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.
It is very many years since I read The Go-between and The Heirling, the only L P Hartley novels I have read. I have been meaning to re-read both of them as well as getting to his other books. I remember how much you loved The Boat and I am sure I have a copy of that one. I hadn’t heard of this one, didn’t know he had written a trilogy. Love the sound of this book, sibling relationships can be so complex and involved that they do make for good storytelling.
I started this one today with the intention of finishing it in time for the ’44 Club – I may not achieve that though. I’ve only read the first two chapters but I think Hartley does a good job in describing the children’s thoughts, especially Eustace. I thought his reaction to seeing Miss Fothergill very amusing as it’s just how children react to certain people.
I have a chunky Faber copy as well but it’s an older one with a still from a TV production on the cover.
Another author I’ve never red, but should have. (OH rates The Go Between very highly, but I think he’s influenced by loving the film…)
I loved the way Hartley captured young Leo’s experiences in The Go-Between, a novel I only got around to reading a year or so ago. Oddly enough, I actually have a copy of this trilogy tucked away in the spare bedroom somewhere. The only thing that puts me off is the fact that my edition has all three instalments in one volume which makes it the size of a brick! Anyway, it sounds really good, particularly in terms of the dynamics between the two siblings.
I have a copy of The Go-between that I bought because of your recommendation! Has there been 1953 Club yet? If not, there is still hope that I will get to it. :)
Great review and I find your comment about siblings and having no experience of having an older or younger one interesting. Of course not since you are a twin, but being a middle child from a large family, I never thought of that option.
Just finished Shrimp and Anenome. Didn’t know about The Boat and will look out for it. I thought the relationship between Eustace and Hilda, and for that matter Minney, beautifully drawn. Fitting that the last words of the novel included the three of them.
It sounds like the Go Between or The Boat might be a good book for me to start with, with this author.
Oooh, thanks for the recommendation. I remember reading The Go-Between years ago and enjoying it enormously. (Interestingly, it is only because of that book that I was able to identify the wild plant growing around my in-laws’ back deck as deadly nightshade! Fiction is so useful.)
Also, the first line of your blog made me smile. Years ago, I took my kids to the tide pools (rock pools in Californian) and my little son kept calling the anemones “enemies.” It sounds like that is not too far off from the sibling dynamics in the story! Thanks for the good memory.
Great review – makes me want to re-read it – thanks.
Is Miss Fothergill actually an elderly lady, or is this one of those cases where the “old lady” actually turns out to be 35? :) I’ve not read this author, but I mean to.