This is my review of The Violins of Saint-Jacques: A Tale of the Antilles by Patrick Leigh Fermor.

In this short novel, written in a continuous chapter-free flow, an elderly artist name Berthe recounts to the narrator the dramatic climax of her time spent fifty years previously on the Caribbean island of Saint-Jacques, ruled as a benevolent dictatorship by the aristocratic expatriate French Count, by whom she was employed as a governess but came to enjoy the status of a respected virtual member of the family, his “confidant and counsellor”. It took me a while to grasp that the island is outlined so sketchily on the map provided, because it is imaginary. This enabled me to overlook some of the worrying geographical inconsistencies (for a travel writer) of having lush forest grow so close to the active volcano forming the core of the island.

Although many devotees of the travel writer Patrick Leigh-Fermor may be delighted by the only novel he ever produced in a prolific writing career, I abandoned it mid-way and had to force myself to finish it. I concede that the second half is better, since it contains more dramatic action, when all the “hazards and sorrows ahead ” begin to crack the surface of the idyllic bubble of exotic privilege which the author has inflated with his literary flourishes at full spate in the first half, largely devoted to the preparations and conduct of a grand Shrove Tuesday ball, no expenses spared.

I understand why some readers revel in Leigh-Fermor’s Rococo prose, which I admit once aroused my curiosity to visit what proved to be the remarkable Austrian monastery of Melk. However, in this context, the verbosity is just too much to take. In the course of a lengthy description of the Count’s background, Leigh-Fermor turns to the memorial slabs of his dead ancestors, the Serindans: “The orgulous record of their gestures…..their impavid patience in adversity…..the splendour of their munificence and their pious ends was incised with a swirling seventeenth-century duplication of long S’s and a cumulative nexus of dog-Latin superlatives which hissed from the shattered slabs like a basketful of snakes”. The “Serindan cognizance” crops up again: “ a shield bearing three greyhounds passant on a bend on a field of cross-crosslets within a tressure flory-counter-flory”. I found myself irritated by the author’s continual flaunting of his erudition and addiction to flamboyant verbal excess, rather than sincerely seeking to create three-dimensional complex characters for whom one might feel real empathy.

The frequent inclusion of Latin tags, and dialogues in French, often with a Creole patois, plus an imitation of the Count’s weak “r”s which the local people have innocently copied, often seem both pretentious and irritating if one cannot understand them. I may be underestimating his intention to write tongue-in-cheek as in the passage about ancient tree trunks, each “half following the spiral convolutions of the other like dancing partners in a waltzing forest; the rising moon entangled overhead in the silver and lanceolate leaves, had frozen these gyrations into immobility.” – A “highly literary simile" which he attributes to Berthe. Perhaps I should excuse the dated character of a book written more than sixty years ago about a period now more than a century past. Yet, in his creation of a dawn of twentieth century period when privileged people still lived complacently in the conspicuous consumption of untrammelled luxury served with unquestioning loyalty by contented slaves, I have the uneasy impression that Leigh Fermor does not question the morality of all this – it reads like a lost world for which he feels a sentimental nostalgia. An extreme example of this is the jovial acceptance of the Count’s practice of “droit de jambage”, a Leigh-Fermor conceit for “droit de seigneur”.

Perhaps, I am taking it too seriously, and should simply laugh at a guest dressed as a swordfish, and a heroine in flight falling over an armadillo.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

This is my review of Golden Hill by Francis Spufford.

In the parochial little British colony of mid-eighteenth century New York, no one knows what to make of the handsome young new arrival from London, Mr Richard Smith. Is he a provocative conman, or a well-intentioned blunderer? Should the wily merchant Lovell accept his bill of exchange demanding the vast and ruinous sum of a thousand pounds? When the gossip grapevine spreads the word of Smith’s wealth, everyone wants to curry his favour, but a twist of misfortune can quickly set the whole community against him

Francis Spufford has used his research skills as an established writer of non-fiction to recreate in his first novel the minute and vivid detail of a past age which seems to ring true even if it is fact an artful illusion. This is a modern take on a Henry Fielding, Tom Jones kind of fiction, a succession of quirky events, with a sometimes intrusive narrator, but free from the sententious, long-winded moralising of the classics. The author has even taken the bold risk of adopting an eighteenth century turn of phrase, and appears to carry it off. Although some may find the style somewhat contrived and overblown, I was continually impressed by his skill in moulding words into distinctive, original images and thoughts. Often funny, entertaining yet farcical, the narrative keeps returning to the alternating spark and pathos of Smith’s encounters with the sharp-tongued, unpredictable Tabitha Lovell, the bird in a cage of her own making. He is drawn to her fatefully, despite knowing that “there is something very wrong with her”.

He made me realise how the lack of coins in New York obliged people to trade with a bewildering variety of coins of arbitrary value “ a Morisco piece we can’t read, but it weighs in at fourteen pennyweight, sterling, so we’ll call it two-and-six”. He can write a whole page on the simple act of walking in near darkness through a hall and up a staircase: “picture frames set faint rumours of gold around rectangles of darkness or curious glitters too shadowed to make out, as if Lovell had somehow collected, and drowned, a stairwell’s worth of distant constellations”. And so the narrative rattles on through the twists and turns of pursuits of a thief, sinister bonfire celebrations, melodramatic escapes across roof-tops, imprisonment, amateur dramatics, and duelling in the snow.

Francis Spufford could make paint drying sound interesting, as when Smith describes a boat trip up the Hudson River through a fog which shifts from “coagulated grey curtains…. to mere streamers and tatters….. while little cats’-paws of breeze come wrinkling and dabbing…..scuffing the water… from silver to pewter” or observes the winter ice forming on the East River, “into whose depths you could look and see swirls of grey brine and glassy freshwater fused together as still and rigid as the heart of a child’s marble.

Beneath the flippant, tongue-in-cheek portrayal of a varied cast of well-drawn characters with hints of their failings and secrets, run the darker currents of the serious rivalry between the Governor and smoothly menacing, power-hungry Judge De Launcey, the crude and corrupt system of justice, and the contemptuous exploitation of the slaves on whom the prosperity of the colony is based. There is the lurking knowledge that even a happy ending will be short-lived, since the colony is shortly to be blasted apart by the War of Independence with Great Britain.

On finishing this book I was left with a sense of disappointment, partly because the verbal pyrotechnics of this well-plotted page-turner made other novels seem bland. It was also due to my finding the denouement revealing Smith’s much-hinted at but long-kept secret something of an under-developed anti-climax, and the final unsettling twist too clever by half. Yet I did not mind that the ending is inconclusive. In general, for sheer originality and the quality of the writing, this book would make a deserving winner of the Man Booker Prize.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars

This is my review of The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry.

This imaginative yarn set in the 1890s revolves around Cora Seaborne, the unconventional young widow who acknowledges her sense of relief over the death of a sadistic husband. Within days of his demise, she has left the bustle of London with its sharp social divisions for the stark beauty of the Essex coast, often obscured by shifting mists, accompanied by Martha, the competent nanny who never left and son Francis, who would nowadays be considered autistic. With his inability to show the normal affection of a child, and his obsession with collecting objects, Francis is a continual source of puzzled concern, but Cora obtains emotional support from Martha, who manages to combine this with her commitment to persuading wealthy men like her admirer Spencer to invest in the replacement of the London slums with decent housing for workers.

It being the 1890s, Cora is thought to have a “masculine mind”. Although a wealthy woman with the means to dress fashionably, she often tramps the country dressed like a bag lady, in a man’s tweed coat with grimy fingernails. Apart from being practical gear for a geologist, perhaps this is a sub-conscious desire to conceal her femininity, having been so abused by her husband. It is hard to believe that such an independent-minded woman would have submitted to this, but perhaps she was trapped by her initial youth and the social attitudes of the day.

Absorbed in her fashionable pursuit of fossils, Cora is intrigued by the “Essex Serpent”, a creature of local folklore who is thought to have made a recent return to prey on the the inhabitants of Aldwinter, terrifying them in the process. Cora harbours dreams of making her name as a female geologist through the discovery of some giant ichthyosaurus. Frustrated by his parishioners’ superstition, local vicar William Ransome is driven to hac away the carving of a sea serpent which adorns the arm of a church pew. Although holding diametrically opposed views on religion, William and Cora are drawn to each other by a powerful meeting of questioning minds, the joy of conversing and bouncing ideas off each other. But can such a friendship endure in 1890s England, when does friendship become love, and what is to be done since William Ransome already has a beautiful, sensitive wife whom neither William nor Cora could bear to hurt – although she is conveniently frail and consumptive, so perhaps they can have their cake and eat it if their love can survive all the interim setbacks?

At first, I found the characters somewhat unconvincing, such as the brilliant, eccentric surgeon Luke Garrett, and his wealthy friend Spencer. Too often both dialogues and descriptions seem artificial, clunky contrivances for informing the reader about the burning social issues of the day. Yet, the descriptions of the Essex countryside and shoreline, together with the unsettling suspected presence of the serpent, are well-written and evocative, and once William Ransome is established alongside Cora to provide the two most fully developed central characters, I found myself more fully engaged in the story. Sarah Perry is also good at writing about children.

Overall, it is a modern writer’s take on the late Victorian world a generation after the period of Dickens and Wilkie Collins. Written somewhat in their vein, it avoids cloying sentimentality, yet is over-long and repetitious in places, and soft-centred at its core, although these are all features of the writing of this period.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

 

This is my review of All We Shall Know by Donal Ryan.

With a masters in journalism, a frustrated would-be writer, her prose searing and insightful in print, but foul-mouthed in her speech, self-absorbed, quick to fly off the handle, swinging between extreme attachments and violent dislikes, unstable to the point of being a little mad, the inaptly named Melody is difficult to like. Donal Ryan contrives to hook us onto this sad, often violent tale, by the power of his quicksilver flow of words, the original, striking descriptions and wry Irish turn of phrase which makes one wonder how such articulate people can so often fail to avert trouble by sheer verbal skill alone.

We know from the first paragraph that Melody has got herself pregnant by seventeen-year-old Martin Toppy, a pupil almost half her age, the handsome, illiterate son of a famous Irish Traveller. Although not prepared to risk telling her husband Pat the truth about the baby’s parentage, it is clear that she expects the pregnancy to bring to an end what has evidently been a tempestuous marriage, with Melody’s unpredictable, unreasonable behaviour the root of the problem . As Melody reveals her past, layer by layer, it becomes ever more apparent that her ability to relate positively to others has been blighted by a profound sense of guilt over her treatment years before of her former best schoolmate, Breedie Flynn. Melody's current striking up of an almost obsessive friendship with the young Traveller Mary Crothery becomes an attempt to atone for the past actions which haunt her. Even in this, she may be accused of a degree of manipulative control-freakery.

Judging by this and Donal Ryan’s first novel, “The Spinning Heart” which I found superior perhaps because less intensely bleak as regards the unrelenting piling up of misfortunes, the author’s central theme is the interplay of dysfunctional families and neighbours in close-knit, claustrophobic small-town Irish communities, riddled with Catholic guilt, struggling to adjust to external pressures for change.

If I had not known to the contrary, I would have said this novel was the work of a woman, as the chapters chart the course of Melody’s pregnancy, week by week. Yet I am not sure a woman would be likely to take with such apparent ease the course of action she takes at the end of the novel, by way of expiating past sin.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

This is my review of Azazeel by Youssef Ziedan.

It is interesting to be reminded that the Middle East was once briefly Christian, and as unstable and riven by violent dissension as it is now.

In the ruins of a monastery near Aleppo, archaeologists unearth a tightly sealed wooden book, containing parchment manuscripts, the memoirs of a fifth century Egyptian-born monk and self-taught physician called Hypa, whose wanderings took him to Alexandria, Jerusalem and Antioch.

A thoughtful and observant man, his avid reading, including of “forbidden books” has stimulated his questioning mind. In a period preceding the rise of Islam, he sees Christians behaving with a savage bigotry to rival a modern-day IS fighter: their brutal murder of his father, for quietly following his pagan beliefs, or of the gifted female mathematician Hypatia (from whom he has taken his adopted name), denounced for heresy by the vicious Bishop Cyril of Alexandria. On a personal level, he wrestles with the overwhelming desire to love the beautiful Martha, which is incompatible with his chosen life as monk. On a larger scale, there is the use of abstruse differences in doctrine as a weapon in power struggles over a religion divided between Cyril who looks to Rome, and Bishop Nestorius, who has become Hypa’s friend through a shared love of books, based at Antioch.

As he writes, Hypa is continually distracted by Azazeel, one of many names for the devil, yet clearly the voice of Hypa’s own “inner voice”.

At one point, Azazeel asks Hypa, “Did God create man, or was it the other way round?” He answers his own question: “Hypa, in every age man creates a god to his liking and his god is always his visions, his impossible dreams and his wishes”. When Hypa whispers, “But Azazeel, you are the cause of evil in the world.” Azazeel responds, “Hypa, be sensible. I’m the one who justifies evil. So evil causes me.” Later he urges, “Wake up, Hypa, and come to your senses. Your desire for her (Martha) is crushing you and breaking your heart. Go to her, take her and leave this country. Delight in her and make her happy, then heap curses on me because I tempted you. Then all three of us will thrive, having fulfilled ourselves.”

The book may be an “acquired taste”, perplexing and tedious for someone with either little knowledge of or no interest in religion. Although the translation from Arabic is in general excellent, some descriptions are over-detailed, dull and hard to follow. Yet the book creates a vivid impression of what life might have been like fifteen centuries ago, with realistic characters revealing all too recognisable human flaws. The author also shows the appeal of a life of contemplation: there is a striking passage in which Hypa observes the habits of the wild doves, who mate indiscriminately with each other, care jointly for the young, living together in a seemingly peaceful community, causing him to wonder why humans cannot do the same. It occurs to him that another monk throws stones at the birds because he is afraid of the fact that at heart, he likes them.

I do not know to what extent the slow pace and precise detail are a feature of Arab writing. Some readers have criticised the Muslim author’s interpretation of rival early Christian doctrines but this does not seem to me to matter. What is important is the portrayal of a humane and conflicted individual to whom we can relate, despite the radical differences in our lives.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars