vicky is more a real character than a likeable one. Or, perhaps, she becomes likeable because she is so understandable. She does not particularly want Rene to move in with her, nor does she know quite how to speak to her. Orange is very good in the scenes where Vicky tries to reach across the intellectual and social chasm between herself and Rene, wanting to find the right topics and language, but also (because she is only ordinarily nice; nothing special) not putting in quite as much effort as is needed. She is definitely an intellectual snob and, to a lesser extent, a class snob – but it is undeniable that this chasm would exist, even if Vicky cared less about it. The women are two different to understand one another.

Meanwhile, she starts to reconnect with her ex-husband – recognising, for the first time, that he might want to make something of the role of father, and that she never really gave him the chance. Looping back to the title – might he become the aforementioned company?

The dynamics of the unusual household are done extremely well. We always know what people are or aren’t likely to say, do, and feel, and understand how awkwardly these elements cohere – or don’t cohere. It is a funny novel, but not in the way that Tom Tiddler’s Ground was. It’s the war – set in 1941, if memory serves – and a more sombre light is cast over the book.

Having said that, all the stuff at her literary agency is amusing – particularly her dealings with an author who sends all her best stories elsewhere, and is maddeningly unhelpful in meetings. I love reading about anybody engaged in literary work, and this was all rich material for what a literary agency was presumably like in the 1940s.

Dorothy Harper wafted herself out of the office, all pearls, fur-coat and scent. I am sure that she always pictured herself as bringing just a little colour and romance—a breath of the outside world—into our drab lives. As neither of us ever did anything but listen patiently while she talked her society prattle, perhaps we encouraged her in this conception. I was ‘Miss Sylvester’ to her, as I was to all our clients. I am sure that had she known that I was (like her) a divorcee, she would. have been deeply shocked. Little typists in offices (she would think) have no business to be also divorced women with private lives of their own.

The oddball humour is perhaps an odd fit with the social anxieties – and with all the motherhood aspect, particularly when Vicky’s daughter has a health crisis. But I think it works well together – because, of course, people’s lives have funny moments and unhappy moments, and Orange has written something that is naturalistic in tone, if not in every word spoken. I’m so grateful that Scott and Furrowed Middlebrow have brought Ursula Orange back into print – and you can read his detailed thoughts about this novel on his blog.

#1944Club – starts today!

StuckinaBook All 24 Comments

Happy #1944Club day, everyone! Until Sunday, we’re asking everyone to read and review books published (in any format, language, or place) in 1944. Pop your review up on your blog, and then let me or Karen know the link – at the end of the week, I’ll compile a round-up, and any thoughts that might lead out of that. If you don’t have a blog, we can link to reviews on LibraryThing or GoodReads, or you can put a review in the comments here.

Happy reading!