Miss Hargreaves: Frank Baker

Some readers may remember the 1985 film Weird Science and its premise that two high school nerds create the ‘perfect woman.’ Weird Science was a hit at the time of its release and is now considered a cult classic. And why not–the film reflects Hollywood’s obsession with high school (high school sexuality) and it’s also a buddy film. And that brings me to Frank Baker’s 1939 novel, Miss Hargreaves. In Weird Science, the two high school teens created, using a computer programme, a sexy, scantily dressed woman. In Miss Hargreaves, Norman Huntley and his friend, Henry create an ancient, indominable, eccentric elderly lady using just their imagination.

It happens like this: Norman and Henry go on holiday to Lusk, a small village in Ireland. They had a “grand month” in spite of the rain, mostly in the countryside around Lusk. One day they decide to visit Lusk church and Norman feels a reluctance to go inside. Unfortunately, the sexton, a man with a squint and a “grave-digging manner” lets them inside the locked church. As the sexton shows Norman and Henry around the church, both young men experience a sort of dread, and as a way of alleviating the mood, they start making up a story about a fictitious woman named Miss Hargreaves. A lively repartee is exchanged between Norman and Henry as they add colourful details about the eccentric Miss Hargreaves whose hobbies include writing poetry and painting watercolours. The merriment continues even after they leave the church and soon the two young men have created a vivid portrait of Miss Hargreaves, along with her pet parrot named Dr. Pepusch and a Bedlington terrier called Sarah. At the apex of the gush of creative joking, Norman dashes off a letter to the fictitious Miss Hargreaves and invites her to stay at his family home in the town of Cornford. And this is when the trouble begins. …

Norman returns home to his family. Oddly, very oddly as it turns out, Norman’s father, an eccentric bookshop owner, finds a book of poems for sale in his shop, and to Norman’s horror, the poems are the work of Miss Hargreaves. The appearance of the book of poems should be a warning of things to come. Imagine his astonishment when Miss Hargreaves arrives–along with her cockatoo and her Bedlington terrier. She is everything that Norman imagined. On one hand, he’s amazed and proud of his creation, but on the other hand, she’s so demanding that she causes a great deal of trouble in Norman’s life.

A shrill, imperious voice had cried, “Porter! Porter! Porter!” Simultaneously the cockatoo, with a sepulchral growl on a low D, stopped singing. By now everybody else had got out. A porter sprang to a first-class carriage and opened the door. With his assistance, slowly, fussily, there emerged an old lady. She was carrying two stick, an umbrella and a large leather handbag. Following her was a fat waddling Belington terrier, attached to a fanciful purple cord.

With no small difficulty, Norman persuades Miss Hargreaves to take a room at the local inn instead of following him home. At the inn, Miss Hargreaves wreaks havoc, demanding food that is not on the menu and buying up vases she thinks are so ugly, they must be destroyed. Norman tries to tell a few people that he ‘made up’ Miss Hargreaves but no one, apart from his completely dotty father, believes him. Henry leaves Norman in the lurch at crucial moments and Norman’s young lady becomes extremely jealous of Miss Hargreaves. Norman finds that he must be very careful what he says about Miss Hargreaves as the slightest thing he adds to her imaginary bio comes true. Sections of the story have a certain frantic energy, but this is in contrast to other sections which are overly wordy. Ultimately this is a romp which explores the power and danger of imagination.

“Calm,” I said, “be calm, Norman. You’ll have her in a straight jacket in no time if you play your cards properly.”

The Bachelors: Muriel Spark

“Never have to do with a woman … they draw the virtue out of you.”

Muriel Spark’s The Bachelors, a tale of blackmail, fraud and skullduggery, focuses on a handful of thirty-something single men who live in London. London is, according to the novel, “the great city of bachelors,” and as expected, most of the novel’s characters are unmarried men who are connected, in various ways, to a criminal case of fraud against spiritualist/medium, Patrick Seton. Patrick Seton, a member of a spiritualist group, The Wider Infinity and its elitist, secret center, The Inner Spiral is charged for fraud and forgery. Seton is accused of forging a letter, purportedly from his former landlady, Mrs. Freda Flower, “a dumpy, much-powdered woman of middle-age.” The letter included a cheque for 2,000 pounds–the entirety of Mrs. Flower’s life savings. Barrister Martin Bowles is prosecuting Seton, and Martin’s acquaintance, Ronald Bridges, an epileptic who works as an assistant curator at a museum of Graphology, who is also a handwriting expert, is to be called as a witness in the upcoming trial. Other bachelors include art-critic, Walter Prett, Irish journalist Matthew Finch, grammar school master/spiritualist Ewart Thornton, and clairvoyant /male prostitute Mike Garland who is in the blackmail/pornography biz with Father Socket.

While the story centres of a group of bachelors, a few females enter the plot. There’s Ronald’s former ‘perfect’ girlfriend, Hildegarde, one of those awful know-it-alls. Diabetic Alice Dawes is Patrick’s pregnant, naive, girlfriend. She believes Patrick when he tells her that they will marry as soon as his divorce comes through, and she refuses, much to Patrick’s annoyance, to abort their baby. Elsie Forrest, Alice’s friend dislikes and distrusts Patrick, and she becomes embroiled in the forgery case. Elsie has a tendency to blackmail men into sex, and this habit has mixed success in the book. There’s also Marlene Cooper who heads the spiritualist group, and who runs it almost exclusively for her own purposes: after all she has both a husband and boyfriend on ‘the other side,’ and occasionally wonders “how Harry and Carl were making out together in the land of perpetual summer.”

The novel takes us into the world of Spiritualism where Patrick Seton is a much admired medium. While the date draws nearer to Patrick’s trial, immense pressure is exerted upon the impressionable Mrs. Flowers, and Patrick consoles himself with fantasies (as well as a concrete plan) to murder Alice. He doesn’t want to be tied down with a wife and baby, so Alice must go.

And I will release her from this gross body. He looks with justification at the syringe by her bedside, and is perfectly convinced about how things will go in Austria (all being well), since a man has to protect his bread and butter, and Alice has agreed to die, though not in so many words.

The Bachelors is the funniest Muriel Spark novel I’ve read to-date. Authentic vs fake is a theme: for example, while Patrick takes medication he doesn’t need to enhance the showman side of his contact with the other world, Ronald takes the very same medication to control his epilepsy. Most of the characters, spiritualist or otherwise are frauds in one way or another, and most are not what they seem. While deceit controls the action, sex is the currency, so the subject of sex weaves its way through the lives of the characters: the lack of sex, post-coital guilt, onion as a weapon of abstinence, homosexuality, and pornography all play a role here. Great fun. It’s rare for a book to cause me to laugh out loud.

Memento Mori: Muriel Spark (1959)

“How nerve-wracking it is to be getting old, how much better to be old!”

At the heart of Muriel Spark’s wickedly funny novel, Memento Mori, lies a chain of anonymous phone calls in which the speaker says “Remember, you must die.” These anonymous calls set off a series of events as various characters react to the calls with anger, terror and, in some cases, interest. While most of the characters in the novel are connected, the telephone calls bring other characters together, but perhaps the least predictable fallout from the phone calls is the way in which the past comes calling in various ways. So here’s a breakdown of the characters:

Dame Lettie Colston. Unmarried, one of those social do-gooders. Busy bossy everyone about and arranging their lives.

Godfrey Colston, heir to a brewing company. Perennially unfaithful to his wife. “Obsessed by the question of old people and their faculties.”

Charmain Colston, novelist. Dotty. But not as dotty as she appears.

Charmain’s former employee Jean Taylor who lives in a nursing home. She’s mostly glad that she lives there and isn’t subject to the wild emotional challenges of life outside of the home.

Lisa Brooke, deceased, a woman whose death unleashes other plot developments.

Guy Leet, charming, even now in old age and ill health. Charmain’s former lover.

Mrs. Pettigrew. Lisa Brooke’s conniving housekeeper

Alec Warner. A emotional vampire whose obsessive, morbid interest in the health and health reactions to exciting or traumatic news reflects his own fear of morality.

Various residents of the Maud Long Medical Ward

Inspector Mortimer, retired, who investigates the phone calls.

Other minor characters

• 

While chapter one kicks off with an anonymous call, the plot thickens when Dame Lettie, a dreadful bossy woman, persuades her brother, Godfrey to employ Mrs. Pettigrew to ‘take care of’ Charmian. Mrs. Pettigrew was supposed to inherit her employer, Lisa Brooke’s estate, but since that doesn’t work out as planned, Mrs. Pettigrew must move on to pastures new. Dame Lettie, a woman who lacks a particle of empathy, argues that Charmian “needs a bully,” and her desire to see Charmain in thrall to Mrs. Pettigrew is not without malice:

“Mrs. Pettigrew has a constitution like a horse,” said Dame Lettie, casting a horse-dealer’s glance over Mrs. Pettigrew’s upright form. “And it is impossible to get younger women.”

“Has she got all her faculties?“

“Of course. She had poor Lisa right under her thumb.”

“I hardly think Charmain would want to —”

“Charmain needs to be bullied. What Charmain needs is a firm hand. She will simply go to pieces if you don’t keep at her. Charmain needs a firm hand. It’s the only way.”

At the core of the novel, lies mortality. An unfaithful husband find innovative ways of straying, nasty people become nastier, and dottiness is a refuge from the more unpleasant things in life. Charmain, who ponders the limits of marital obligation, Jean, who proves immensely powerful, even from a care home, and Guy, who remains pleasant company in spite of ill health, bad luck and old age, are the nicest characters in the book. Mrs. Pettigrew with her very practiced way of infantilizing the elderly is the nastiest person in the book with Dame Lettie as the runner-up. Mrs. Pettigrew insinuates herself into the good graces of those with power, and coopts others, who don’t want to be seen as dotty, into her crew. What a horrible woman.

Memento Mori: Latin translation: Remember you must/have to die. (I had to look it up.) So it’s no surprise that the themes of death and dying appear here, and while that may seem morbid, how one choses to approach life, how one accepts aging, and how one choses to live life are also themes. Charmain has chosen to approach life in a very particular way–as has Guy Leet, in spite of ill health. At the same time, there’s 87-year-old Godfrey choosing to pursue women–even if these days it means paying for the privilege (in more ways than one) of salivating over the view of a suspender belt. Somehow Muriel Spark’s mordant, black comedy brings the idea of the best way to live one’s life, and how to waste it, in sharp relief.

“Would you like me to read you the obituaries, dear?” Godfrey said, turning the pages to find the place in defiance of his sister.

“Well I would like the war news,” Charmain said.

“The war has been over since nineteen forty-five,” Dame Lettie said. “If indeed it is the last war you are referring to. Perhaps, however, you mean the First World War? The Crimean, perhaps …?”

There are lessons here about death and dying, but there are also lessons for life. The novel argues that people don’t change. Youthful bores become old bores. Pleasant, kind young people become pleasant kind, old people. We don’t change. We distill.

A delightful, darkly comic read.

The Arrangement: Sarah Dunn

“Yeah, but I’m not sure marriage should be like dating,” said Lucy. “Where you’re always looking for someone to hook up with.”

I knew I wanted to read Sarah Dunn’s novel, The Arrangement after reading the blurb: A hilarious and emotionally charged novel about a couple who embark on an open marriage-what could possibly go wrong? What indeed? This is an extremely funny look at a couple, who bored with their lives, make what they think is a mature, controlled decision, but in reality, it’s a decision that leads to chaos, confrontation, and other unexpected results.

Lucy and Owen, married and with a five-year-old autistic son, have traded in their fast-paced New York life and moved to the Beekman burbs. It’s a move that was supposed to bring more ‘quality of life’ but like many young couples, Lucy and Owen are feeling overwhelmed and even, possibly, bored. One evening, married friends confess to Lucy and Owen that they’ve decided to try an open marriage as they’re “both tired of this persistent, […] low-grade dissatisfaction.” At first it seems like an outrageous idea, but after Lucy and Owen discuss it one evening, they find themselves creating ground rules and embarking on a six-month long experiment.

Owen who complains about how his wife is constantly “choring,” slips gleefully into an affair with the free-spirited, sexually adventurous Izzy, a woman with the laugh of a “mental patient,” and while Owen finds himself being dragged into a relationship that’s more demanding than his marriage, he doesn’t for a minute suspect that Lucy is hunting for prospects at local coffee shops.

It was like a whole world of signs and signals had been floating right past her-lingering looks, secret smiles, eyes moving up and down, wineglasses lifted in solidarity, charged conversations in bookstores. It was like an energy field, and some people were aware of it and some people weren’t.

The Arrangement is a very funny look at the mistakes made by a couple who really need time for themselves and each other--not time for other people.  Owen and Lucy’s experiment is set against the backdrop of the affluent Beekman community and the local drama concerning a male elementary school teacher who decides he’s a woman and starts dressing accordingly. One cohort of parents support Mr Lowell’s decision to become a woman and think that the kindergarteners “have an opportunity to watch her as she becomes who she truly is.” Other parents demand Lowell’s removal.  The lively cast of characters include Lucy’s friend, Sunny Bang, who arranges a hook-up for Lucy, Susan Howard, an annoying perfect and PC mother, and George Allen, a crass bombastic billionaire on his umpteenth wife, a ex-cocktail waitress.

Infidelity isn’t a naturally hilarious subject, but Sarah Dunn wickedly inverts the age-old scenario of ‘cheating.’ Owen and Lucy choose to bring disaster and chaos down upon their heads, so the novel is more about the foibles of the affluent who have the time and money to burn on hotel bills and trips to NYC.  Owen and Lucy’s married life is essentially good–but strained by time and familiarity, and stressed by parenting a difficult child.

The Arrangement argues that the emptiness of modern life makes people crazy as they age. Many of the characters here have arrived at middle age with their goals achieved but find only boredom at the end of the rainbow. At one point, a character mentions how all of her female friends are going crazy and how she knows one woman, “perfect Jen,” who spends her free time making out with men she meets in bars:

This semi-normal women is, in fact, like a grenade with the pin pulled out.

I haven’t laughed so hard at a book in a long time, and The Arrangement is going to make my best-of-year list. It’s funny, irreverent, insightful, and Sarah Dunn’s flexible, smooth style perfected matched the content:

And the pictures. Good God, the pictures. After his second time with Izzy, a seemingly unending stream of pornographic selfies popped up on his text screen to the point where Owen’s once rather cozy relationship with his cell phone was forever changed. He’d type in his password and see he had four new texts and then be like Whah? She really didn’t have a good eye, Izzy. She didn’t seem to know the difference between a sexy picture and an alarming one. 

Author Sarah Dunn is a television writer, and someone out there, PLEASE make this into a television series.

Review copy

Expo 58 by Jonathan Coe

“It’s just that you must understand–this knees-up in Brussels, well, it’s a wonderful idea in principle of course, but there are dangers involved.”

Early on in Jonathan Coe’s novel Expo 58, we are told that our main character, married bureaucrat Thomas Foley bears a striking resemblance to both Gary Cooper and Dirk Bogarde. This isn’t the only time in the novel that the resemblances are mentioned, and it’s fairly easy to imagine that Thomas is a romantic hero here, but in reality Thomas isn’t a hero at all; he’s a civil servant swept up into Coe’s comic spy caper, and while Thomas goes off the rails for a period, he’s largely oblivious to the significance of the events taking place right under his nose.

Thirty-two year-old Thomas Foley has worked, since 1944, in the Ministry of Information, now called the COI. He’s a junior copywriter and a great deal of his job is spent “drafting pamphlets on public health and safety, advising pedestrians of the best way to cross the road and cold-sufferers of the best way to avoid spreading germs in public places.” Depending on his mood, some days he thinks he’s done well in life but “other days he found his work tedious and contemptible.”

Little does Thomas suspect that life is all about to change, and not necessarily for the better. Expo 58 is scheduled to be held in Belgium and the COI has “overall responsibility for the content of the British pavilion at Expo 58 and this had immediately led to a frenzy of headscratching and soul-searching around that maddening, elusive topic of ‘Britishness’. What did it mean to be British in 1958? Nobody seemed to know. Britain was steeped in tradition, everybody agreed on that: its traditions, its pageantry, its ceremony were admired and envied all over the world. At the same time, it was mired in the past, scared of innovation, riddled with archaic class distinctions, in thrall to a secretive and untouchable Establishment. Which way were you supposed to look when defining Britishness? Forwards or backwards.”

The COI is faced with a “conundrum” when it comes to organizing the content of the British pavilion. Everyone knows that both the Americans and Soviets “were bound to produce national displays on a massive scale,” so the dilemma centres on the image Britain wants to project.  Amongst a lot of muttering about the “bloody Belgians,” one firm idea emerges: there must be an authentic pub, and so it’s agreed to build a British pub next to the British pavilion. This is where Thomas comes into the picture. Thomas’s father ran a pub, and was married to a Belgian woman. Thomas’s  boss decides that Thomas, with all that ‘experience,’ is the perfect man for the job and that he should oversee the running of the pub at Expo 5–an establishment that will be called the Britannia and which will offer traditional British fare:

“as British as bowler hats and fish and chips, representing the finest hospitality our nation can offer.” Mr Ellis shuddered. “Those poor Belgians. That’s what we’re giving them, is it? Bangers and mash and last week’s pork pie, all washed down with a pint of lukewarm bitter. It’s enough to make you want to emigrate.”

If that sort of ribbing about British traditions appeals to you, then there’s a good chance that you will enjoy this mostly good-humoured book which is laced with just a twinge of bittersweet regret. The book captures beautifully the nuances and attitudes of the time. The 60s have yet to arrive and Britain has emerged from WWII, the emphasis remains on tradition–not change, and meanwhile the menace of rock & roll and the cold war colours all official attitudes.

So Thomas is put in charge of the pub at Expo 58, and his new position means that he will have to stay there for approximately 6 months. Since he has a wife and a young baby, he’s given the option of taking them along, but Thomas decides to leave them at home, and it’s a decision that illustrates Thomas’s desire for freedom and change. Thomas’s personal life becomes mixed up with skullduggery and some rather exotic characters at Expo 58, including  the fascinatingly assertive American actress, Emily, Belgian hostess Annecke, and a member of the Soviet delegation, Mr Chersky–a man who develops a passion for British crisps. Meanwhile, Thomas’s wife Sylvia, resentful that she’s been left alone while her husband is off partying in Belgium, encourages a relationship with a neighbor who’s only too happy to step into Thomas’s place.

The novel’s emphasis, especially initially, is on humour. There’s one scene, back in London, still at the planning stages of Expo 58 when the discussion of a display which covers “A history of the British water closet,” is shot down by COI officials. An argument then rages concerning the fact that  “Britain’s contribution to the disposal of human waste has never been recognized,” and that we all do “number twos,” even the queen. Definite Carry On material here, but most of the humour directed at fussy establishment tastes and what it ‘means’ to be British is much subtler. Then there’s two spy chappies from MI6, Radford & Wayne, who reminded me of Tin Tin’s Thompson & Thompson,  sniffing around Thomas trying to vet whether or not he’s a commie:

“Ah yes. The classics. Nothing like a bit of classical music, is there? I expect you like Tchaikovsky?”

“Of course. Who doesn’t?”

“What about the more modern bods? Stravinsky, say?”

“Oh yes. First rate.”

“Shostakovich?”

“Haven’t heard much.”

“Prokofiev?”

Thomas nodded, without really knowing why. He couldn’t see where any of this was heading. The waitress brought their coffees and they all stirred in their sugar and took their first sips.

“Of course,” said Mr Radford, “a lot of chaps would rather read than listen to music.”

“Curl up with a good book,” agreed Mr Wayne.

“Do much reading?”

“A bit yes. Not as much as I should probably.”

“Read any Dostoevsky? Some people swear by him.”

“What about Tolstoy?”

“I’m rather parochial in my tastes. I like Dickens. I read Wodehouse, for a bit of light relief. Do you mind telling me what this is all about? You seem to be asking me an awful lot of questions about Russian writers and composers.”

But the British aren’t the only ones whose zest for their own culture reveals fusty archaic attitudes and prejudices; the Belgians have the bad taste to build a fake Belgian Congo exhibit for Expo 58 which involves the creation of an entire village and even importing Congo natives to man and ‘authenticate’ the display.  No bets accepted about how this ends up. Since Expo 58 is part spy novel spoof, a sly reference to that ultra smooth spy 007 creeps into a discussion between Thomas, Mr Wayne and Mr Radford.

“Well, Foley, it’s very good of you to come all the way out here to join us,” said Mr Wayne at last.

“I wasn’t aware,” said Thomas, “that I had any choice in the matter.”

“My dear fellow,” said Mr Radford, “whatever can you mean?”

“We thought Wilkins was bringing you out here.”

“He bundled me into a car and pointed a gun at me, yes.”

“A gun?”

At this, they both started to chortle.

“A gun! Dear me!”

“Poor old Wilkins!”

“Really, he is the end.”

“He’s the absolute limit.”

“Lives in a fantasy world, poor fellow.”

“Reads far too many of those books. You know the ones I mean.”

“I know the ones. What’s the author’s name?”

“Fleming.  Have you read them, Foley?”

“No, I can’t say that I have.”

“Having a terrible influence, you know … on the chaps who work in our department.”

“Pure fiction, of course. Gadding around the world …”

“Bumping people off without so much as a by your leave …”

“Sleeping with a different woman every night …”

This detail, it seemed, struck both of them as especially implausible.

“I mean, dash it all, Radford, when was the last time you did that?”

“Bump someone off, you mean?”

“No–sleep with a different woman.”

Expo 58 is a light, gently comic read–the story of an Everyman who steps out of his comfort zone into a dangerous world of spies, assassins and perhaps even a femme fatale. Coe’s novel The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim is a humorous novel which explores the issue of relationships in the age of the socialverse, and Expo 58, with a similar style of humour successfully spoofs British attitudes , ethnocentrism, & the Establishment in the cold war 50s. The quotes give a good sense of the novel’s tone, so if you find yourself smiling at the quotes, you’ll probably enjoy the novel.

Review copy.

Writing is Easy by Gert Loveday

“He would get her to write the kind of novels women loved, about families and children and losing weight and finding themselves. Joanna Trollope for the younger woman.”

One of the strangest questions I remember from my days of ‘higher education’ came from a very confused man who asked: “where do poets go to live?” How does one answer such a question? Should the reply have been the knee-jerk response? : If you have to ask you’ll never be a poet, moron. Or is the true question to be found in why he thought poets had to go anywhere? After all, it’s not as though poetry  (and talent) rubs off through proximity or collective subconscious. But hold that thought…. What about writing workshops?

Gert Loveday’s hilarious novel, Writing is Easy, is set at a writer’s workshop–a workshop conducted by two published authors who occupy opposite ends of the publishing spectrum. On one end, there’s sturdy, bossy Lilian Bracegirdle, a showy, pretentious performance poet with a “couple of impenetrable experimental novels” to her credit, and on the other end is Marcus Goddard, a man who broke into the literary scene with a brilliant first book, and ever since then he’s churned out a series of salacious “unspeakable potboilers.” According to one hostile critic, Marcus’  latest novel Never Turn Back “reads like a hack version of Tess of the D’Urbervilles with a spot of Lawrentian stallion-business thrown in.” Both Lilian and Marcus are haunted by their fabricated pasts. Lilian, whose real name in Lois Hoggett, would really like to be some sort of ethereal creature, but in reality, she’s from “a sturdy farming family in New Zealand,”and she can’t ever seem to shake off the influence of T.S. Eliot. Lilian’s hidden past, however, seems only trivial next to Marcus’ secrets.

Arch-enemies Lilian and Marcus, both frauds in their own way approach the workshop with a separate agenda. Marcus has some nasty secrets from Lilian’s past he intends to amuse himself with, but mostly he just wants to lounge around and booze for 8 days and leave the work to Lilian. So with Lilian and Marcus setting the pace for the 8-day writer’s workshop, a handful of would-be writers pay the big bucks hoping to get advice, have their mostly horrible work critiqued, and with any luck at all, land a hook-up in the publishing world. Lilian and Marcus are both accompanied by their assistants: the long-suffering, stalwart Marjorie (with her “fetching little moustache,“), general dogsbody and companion for Lilian, and the sly, opportunistic Lester who works for Marcus.

But what of the hopeful, would-be writers, those poor sods who scraped up the money for an eight day workshop thinking that they might actually learn something useful? There’s Desma Brooks, a perennial attendee who’s trying to write a family history and  “hadn’t worked out by now that no one would ever, no one could ever, want to read her family saga based in meticulous research into every last packet of biscuits of the shelves of her great grandfather’s grocery store.” Then there’s Rex Random, an accountant who compensates for his hum-drum life by writing a cheesy crime novel, Broads and Booze, and imagining that he’s the next Raymond Chandler.  Also attending is housewife Marilyn Boots, writer of sentimental crap, who has managed to escape her abusive husband for 8 days. Attractive Helen West, protégée of mousy Trader Cheeseman (author of Sicko Psycho and Hangmeat) is also attending the workshop thanks to the grant she’s received, and the final attendee is John Brow, a fitness fanatic who only eats raw vegetables, who’s given himself a week to write his book, and who refuses to sit down as he believes that this is against primal man’s natural state and “blocks the intestines.”

The workshop is held at Gagebrook, an exclusive Australian country resort run by husband and wife team, Andrew and Mandy. Andrew rules the kitchen dreaming up gourmet meals for guests who don’t appreciate his talents, and while Andrew throws a few fits about his kitchen and his cooking, Mandy, Andrew, and worker Janie are the ‘normal’ people who are appalled by the behaviour of the writers and the workshop attendees.

One of the first things Lilian does after gathering the workshop attendees is to establish the hierarchy through her authority and reputation as a published author. Here’s Lilian Bracegirdle giving one of her performances about the “pathos of beginnings” and “the confusion of identities” which seems to be more a precursor to a séance:

The students shifted in their seats and exchanged glances as Lilian, her back to the audience began to make peculiar huffing and hissing noises. Janie stood near the door so she could hear Mandy if she called her. Lilian hurled her body down on the floor. Lying on her back, she closed her eyes and raised her arms at right angles above her head. She let out a long howl, “Aaaaaaahhhhh, oooooohhhhh, aaaaahhhh.” Her voice rose and fell, deafeningly loud, then  a tiny whisper. She kicked her legs. Janie thought she might be pretending to be a baby, but her voice was more like a siren. She went on and on. Janie’s ears were ringing. Lilian’s dress was riding up over her knees showing long pink knickers over the top of her tights. Just when Janie thought she couldn’t bear it any longer Lilian turned over onto her hands and knees, crawled to an armchair and dragged herself to her feet. She stood swaying, her arms held out in front of her like a sleepwalker. What did it mean? It was like a kind of charade. Lilian began to speak very quickly.

“Are you there, are you there, are you there, number please who are you number please are you there no don’t know don’t no don’t.”

She was really getting going now. It was like a steam engine getting started then going faster and faster and all the time Lilian was babbling.

“No oh no are you there no number please who whom who.”

Some words were very loud, Now she was marching up and down. Janie worried she would knock over a table. Helen and Rex had their hands over their mouths. John was looking at his watch, Marilyn had her mouth open in amazement, and Desma was nodding. Janie couldn’t take her eyes off Lilian. She kept on chattering more and more rapidly until it all sounded like one word, “Areyounumberwhononowho?” and her voice sank to a whisper. Then she opened her eyes put her arms by her side and let out an earsplitting shriek.

Apart from a short section post-workshop which follows the lives of the characters, most of the book covers the chaos which ensues at the workshop with Lilian trying to get Marcus to work, Marcus trying to avoid work, John Brow deciding that fat, out-of-shape authors make great guinea pigs for his fitness regime, and the workshop attendees who try their best to actually get their work critiqued. Throw into this mix blackmail, rivalry, really bad writing, and a few attempts at murder, and the result is a hilariously funny book.

As the days continue, tension mounts, behaviour disintegrates, and every evening the group gets together over dinner, there seems to be some sort of rampage; the fondue for example, brings out the very worst in everyone. While the book is consistently very funny (and it’s no easy feat to maintain humour over the course of a book), there are two specific elements to the book that go beyond humour and are psychologically intriguing: Marcus and Lilian are held in a position of respect by the workshop attendees and by their hosts at Gagebrooke. This currency goes a long way, and Lilian and Marcus’ impressive history of publication offer them a layer of protection. So the set-up alone, without a word written, is a segue into the expectations we place on writers, who just because they write well don’t necessarily behave well.  As one of the attendees says: “I know writers like to think of themselves as bohemians,…, but that doesn’t mean they can’t behave decently.” Author vanity, a main target of the book’s humour, is just one of many poor character traits our published authors possess:

Several people opened notebooks and took out pens. Marcus began.

“Lilian tells me you have asked for a session on register today. This is an excellent starting-point. You may well have asked yourself, reading a novel, perhaps, indeed, even one of my own, what it is that gives this work such an authentic voice, such a sense that truth itself is speaking? One becomes oblivious to the fact that there is a writer’s mind behind it. Have you had that experience?”

“Oh yes,” said Desma. “That one of yours, you know the one about the crippled girl who falls in love with the neurosurgeon even though he’s responsible for her being crippled, honestly. I lived every second of that book.” She looked around at the others.

“I love that one, too,” said Marilyn, “and that book by Clough Gryffyd about the nun in Saudi Arabia.”

“I don’t believe I’ve read that,” said Marcus.

Author Gert Loveday isn’t afraid of playing with these characters, and there’s a no-holds-barred approach which approaches farce but yet manages to avoid it as the action at the workshop spirals out of control. Soon there’s “the prospect of an insurrection,” as the characters behave badly with marvelously funny results, but the genius here is while there are some very cruel truths revealed about workshops and their attendees, the author still manages to show generosity to her characters. We don’t completely dislike selfish Lilian or vain, pompous cheating Marcus even though they’re happy to take the money for the workshop while they secretly poke fun at the writing of the attendees. The reason we don’t dislike these two characters is that the author exacts revenge on them both through her plot. These two suffer, and we have a good laugh and a very satisfying read at their expense. I laughed out loud many many times, and while the fondue scene is a serious contender for the funniest part, Lilian reading as ‘inspiration’ I Drag My Way, the true story of how a woman dragged a sled with provisions across the desert for an insane explorer takes a close second place.

But underlying all the fun is the question whether or not writing can be taught, and certainly by the end of the novel all of the characters have come to various conclusions regarding whether or not the workshop was a waste of money.

The way I see it is, you can either write or you can’t.

Author Gert Loveday, in reality is writing team, Australian poet Joan Kerr and her sister, Gabrielle Daly, and Writing is Easy is the first novel they’ve published. Please let there be more….

 

Everything and More by Geoff Nicholson

Another entry in my Year of Geoff Nicholson project, and this time it’s Everything and More–a Nicholson novel I loved for its originality and sheer compressed scope–you’ll see what I mean later. The novel, with a few minor exceptions, is set inside Haden Brothers, a vast, seemingly endless London department store (“including 12 different eateries,“) designed as a replica of Brueghel’s Tower of Babel & built in the 1930s by “maverick visionary” Edward Zander, the architect who mysteriously disappeared once the project was completed.

However, Zander’s building has few of the rhythms, repetitions or classical form of its supposed model. Rather it suggests a series of multiple codings, elements of Russian Constructivism, Italian Renaissance and stuccoed Baroque. It is decked, as though at random, with crenellated parapets, pantile roofs, ogee arches, steel balconies, oriel windows and flying buttresses. Carved into the fabric of the building are angels, putti and mythological beasts. There are gargoyles, caryatids, mosaics, expanses of Moorish tiling and some magnificent stained glass. Zander had envisioned a menagerie on the ninth floor and wanted the whole building to be painted blood red, but he was talked out of these schemes.

 This story is the perfect vehicle for Nicholson’s frequent themes of collection and obsession, for after all, doesn’t shopping encompass both of these neurotic pastimes? And what better place for the compulsive shopper to hang out than Haden Brothers–the 400 department emporium that boasts that it sells “everything and more,” where shopping is an experience rather than a mundane activity.

Enter two eager job seekers: Vita Carlisle and would-be artist Charlie Mayhew. Charlie applies for a job because he’s an unwelcome guest sleeping on the sofa of the only friend who’s still talking to him. Vita has a boarding school & university background along with an impressive resume, and while her determination to work at Haden Brothers seems a little odd, her professionalism and apparent fanaticism about the workings of the sprawling shopping metropolis really can’t be faulted or penetrated. Vita could obviously do a lot better than Haden Brothers, but she insists that she’s in love with the place and working there is her dream. Both Charlie and Vita are employed on the spot by Derek Snell, who’s officially head of personnel and unofficially, the pimp for the reclusive owner of Haden Brothers, Arnold, the last of the line. Arnold lives in the penthouse suite, accessible by a private lift, on the very top of the Haden Brothers building, and he hasn’t stepped into the outside world for years. Derek Snell, a rather sleazy character, has an eye for the sort of women his boss prefers, and since he is, in essence, the pimp for the king of Haden Brothers, he has a position of some power:

Derek Snell was no fashion victim, or at least he had been victimized in about 1975 and had never entirely recovered. He wore a brown Viyella suit with wide lapels and deep turn-ups, a chunky knitted wool tie, a shirt with a flapping collar and a pattern of tiny veteran car motifs. He was a toothy, slim-chinned man, about forty-five with a lot of gingery hair that curled round his head like a tarnished halo.

Vita becomes part of the so-called Flying Squad–a sort of troubleshooter, and here she is in the toy department with “raw, lean, adrenalin-driven, toy buyer,” Carl:

On Vita’s first day in the department he took her aside and told her, ‘We sell a lot of merchandise here on the basis that we’re educating the little fucks, stimulating their imaginations, fostering hand-eye coordination, that kind of crap. The truth is, what we’re struggling to do here is sedate and socialize a generation of would-be Adolf Hitlers.’

Vita looked at him uncertainly but still managed a smile.

‘The thing to remember is this,’ Laughton continued, ‘all children are thugs, fascists and megalomaniacs. There was a time when they wanted scaled-down versions of the real world; toy animals, toy soldiers, dolls, building blocks to make miniature cities. Then they pulled the eyes out of the animals, tore the dolls limb from limb, massacred the soldiers, razed the cities.

‘These days, they play with computer games, and they can play at destroying whole life forms, whole planets and galaxies. They take to it like ducks to water. It all comes perfectly naturally to them. And they genuinely believe that when they grow up they’ll be able to do all this stuff for real. But when they do grow up they discover, with one or two important exceptions, that they don’t get to blow things up at all, and that really hurts them. It’s a discovery nobody ever quite recovers from. I know I haven’t.

‘That’s why toys are so attractive to adults, why they carry so much nostalgia with them, because they remind us of a time when we were power-mad, conscienceless dictators.’

While Vita moves from department to department as part of the elite Flying Squad, poor Charlie becomes a furniture porter. The subliminal messages piped out over the sound system geared to make shoppers and employees alike behave don’t seem to work on the porters who take the example of their subversive leader, Anton, and spend most of their time devising elaborate ways of not working. This means hiding when there’s work to be done, spending hours quibbling over payroll deductions in the accounting office and engaging in “extravagant pilfering.” What’s so interesting is that Vita is involved in the day-to-day activities of ensuring that Haden Brothers runs smoothly, while Charlie becomes snared in the subversive shadow life of Haden Brothers, the bomb threats, the mysterious graffiti that appears periodically on the shop’s windows, the hidden, fully operating miniature railway, and the secret passages down deep in the basement. Only the Head of Security, Ray Chalmers seems to recognize that there are elements undermining the efficient day-to-day operations of the huge department store, and since everyone connected with Haden Brothers seems to lose all sense of proportion, Chalmers declares war on the subversives:

I’m not trying to say that it’s like Vietnam out there, but in a sense it is. It’s a jungle. The enemy’s hard to spot. The terrain is difficult and we don’t always get the backing we need. There are goons. There are traitors and double agents. There are men from our side who’ve abandoned discipline and gone native. At least in Nam they were allowed to use defoliant, napalm, cluster bombing. I wish we could do that at Haden  Brothers. That would shake the buggers up, flush them out so they could be punished with loads of prejudice.

The newest furniture porter seems like a suspicious character to Chalmers. After all, what’s his first name?

Initially Charlie isn’t thrilled with his job, but over time he becomes entranced with the fabulous exotic extravagance of the building as he begins to note “strange faces and African masks carved into the woodwork, wrought iron archways with swastikas and pentagrams, staircase finials that looked like simple spheres but turned out to be intricately carved globes of the world.”

While on the surface, Haden Brothers is a monument to shopping and materialism, there’s a lot of peculiar goings on, and Charlie begins to be aware of just what some of those peculiarities are even as the unfathomable Vita becomes increasingly involved in the surface management.  One of my favourite scenes takes place when a customer lodges a complaint and is summarily whisked off to a seductive paradise hidden away in the secret corners of Haden Brothers. And here, in exotic hypnotic luxury, the half-dazed customer, is grilled:

He wanted to be cooperative  but he was too entranced by the room in which he now found himself. The carp pool was undoubtedly the most imposing and unexpected feature, but then he had not been expecting the Persian tapestries either, not the ornamental fountain, not the parakeets on their perches, not the bejeweled mirrors and tables and fireplace, not the ornately carved golden couches on to one of which he was now being guided. It was impossible to sit on these with any degree of formality and he found himself lying back, reclining like some Roman hero.

Still Life with Volkswagens by Geoff Nicholson

“You don’t think there’s something eye-catching about jack-boots, Nazi uniforms, death’s head insignia?’

Another entry in my Year of Geoff Nicholson, and this time it’s the second volume of the author’s Volkswagen trilogy: Still Life with Volkswagens. This follows Street Sleeper, and there are so many repeat characters with continued history that readers should begin with the first book and then read on. In Street Sleeper, Barry Osgathorpe aka Ishmael, the Zen Road Warrior, bought a battered old VW Beetle, dumped his long-suffering girlfriend, Debby, and took to the road to ‘find himself.’ Along the way he met Fat Les, a VW mechanic, who converted Barry’s junker into Enlightenment, a loaded Beetle that is the envy of those who see this gleaming machine, and together with Enlightenment, Ishmael had many adventures and met the woman of his dreams–even if the feeling wasn’t mutual.

Back to Still Life with Volkswagens which finds Barry (yes, back to plain old Barry) dossing in a caravan in Yorkshire. His short-lived days of adventures are over, and Enlightenment is permanently parked and covered due mainly to Barry’s current obsession about the planet, greenhouse gases and global warming. He’s considering forming a club called the Green Beetles for those committed to never driving their cars:

They may clean and polish them once in a while, even sit in them from time to time with their friends and families. The important thing is; they will never drive them. They will leave their cars parked next to their house or caravan, never start the engines, never pollute mother earth with their deadly fumes.

Debby is still in Barry’s life, and she’d still like to travel a bit but Barry defensively argues that he “never want[s] to go anywhere or do anything.” Problems begin for Barry when Volkswagens mysteriously begin exploding all over England, and banking scion Carlton Bax, the world’s “foremost Volkswagen collector[s]” goes missing. Involved whether he likes it or not, Barry is forced to abandon his inertia. Not only is Barry a prime suspect for both crimes, but the love of his life, Marilyn, now a weather-presenter on television, reappears in Barry’s life and begs for his help. Marilyn suspects that her father, Charles Lederer, recently released from a mental asylum may be responsible  for the war against Volkswagens and the disappearance of her lover, Carlton Bax. (If you’ve read Street Sleeper, you’ll remember both Marilyn and Charles Lederer, and it’ll also make sense to you why Lederer hates Volkswagens).

Since author Geoff Nicholson developed some many great characters in Street Sleeper, it’s wonderful to see them back for the second part of this trilogy. After all, why waste characters by only using them once? So Fat Les reappears–now the proud owner of a “clean and flawless Volkswagen emporium” near Southend. It’s in this building, an “exhilarating piece of Odeon-style seaside deco” called  ‘Fat Volkz Inc,’ that Fat Les runs his very lucrative VW business.  According to humorless Detective Inspector Cheryl Bronte, Fat Les is yet another suspect in the disappearance of Carlton Bax. Also making a re-appearance is Marilyn’s nymphomaniac mum, Mrs. Lederer who gets her “revenge”  on her neglectful husband by offering her body to cab drivers which is a bit difficult when a man she mistakes for a cab driver is driving a custom Beetle.

Add to this crazy list, Phelan, a sicko, cunning neo-Nazi who likes to be whipped (amongst other things) by leather-clad dominatrix Renata Caswell (who also appeared in Street Sleeper). Phelan’s master plan is to organize a gang of yobos or as he describes them: “A band of supermen, roaming this great country of ours in chariots of fire, by which I mean Volkswagen Beetles.”

Naturally Still Life with Volkswagens is full of Nicholson’s brand of dark humour. Here’s Barry having a conversation of sorts with Phelan:

“You’re like me Barry. You look at all these people and what do you see? Do you see your equals? Do you see creatures made in god’s image? I don’t think so Barry. I think you see a lot of useless clutter. Don’t you think a lot of that clutter could be tidied away?”

“I’ve never thought about it,” Barry says.

“Oh, I think you have,” Phelan says insinuatingly. “Haven’t you ever thought to yourself that the world would be a much better place if only there were more people like you in it?”

“I suppose so.”

“I’m here to tell you Barry that there are more people like you in the world than you might think.

Take a drive around the M25 Barry. What traits are displayed by your fellow man? Aggression, selfishness, bad temper, competitiveness, madness brought on by stress. that’s not what the world ought be like, is it?”

“No,” Barry admits.

“When Adolf Hitler conceived of the idea of the autobahn that’s not what he had in mind at all. He saw long straight fast motorways uncluttered by riff raff and deviants.”

“What?” says Barry.

“You’re a good citizen, aren’t you Barry? You’re law-abiding, moral, politically middle of the road, not sexually or socially deviant. You’re male and you’re white.”

“Well, to an extent,” Barry stutters.

“Why deny it Barry? Why be ashamed? You don’t want the world left in the hands of extremists and perverts, do you? Of course you don’t. In your heart of heart you’re just like me, just like us. You know Hitler was right.”

“About motorways?”

In this tale of the battle of ‘good’ vs. the forces of evil, Geoff Nicholson’s humour knows no taboos, so he’s just as ready to poke fun at neo-nazis as he is at any type of extremism–be it perversion, obsession and collectors (all favourite themes for this author), so it should come as no great surprise that while the book includes a fair amount of trivia about Volkswagens, somehow or another, various Volkswagen drivers and collectors are mentioned: Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, Hitler and even the Fabulous Elvis also find their way into these pages. And for anyone who plans to scream in outrage at the very idea, let me say that Nicholson’s black humour diminishes Manson and Hitler into the pathetic, sick human beings they were, empowered by people misguided enough to sign on for their madness (and no I’m not comparing Manson to Hitler. They just both happen to appear in the book). Who knew so many weirdos were attracted to Volkswagens, and what does that say about me? Oh never mind.

Not only does the author show some of the weirder aspects of the Volkswagen enthusiasts, but by interjecting fact into his fiction (there’s even a bit of the author’s own life in these pages), somehow the craziness blends, and neo-Nazis of the Apocalypse and Volkswagens exploding nationwide just don’t seem that far-fetched:

Manson starts to live out more of his fantasies. He sets up a production line behind the Spahn Ranch, which he calls the Devil’s Dune Buggy Shop. Volkswagens are stolen from town, taken to the ranch, stripped down, converted into vehicles of the Apocalypse. Some of them can be bartered for drugs and weapons, and he hopes they’ll be useful in some of his other fantasies, like kidnapping busloads of schoolgirls, raiding a military arsenal, murdering a few rich pigs.

Pride of the fleet is Manson’s own command vehicle. It is one Hell of a dune buggy. It looks both futuristic and ancient. There is a ‘magic sword’ sheathed in the steering column. locks of human hair tied around the roll bar, a sleeping platform, armour plate, a machine gun mounting, a fur canopy. It has been recently resprayed, then desert sand thrown onto the paint while still wet, to form a kind of camouflage.

When the whole shooting match is over, this Command Vehicle will be displayed at a car show in Pomona, California, and get a lot of admiring attention from the custom Volkswagen fraternity.

Charles Manson Family Dune buggy graveyard Spahn Ranch Dec. 27, 2011 Santa Susana Pass Road

The Errol Flynn Novel by Geoff Nicholson

“We both deserved more, something more difficult, more special. How much do you know about sadomasochism?”

Another entry in my Year of Geoff Nicholson, and if you didn’t know already, it’s Geoff’s 60th birthday next month. This read-a-thon is a way for me to say ‘thanks’ to one of my favourite authors who’s given me a lot of laughs over the last few years. Always grateful to authors who make me laugh and if they throw a little obsession and perversion into the mix, well so much the better, right?

This time, I’m writing about The Errol Flynn Novel, a book I first read a few years ago and a book that was rather difficult to track down at the time. I loved it and immediately recommended it to several people who didn’t like it at all. So take that as a warning for what it’s worth. One of the complaints I read about the book is that it isn’t really about Errol Flynn. Actually, while that isn’t strictly true, I can see why this book, in common with other Nicholson novels didn’t get the right audience. Other readers appear to be offended by what is written about Errol Flynn. Well you can’t please all the people, etc., so suffice to know that I thoroughly enjoyed this strange tale.

So what’s it about?

The story concerns a failed actor named Jake who’s all but given up the idea of ever making the big time. This explains why he’s working in a photocopying shop when the story opens. Jake admits that he “wanted excitement, drama, money, love” so this is one of those ‘be-careful-what-you-wish-for’ scenarios. By the novel’s conclusion, Jake has far more excitement than he wants, lots of drama and some strange sexual encounters. Shortly after the novel begins, Sacha, an attractive girl from Jake’s drama school days walks into the shop. She’s making a career out of edgy art films, and Jake is initially not thrilled to see her as his loser life is in stark contrast to her acting career which seems to be a series of good moves. Jake is then rather surprised by Sacha’s offer to introduce Jake to Dan Ryan, an American who’s making a film about the life of Errol Flynn. If something sounds too good to be true, it usually is, and if Jake weren’t so desperate to have that elusive acting career, he’d probably have smelled a rat at this very first meeting:

“Look,” Ryan continued, “this is not going to be an expensive movie. we’re only talking about a few million dollars or so. Okay, that means we won’t be hiring Robert Redford, but it also means we can be free in a way Hollywood never dreamed of. We can be outrageous. We have the freedom to be weird. It’s important that you know what kind of director I am, Jake. I’m not a David Lean. I’m sure as hell no Dickie Attenborough. I’m more Andy Warhol meets David Lynch meets Peter Greenaway. Is that okay by you?”

“That’s fine by me,” I said.

” And look, in the end it may not be a movie about Errol Flynn at all, not the Errol Flynn who actually lived. It may be about ontology and iconography, and sensuality, and fame, and myth, and, of course, death. And you know what it’s going to be called? The Errol Flynn Movie.”

I don’t know about you, but I’d be a bit nervous about that speech–a speech which rather uncannily is a mirror image of the novel itself. Jake certainly is a little uncomfortable with Ryan, but he’s also never been in a film before. Perhaps all directors are nuts. While his concerns are mostly silenced by a large cheque, Jake does have the wit, however, to ask to see the script. There isn’t one. Well, at least not yet, but Ryan’s harried, slightly neurotic wife, Tina is desperately trying to produce one. To Jake’s astonishment, he lands the leading role, and armed with Errol Flynn’s biography, film stills, videos, recording and a gossip mag, he begins to ‘discover’ the man he’s supposed to portray in the film.

Naturally since this is a Geoff Nicholson novel, things go downhill from here. Ryan not only wants to make a film about Errol Flynn’s life, but he seems determined to live parts of it. As the film is made, things spiral increasingly out of control until… well … until they devolve completely.

One of the frequent themes in Nicholson’s novel is obsession, so in The Errol Flynn Novel, we see a multi-layered obsession with Errol Flynn. Director Dan Ryan is so obsessed with the exploits of this iconic star  whose life is wrapped in myth, scandal and rumour, and Ryan wants to make the ultimate film, an ‘interpretation ‘of Flynn’s life, yet where does fact and fiction end? And where are the demarcations of reality and fiction in Ryan’s head? Can Ryan be so gregarious, such a larger than life personality that his actions mask  … insanity?

Throughout the making of the film, Jake of course must act and dress like Errol Flynn, so this involves no small number of costumes and feats of daring (which are very funny if you’re not Jake). Jake has researched his subject, and so the novel is full of Errol Flynn trivia as well as Jake’s inevitable comparisons with his own pathetic life.

No don’t get me wrong. I’m not some sort of sexual inadequate. I have had my fair share of sexual partners, although you could debate whether or not it was a fair share. I am not one of those men who feels he has to make a lot of conquests, and I certainly don’t see why you would want to have sex with someone who didn’t want to have sex with you, and I’m definitely liberal enough to believe that women are entitled to say no and be believed. On the other hand I do wish that rather fewer women had felt free to say no to me over the years than actually have.

Nicholson excels in creating these peculiar situations that spin out-of-control and morph into total whackiness, and in this humorous novel, a film that’s supposed to be a bio-pic of Errol Flynn becomes a formless homage of the very worst aspects of Flynn’s life and a vehicle for Ryan’s obsession. Insane scene after insane scene is shot by a devoted cast while Tina, Ryan’s harried wife attempts to churn out a script. Eventually Jake sniffs that there’s something fishy afoot, but he has no idea just what he’s got himself into….

Miss Peabody’s Inheritance by Elizabeth Jolley

Last year when I posted a list of The Best of 2011, Gummie from Whispering Gums mentioned that she hoped I’d have an Australian category included in the Best of 2012. This seemed a good idea, so I’ve made a point to read a few Aussie books this year. While Tirra Lirra by the River is still the best Australian novel I’ve read this year, a serious challenge to that title appeared as I read and laughed at Elizabeth Jolley’s novel, Miss Peabody’s Inheritance. I’ve read a couple of Jolley’s novels, and I considered them ok–nothing more, nothing less. Before Miss Peabody’s Inheritance, I certainly wouldn’t have considered myself a fan, but that all changed with this extremely funny, subversive novel that’s really a novel within a novel for Miss Peabody’s Inheritance is a marvellous example of metafiction.

So here’s the premise:

Miss Dorothy Peabody is a lonely middle-aged spinster who works an office job in London and scurries home every night to take care of her demanding, bedridden mother who has the uncanny ability to know whether or not the downstairs furniture has been dusted. Nothing much ever happens in Miss Peabody’s dreary life, and a daring act for Miss Peabody is to get into the lift and squeeze between the males with “Je Reviens of Worth Paris dabbed on her wrists and behind her ears.” Miss Peabody has a secret yen for romance, and as a people watcher she notes the lurid office affair between the married Mr Bains and Miss Truscott, embellishing the affair with her imagination. There’s only one bright element to Miss Peabody’s life, and that is her amazing correspondence with the Australian  novelist, Diana Hopewell.

After reading Diana’s novel, Angels on Horseback, Miss Peabody writes a fan letter, and to her astonishment, Diana replies. Soon a lively correspondence begins between the two women. Miss Peabody sends details of her life, work and her dreams, and Diana writes about her horses and her beautiful ranch in Australia. Diana is also writing a new novel, and she includes the latest installments for Miss Peabody, and through the correspondence, Miss Peabody is drawn into Diana’s story of Pine Heights, an exclusive boarding school for girls….

In Diana’s installments, she introduces the world Pine Heights–a boarding school which is managed on a tight budget by the idiosyncratic headmistress, stout, middle-aged Miss Thorne (picture an Aussie Miss Fritton from St Trinian’s). Miss Thorne, also known as Prickles, is a strange blend of conformity and radicalism. A proponent of an annual school bra-burning ceremony, she has little time for men and every year she enjoys an annual holiday in Europe with her current companion, the nervous, clingy Miss Edgely, and Miss Thorne’s long-term friend Miss Snowdon, a matron of Queen’s Hospital.

Both Miss Snowdon and Miss Thorne have the same kind of figure; a portliness brought on by years of responsibility, plenty of money, comfortable accommodation and good meals. Both women have the education, the background and the capabilities required for their positions. neither of them care too deeply for other human beings and they are not dangerously touched or moved by the human predicament.

Miss Edgely shares some of the qualities but, by contrast, is small. She has no taste and far less money.

Miss Peabody receives, via her correspondence with Diana, installments of the novel, so the delightfully funny Miss Peabody’s Inheritance goes back and forth between Miss Peabody’s personal life (which grows increasingly out of control) and Miss Thorne’s fictional trip to Europe.  In these installments, Miss Thorne, Miss Snowdon and Miss Edgeley make their annual Mecca to “the wine houses at Grinzing,” but this time, Miss Thorne elects to take schoolgirl Gwendaline (Gwenda) Manners along. Gwenda’s widower father recently re-married a young Brazilian woman, and after bouncing a cheque for Gwenda’s tuition and board, he more or less disappeared. Miss Thorne argues that a trip to Europe is just what Gwenda needs and that it will give her “a little finishing,” but is Miss Thorne really motivated by altruism or lust? Miss Edgely “all but smashed the place up” in a jealous rage at Gwenda’s inclusion in their annual holiday, and as the trip continues via installments to Miss Peabody, a disaster unfolds with unexpected consequences.

Over the course of the holiday, we see how the formidable Miss Thorne organises her relationships so that she’s always in charge, always has the upper hand and always gets what she wants. Poor boring Miss Edgely:

Somewhere between Vienna and Paris Miss Edgely gets left behind in a station lavatory, the novelist’s letter starts straight in without any enquiries or remarks of a personal nature.

“D’you think I’ve got time?” Miss Edgely asks.

“Oh, rather! Edge of course you have, but don’t be all day.” Miss Thorne notices that the guards are slamming the doors of the Express. All around them are the noises of departure. She knows Miss Edgeley has not really time. Whistles blow and flags wave.

As Miss Peabody continues to receive letters from Diana which include fragments of the adventures of Miss Thorne, she begins to live for the arrival of the next letter, and as she burrows deep in the lives of Diana’s fictional characters, Miss Peabody begins to lose her grip on reality.

Miss Peabody’s evenings had become another world. A world of magic and enchantment. She lived for the evenings and for the time spent with the novelist’s letters and the composing of her own replies.

All the different things her mother asked for hardly mattered. The petulant voice calling down the narrow stairs could not remove the anticipation of her happiness.

Miss Peabody’s correspondence with Diana serves to broaden her horizons and it also brings several titillating issues to the fore. For example, partly inspired by Miss Snowdon’s paper, The Forgotten Placenta, Miss Thorne hopes to organise a lecture at the school for the edification of the “gels” as she calls them: Chasing the Orgasm: How When and Where. This makes rather shocking reading for the very sheltered Miss Peabody, and the correspondence between Diana and Miss Peabody ultimately has startling results.

Often with novels that have a clear division (in this case the division is between the life of Miss Peabody and the letters from Diana), there is a range of quality, and one strain becomes stronger than another. Not so with Miss Peabody’s Inheritance. In fact the two strands come together and mesh extraordinarily well. Miss Peabody’s Inheritance, is of course about loneliness, but it’s also about how little we human beings need to jettison our imaginations beyond our lowly, and often restrictive conditions.

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