Vinegar Girl

by Anne Tyler

I approached this book with mixed feelings.  On the one hand, I had already mentally added it to my TBR (to be read) list, so when I spotted a copy on my friend Pat’s book shelf I asked her if she would kindly lend it to me.  On the other hand, before I got round to reading it, I had listened a TED interview by Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love in which she speaks about her ideas of creativity, and the notion that creative ideas ‘float around’ (my words) waiting to reach for the person who can give them life.  This concept flies in the face of the Hogarth Shakespeare project, where established authors take a Shakespeare story and put their own spin on it.  However, Shakespeare himself reused stories rather than inventing everything from his own imagination.  His creativity lay in giving the stories and their characters life and meaning.  I have read several others in this series, and the only one – so far – that really worked for me was Margaret Atwood’s Hag-seed.  But then, Atwood can write just about anything and I will greedily devour it.

In Anne Tyler’s book, Kate is “vinegar girl” – labelled thus by Pyotr, a Russian colleague of her scientist father.  Kate’s father conceives a scheme to keep Pyotr in the US by having him marry Kate.  Kate is understandably resistant to this idea, although she does eventually warm to Pyotr, and comes to see marriage as an escape from the household which she runs for the benefit of her controlling, ungrateful father and her wayward teenage sister Bunny.

The story is barely believable (but then, is Shakespeare’s story any more so?).  But, as we expect from Tyler’s novels, there is a wealth of carefully observed and accurately presented domestic detail, and a lot of humour.  All the Americans except Kate pronounce Pyotr’s name as ‘Pyoder’, and don’t take the trouble to get it right – or maybe they don’t even notice.  Aunt Thelma is concerned to put on a good wedding party for the couple, but seems oblivious to Kate’s predicament and never asks her whether this is something she actually wants.  Neighbours, colleagues, Pyotr’s landlady and companion – no one seems willing or able to understand what Kate is actually facing.  She is a feisty young woman, and perhaps they all feel she is capable of looking after herself.  Do we all make such assumptions about our fellow humans?  I fear so.  (I sometimes feel like shouting the words of the Robbie Williams song Strong (“You think that I’m strong/ You’re wrong”.)

So, my verdict is: a pleasant enough read, with real characters that excite interest.  I would love to know what happened in Pyotr and Kate’s later life.  The last chapter gives us a brief glimpse.  I don’t think this is one of Tyler’s best – and I have only read three others of her novels so far – but perhaps this is because the creative spark bypasses those who are writing to order within the constraints of a storyline.

 

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Postscript:  though I can’t say I know the Shakespeare original well, I have seen a production of it on the stage.  it was in Stratford in about 1995, with Josie Lawrence as Kate in a production set around 1960.  Hugely enjoyable.  She is such a great talent, sadly under-appreciated (or so it seems to me).

The Fear Index

by Robert Harris

I’ve yet to read a Robert Harris novel that I didn’t enjoy.  This is a bit of a departure from the historical framework of many of this author’s novels (Conclave is another).  The setting is Geneva, around the time of the troubles in the financial markets in 2008.  The main characters are Alexander Hoffmann, an American hedge fund manager, his British artist wife, Gabrielle, and Alex’s business partner Hugo Quarry, also British.  Alex is a brilliant physicist and a somewhat stereotypical nerd, responsible for developing the algorithms that make the business a success.  Hugo manages the outward face of the company, schmoozing the big investors.

The story starts with Alex surprising an intruder at his multi-million-dollar home in the city.  There follows a ‘whodunnit’ where the reader is never sure as to Alex’s state of mind.  We learn that he has had a breakdown a few years earlier.  There appear to be tensions in his relationship with his wife.  Can he really trust Hugo?  (Gabrielle thinks not.)  The action is centred on Geneva and takes place in the course of barely more than 24 hours – and there were reminders for me of Ian McEwan’s Saturday.

The intruder is eventually identified, but this incident, frightening though it is (and its sequel) turns out not to be the pivotal point of the story.  The unseen, unknown ‘character’ who is really in control appears to be the algorithm itself.

Writing this as we enter uncharted territory and serious lifestyle impacts from the COVID-19 disease, I find myself reflecting on the interconnectedness of the world’s systems, and the catastrophic outcomes when they go wrong.  This novel highlights all of these concerns in a dramatic way.

Brave New World

by Aldous Huxley

This was a book group choice (at a meeting that I missed).  A member of the group puts forward three or four books, and the rest of the group distributes their three or four votes among the books offered.  It is a system that can be manipulated, e.g. by talking down two of the three books when you present them, or by presenting a book that is so long no one will ever vote for it (our group having a decided preference for shorter books, which some feel gives them more time to read the books that really interest them). Whilst you may argue “why belong to a book group, then?” we are all fairly conscientious about reading the books once chosen.  Our meetings – six-weekly, in the evening – are great social occasions, and we also meet at least once a year for a meal out, sometimes for a country walk, and our December meeting is a lovely Christmas party with a nod to literature by way of shared quotations, a literary game or quiz.  Did I mention that the group consists mainly of male-female couples? with a handful of women whose partners don’t join the book chats but join in for the social events.

All this to introduce the book for our next meeting: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.  Short, mid-century (a period we have been exploring with a few other titles[1]), well-known.  The first shock, when I opened my library copy and started to read, was that I couldn’t remember having read this book before.  Ever.  And yet I am quite sure that I read it thirty or so years ago, when I was trying to ‘catch up’ on classic novels I felt I ought to have read.

I made a start and would have finished the book quickly enough, but it had to go back to the library and I ordered another copy from Awesome Books, which arrived while I was away from home.  Both rather nice, clean, recent editions.  But I am distracting myself from writing about what I thought about the book itself.  Which was, actually, rather a disappointment.

From the perspective of almost ninety years distance, it would be easy to be dismissive of some of the concepts of future technologies.  Television features, as does the telephone, but the huge advances in communication technology that have been seen in the past fifty years were beyond the imagination of the author.  On the other hand, people flit about in helicopters at incredible speed. Which begs the question of how Ford has become the new God, when all the while the motor car has been displaced.

Clearly Huxley’s thrust with the Fordian ‘religion’ is not merely to make a statement about organised religion itself.  The dystopian future imagined by Huxley is one in which ‘civilisation’ means conformity, an absence of emotion (except in controlled, managed doses), sexual abundance within prescribed bounds (carefully managed contraception practised by those who are not ‘freemartins’ – sterilised individuals) and an abhorrence of any behaviour that deviates from carefully prescribed norms.  Human beings are raised and controlled on a production-line system, and the Alpha to Epsilon castes, into which they are forced by their breeding, each have defined roles, expectations and constraints.

The main characters are Bernard Marx, a misfit who is regarded with suspicion by his fellow Alphas, Lenina Crowne, a ‘pneumatic’ (buxom) girl who temporarily attaches herself to Bernard despite her misgivings about him, and John Savage, whose ‘civilised’ father abandoned his pregnant mother on a visit to a savage reservation, and who has consequently grown up without the benefits of civilisation and is very sceptical of it when brought back from the reservation as an exhibit.

The prospect of a society so controlled, lacking familial relationships, ageing, sexual restraint or emotion, is very chilling indeed.  Yet somehow I could not relate this dystopian vision to anything remotely likely.  The character of Lenina lacks depth. Marx, on the other hand, seems true to type – a conformist at heart even though he questions his environment.  In the end he is shown up as the coward he really is.

Sorry Huxley.  5/10 is the most I can give this book.

 

[1] Mid (20th) century books that my book group has explored: The Jacaranda Tree, The Towers of Trebizond, Ginger You’re Barmy, The Siege of Krishnapur, Travels with my Aunt

plus some I have sought out for myself:

The Ballad of Peckham Rye, Before Lunch, The Abbess of Crewe, Cheerfulness breaks in, Troubles, Brighton Rock, The Tailor of Panama, The Loved One, The Rector’s Daughter, Decline and Fall, Le Grand Meaulnes, Hangover Square, Testament of Youth, Mrs Dalloway