Good Evening, Mrs. Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes

Source of book: Borrowed from my wife.

My wife discovered the small British book publisher, Persephone Books, a few years back, when she was looking for her own copy of The Home-Maker, by Dorothy Canfield Fisher, if my memory serves. Although it could have been Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson. In any event, the publisher describes its goal as:

Persephone Books reprints forgotten twentieth century novels, short stories, cookery books and memoirs by (mostly) women writers. They appeal to the discerning reader who prefers books that are neither too literary nor too commercial, and are guaranteed to be readable, thought-provoking and impossible to forget. 

From the three I have read so far, I would say this is accurate. These books aren’t in the pantheon of classics, but aren’t exactly fluff either. They are interesting, and represent a different kind of literature than either genre boilerplates or the heavy and turgid literary novels which characterized much of the 20th Century. One might say that they fall in a traditionally disrespected category: women’s literature. For much of history, women were given little shot at literacy - that was for men only. This wasn’t universal, of course, and it started to crack in a serious way with the Feminist movement, which insisted that women were the equals of men - and should be educated accordingly. That said, with the explosion of literate women, the fusty old men who had controlled social standards felt they had to denigrate “novels” as less worthy than the old Greek and Roman “classics” (which, conveniently, were taught only to men.) This prejudice against the things women read - and write - continues into our own time, with “chick lit” incurring particular dismissal, even as male-oriented boilerplate books feature the same (or worse) imaginative and formulaic writing. 

Of the three I have read, I think that this one, a collection of short stories written by Mollie Panter-Downes during World War Two, features the best writing.

Mollie Panter-Downes, despite being British, is actually most associated with American institutions. For decades, Panter-Downes wrote for The New Yorker, in a variety of genres. Much of her writing was regular investigative journalism, reporting from Britain to an upper-middle-class American audience. Other pieces would fall into the category of non-fiction, but not exactly journalism, such as her “Letters from London” series. In addition to this, she occasionally contributed short stories. This particular book collects the 21 stories she wrote during the war, along with one of the Letters from London that serves as an introduction, more or less, to the themes and setting of the stories. (The author didn’t specifically intend that - the letter was written right after Britain declared war on Germany, and before any of the stories were written.) 

The stories are fairly short, and are self-contained. For the most part, they take place in a short period of time, in a single location, and involve a small number of characters - sometimes only one. The stories all focus on the Homefront - the people left behind as the soldiers left to fight in Africa, the Middle East, the Far East, and eventually Europe. The characters are, naturally, mostly women - the men went off to fight. There are two exceptions: the retired Major Marriott, desperate to return to battle; and Mark Goring, stuck in a desk job in London. 

For the most part, these are middle to upper-middle-class Brits - the kind that, before the war, had a few servants, but not necessarily a title or an estate. They are kind of the forgotten middle as far as the literature of the time went. The working poor had recently become a trendy topic in literature, while the upper crust retained its fascination. (Escapism has been a goal of literature for a long time - possibly since the dawn of language.) It seems plausible that Panter-Downes picked this slice of British society both because it was her own class, and because it was likely to appeal to the typical New Yorker reader of the time. 

As Panter-Downes notes in a few stories, however, this particular way of life was rapidly changing. After the war, the petit-bourgeoisie largely faded away, with only the wealthy being able to retain servants. 

In general, I found the writing to be good, the human portraits to be well drawn, and the psychological profiles of the effects of war and change and stress to be perceptive. I am an aficionado of the short story, and these were good ones. 

I won’t try to describe all the stories in this post, but figured it would be good to hit a few highlights. 

The first was in the preface, written by Gregory LeStage, and it was a fact I either didn’t know or had forgotten somehow: in the years 1939 through 1941, more British civilians were killed than were soldiers. The Battle of Britain took a heavy toll in lives as well as infrastructure. The homefront was in essence the warfront. It is difficult for an American in the 21st Century to really grasp this. There has been no war on our own soil (excluding Pearl Harbor) in a century and a half - and the mainland of the US hasn’t been under legitimate threat since, well, probably the War of 1812, more than 200 years ago. 

The collection starts off with a bank, with “Date With Romance,” featuring Mrs. Ramsay, a recurring character. Widowed, she meets an old friend for dinner - he apparently was interested in her back in the day. However, he seems to think of her as old now, and we find out eventually that he hopes to marry a far younger woman. Mrs. Ramsay’s poisonous thoughts are rapier sharp during and after the encounter, and make for a witty contrast to the mansplaining guy. 

Also razor sharp is the opening of “In Clover,” about a rather clueless and classist woman who takes in a lower-class family during the Blitz. The woman in charge of farming out the evacuees from London is described thus:

She had smiled as she spoke, the flashing and more than necessarily kind smile that she reserved for the lower orders, who hadn’t, don’t you know, had quite the advantages that we have. 

I also found “As the Fruitful Vine” intriguing. It is essentially a story of two sisters, the elder of which seems to have upstaged the younger. This becomes even more apparent when, with the war raging, the younger sister gets pregnant on her honeymoon, and everyone disapproves. The sibling dynamics are certainly interesting, but it is this passage that really caught my eye:

After a few days’ honeymoon, Philip had to rejoin his ship, and it was with the greatest astonishment that Lucy discovered in due course that she was going to have a baby. It seemed less like a marital than a botanical incident, the result of a chance brush between a bee and a flower: this discovery of motherhood ought to have been stirring, but again a big moment didn’t quite come off. Paternity would catch up with Philip somewhere in the West Indies or the Mediterranean or wherever Lucy’s startled letter reached him; his reply would reach her long after any emotions which she might have been feeling at the moment of writing his letter had passed. To be truthful, those emotions were not overpowering. It was difficult to work up emotion over a tender secret which had to be shouted to a bee who was now winging his way God knows where. Once more, Lucy felt, life had treated her cruelly.

There are several stories featuring the ladies’ sewing circles, all of which are amusing. Panter-Downes pokes gentle fun at the casual prejudices of the members. In one section, a discussion on what sort of pajamas the Greeks might wear, unexpectedly results in some bigotry being aired. 

Mrs. Twistle coughed gently again and remarked with implacable softness that the Greeks were very marvelous, no doubt, but in her opinion it was a pity that England had to have foreign allies monkeying about with her war. 

After it is pointed out to her that allies are, well, by definition, foreign, Mrs. Twistle kind of doubles down. 

“There’s no doubt, Mrs. Peters, that they’re a fine lot of men. It’s only that if I had my way, we’d have nothing to do with foreigners. We’re better off without them, though there are those in high places, I’m well aware, as don’t see eye to eye.” 

Hmm, this sounds more than a little bit like a lot of white Boomers I know. “I’m sure all those [immigrants, foreigners, African Americans, etc.] are fine people, but why can’t they just stay where they are?” For what it is worth, Mrs. Twistle considers Americans to be suspicious foreigners too. As with Americans - and Brits - today, the delusional dream of Empire casts a rosy glow and paints an illusion that things would be better if we could just go back to a day when foreigners knew their place in the hierarchy.

Mrs. Ramsay’s sewing circle reappears in later stories, in one of which, “Mrs. Ramsay felt that she was sitting in at a sewing bee of the Fates, all busy with shears and thread, snipping at a life here, twinning two strands with a knowing cackle there.” That’s a good line right there. 

Perhaps the most poignant story in the bunch is “Good-bye, My Love,” about a young couple. He is on brief leave, but then must leave her again. 

Language was inadequate, after all. One used the same words for a parting which might be fore years, which might end in death, as one did for an overnight business trip. She put her arms tightly round him and said, “Good-bye, my love.” 

The title story is rather interesting. “Mrs. Craven” is never given an actual name, for reasons which appear as the story progresses. The “she” from whose perspective the story is told, is the mistress of Mr. Craven, who is married with children. They go out to shows together, and always eat at Porters, where she is greeted with “Good evening, Mrs. Craven.” 

At first, this amuses them, but eventually, when the war starts, and he is given deployment orders, she realizes that she is, legally speaking, nobody. (Hence why she never gets a name.) He could be killed in battle, and she would have to wait for the official casualty list to find out. And what if he was just injured?

“Don’t think I’m being stupid and morbid,” she said, “but supposing anything happens. I’ve been worrying about that. You might be wounded or ill and I wouldn’t know.” She tried to laugh. “The War Office doesn’t have a service for sending telegrams to mistresses, does it?” 

It is a bit of a haunting story too, because there is no good ending to this relationship, no matter what happens. 

There are two stories that involve an elderly lady and her elderly servant. (Different characters in each.) In one, “This Flower, Safety,” the lady is terrified by any signs of the war, and keeps moving around to try to escape it. (And probably never does.) In the other, “Cut Down the Trees,” the roles are reversed. Mrs. Walsingham adjusts to the changes with aplomb, even hosting a Canadian regiment on her grounds. (The title comes because they cut a couple of trees down to fit their equipment.) Old Dossie, on the other hand, rages and fights against all change, trying to keep her employer from eating in casual clothes, and in the kitchen no less! When Mrs. Walsingham’s son visits, he is struck by both the changes, and the reactions to them. His mother explains:

“She’s an invaluable creature in lots of ways. Her trouble is that she hates adjusting to the war and she doesn’t like me to adjust, either. She has always refused to adjust to anything. I sometimes think that if there’s ever a social revolution in England, they’ll string Dossie up first before they bother about me.”

Speaking of social revolutions, in “Year of Decision,” one of the stories with a male protagonist, the wealthy couple each have difficulty adjusting. With no servants, they both have to learn how to keep a house themselves. The wife works herself into complete exhaustion, while the husband fantasizes about being able to fight in a real war, not just make important plans for it from behind a desk. 

War had differed from peace only in that one worked harder, smoked more, and was progressively more and more uncomfortable at home. But discomfort was hardly danger; except for dodging a few bombs in the blitz, his had been a remarkably safe war. It had taught him none of the stinging, salutary lessons that he had expected. Instead, he had picked up all sorts of curious, unlikely bits of information, such as how to make a bed, scour a greasy saucepan, and lay a breakfast table so that it did not too greatly resemble the haphazard design of the March Hare’s tea party. 

Times have indeed changed more than a bit. But that is part of the fun of this book. By turns humorous and poignant, it captures the ways that war and stress and trauma change us, and shines a light on the fact that those on the homefront experience war too. I rather enjoyed this book, and would like to seek out some of Panter-Downes’ other writings.  

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

Source of book: I own this, but we listened to it on audiobook

Years ago, in my teens, The Moonstone was the first Wilkie Collins book I read. After that came The Woman In White, because we owned it. A few years later, I was given two additional books by my violin teacher’s husband. (He had extra paperbacks he didn’t need - and introduced me to P. G. Wodehouse and Anthony Trollope as well.) Those two were Armadale, and my favorite Collins, No Name. 

We had a couple of long road trips planned for this year, so I got the audiobook version (narrated by Peter Jeffrey, who does a good job of making the Victorian language flow, as well as distinguishing between the different narrators and characters.) The reviews from the kids were mixed. Some found it interesting, others not so much. Win some, lose some.

First a bit about the book itself. The Moonstone is generally considered the first true detective novel. True, Poe wrote a couple of short stories which had many of the elements. And Sarah Burney’s novel, The Hermitage lent some key elements to Collins’ plot. But it really was The Moonstone that brought all the elements together, and would go on to influence detective stories from the Sherlock Holmes books on down. 

The Moonstone follows a common Collins pattern in that the story is told by multiple narrators. In this case, the story is set up by the hero, Franklin Blake, who asks the other characters to tell the part of the story they have personal knowledge of. He himself contributes a section as well. No knock on Franklin, but he is the straight man, so the other narrations are more amusing than his, although all of them serve to illuminate the plot - and eventually the mystery. 

The plot itself is a classic: a mysterious diamond, the Moonstone, is stolen from its Hindu shrine by an unscrupulous British officer. From then on, it appears to be followed by a curse, with evil (and often death) pursuing those who possess it. This history is told through the eyes of close associates of the thief as well as those who inherit the diamond. When the main story opens, the reclusive owner of the stone leaves the diamond to his niece, Rachel Verinder, and Franklin is tasked with delivering it to her. She wears the diamond at a party, and it is seen by all, including the three mysterious Indians who are undoubtedly determined to return it to India. 

That night, the diamond disappears, and the best efforts of the local police are insufficient to solve the mystery. Franklin calls in the renowned detective, Sergeant Cuff (a precursor of both Holmes and Joe Friday, so to speak), who presents his theory, but cannot completely solve the case. 

 Sergeant Cuff investigates...

Later, it becomes clear that the moonstone has been placed in a bank vault in London, pledged by an unknown person to a shady moneylender. But who? And how did he or she get the diamond? 

The story is told in turn by three main narrators. The first section is told by Gabriel Betteridge, the Verinder’s head servant, and one of the most delightful characters in Victorian fiction. He is obsessed with Robinson Crusoe, which he believes to be an oracle, a cross between the Bible and Nostradamus. It is his comfort, his guide, and his inspiration. Which he is eager to inflict on those around him. He is also a bit of a misogynist, having had a rather unpleasant marriage, and finding relief in his wife’s death. But, he is loyal, perceptive, and observant, which makes him an excellent servant and a useful narrator. He isn’t exactly a reliable narrator, as he is openly biased, but his attention to detail allows Collins to set the stage with most of the clues needed using just his story. 

The narrative next shifts to Drusilla Clack, Rachel’s impoverished cousin. Miss Clack is a puritanical sort, who pushes her religious beliefs on others with a rather assaultive fervor. 

The final narrator is Franklin Blake, who gets to explain his own investigation into the mystery. He has a particularly personal interest, as he is in love with Rachel, yet she appears to hate him - while refusing to explain why. 

There are other, shorter sections, essentially narrated by other characters: Mr. Bruff, the family attorney; Ezra Jennings, the doctor’s assistant; and Mr. Murthwaite, an adventurer who tells the epilogue. 

While it is pretty tough to spoil a 150 year old book, I will refrain from revealing the solution to the mystery. Suffice it to say that the essential elements of the British tradition of detective story are mostly in place. The “inside job,” the red herring, the bumbling local police, the celebrated investigator, the least likely suspect, and the final twist. It is in bringing all of them together - and in the skillful plotting and writing - that Collins came to be considered the first to do it. 

A couple of things only marginally related to the plot itself stood out. The most notable is the use of opium and addiction. Collins himself became an opium addict, and wrote certain sections of this book from experience. This may have contributed to its sales, as dramatic and lurid opium dreams were all the rage at the time. 

Second, although Victorian literature as a rule (and English Victorian literature in particular) tends to be colonialist and casually racist, I was struck by how little stereotyping Collins did. (For its era - obviously it would have been written very differently today.) The Indians - the three Brahmans tasked with recovering the Moonstone - may be “exotic” in some ways, but they are not savages. Rather, they are skilled at blending in, shapeshifting as necessary to accomplish their goals. Collins also portrays their goals as noble: it is the British officer who has stolen the gem, after all. Sure, the Indians may be ruthless and even murderous, but they are morally consistent and admirable in their own way. 

Third, Collins is a master of obliquely discussing female “purity” in subversive ways, even while maintaining plausible deniability. The Moonstone is a bit of an obvious stand in for virginity, and Rachel’s decision to refuse to defend her own honor is fascinating. Indeed, she feels insulted that she should have to. This is hardly the only Collins book to go there - indeed, the question of purity (and the hypocrisy and double standards of Victorian society) runs through many of his books. His heroines refuse to conform to nice submissive stereotypes. They fight for what is theirs, they pursue love - and money - as they wish. They take risks that only men were allowed to take. The decline to play the game. 

The fourth observation is that Collins had a real eye for the swindlers of his era. No Name skewers medical cons as well as financial. In The Moonstone, it is religious hucksterism in its fundamentalist form that Collins takes on. Collins was religious, but rather unorthodox in his personal life. (He eschewed marriage, choosing instead to live with a woman and raise her daughter as his own, while having a second mistress and three children with her.) He had no patience, however, for Puritans and their determination to create labyrinths of rules. To this end, he lets Miss Clack have enough leash to humiliate herself in her attempts to convert others. Here are some highlights from that. 

I sat down in the hall to wait for my answer--and having always a few tracts in my bag, I selected one which proved to be quite providentially applicable to the person who answered the door. The hall was dirty, and the chair was hard; but the blessed consciousness of returning good for evil raised me quite above any trifling considerations of that kind. The tract was one of a series addressed to young women on the sinfulness of dress. In style it was devoutly familiar. Its title was, “A Word with you on your Cap-Ribbons.”

Betteridge’s daughter, Penelope, to whom the tract was directed, gives an acid response:

She looked at the title. “Is it written by a man or a woman, Miss? If it’s written by a woman, I had rather not read it on that account. If it’s written by a man, I beg to inform him that he knows nothing about it.” 

Yep, the more things change...there is no end of the policing of female clothing. Hey, I wrote a whole series on that! It is pretty hard to disagree with Penelope’s response. MYOB. 

Later in the narrative, Miss Clack tries desperately to convert Rachel’s dying mother with more and more and more books and tracts and sermons. 

Here was a golden opportunity! I seized it on the spot. In other words, I instantly opened my bag, and took out the top publication. It proved to be an early edition--only the twenty-fifth--of the famous anonymous work (believed to be by the precious Miss Bellows), entitled The Serpent at Home. The design of the book--with which the worldly reader may not be acquainted--is to show how the Evil One lies in wait for us in all the most apparently innocent actions of our daily lives. The chapters best adapted to female perusal are “Satan in the Hair-Brush”; “Satan behind the Looking-Glass”; “Satan under the Tea-Table”; “Satan out of the Window”;--and many others. 

“Give all your attention, dear aunt, to this precious book--and you will give me all I ask.” With these words, I handed it to her open, at a marked passage--one continuous burst of burning eloquence! Subject: Satan among the Sofa Cushions.

One wonders if Bill Gothard and Jack Chick took inspiration from this. So many demons lurking in the corners of everyday life. I’d laugh a bit more heartily if I hadn’t had to live through too much of this - and hadn’t been handed the equivalent of these books to convince my wife of the joys of patriarchy. Sigh. Nothing new under the sun, though. 

One final observation. Collins has tremendous sympathy for the outcasts of society, and takes care to show that often our prejudices against people have to do with their appearances, or their socioeconomic status. Rosanna has done time for theft, but is hired by the Verinders, who look past her past. But she is never completely out of suspicion, in significant part because she is deformed. Her tragic end contrasts with the way Godfrey is assumed to be good because of his genteel birth, his charitable work, and his slick manners. Oh, and his handsome face. The lame Lucy is suspected of madness or malevolence because of her deformity as well. Ezra Jennings is a particularly good example. Jennings has a mysterious past which is hinted at, but not stated. Probably, he has an illegitimate child to support, but this is merely an educated guess. He is also of uncertain race, being apparently of mixed heritage. He also describes himself as having a “female constitution,” and being somewhere between male and female. Whether Collins means to hint at intersexuality, homosexuality, or merely some “defect” in “manliness” is unclear. Whatever the case, Jennings is ugly, and thus distrusted and hated by everyone. In each of these cases, though, appearances are deceiving. Rosanna has her demons, but she is ultimately more generous and kind than you would think. Lucy is fiercely loyal and good hearted. And Jennings turns out to be one of the most scrupulously moral and decent people in the book. Godfrey...well, you will have to read the book to find out his fate. 

You never truly know sometimes how a book you enjoyed as a kid or teen will age. There have been a few which were disappointing to re-read as an adult. (Looking at you, H. Rider Haggard…) Others turn out to be even better than remembered. (As in The Great Brain or anything by Beverly Cleary.) I can say, however, having re-read two Wilkie Collins books, that he has aged well. The plots are tight, the characters memorable, the writing good. And, while still of an era, they are less sexist and racist than I feared - Collins humanizes his characters too well for that. The Moonstone is rightly considered a classic. 

Aunts Aren't Gentlemen (aka The Cat-nappers) by P. G. Wodehouse

Source of book: I own this in both print and audiobook form. We listened to the audiobook on a recent trip.

I have read quite a few of Wodehouse’s books over the years - he is my favorite humorous author. One can usually count on his books to be entertaining, witty, and utterly ludicrous. In any event, here are the books I have reviewed on this blog, along with an introduction to the author himself:

Introduction to P. G. Wodehouse

Uncle Fred in the Springtime

The Adventures of Sally

Biffen’s Millions

Thank You Jeeves

The Uncollected Wodehouse

Love Among the Chickens

Jeeves And The Mating Season

Summer Lightning

Cocktail Time

This book, like many in the Wodehouse universe, comes with two names. The original name in Great Britain was Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, while the American edition was re-named The Cat-nappers. Whatever you wish to call it, this book was the last one Wodehouse finished before his death, capping nearly 75 years of writing. 

Aunt’s Aren’t Gentlemen is a Bertie and Jeeves novel, featuring the hapless aristocrat Bertie Wooster and his brilliant valet Jeeves. An unexplained rash leads to Bertie being advised to seek rest and clean air in the countryside. He meets up with his Aunt Dahlia (not to be confused with the terrifying Aunt Agatha), and sets out to have a relaxing time. This, of course, does not occur, because hijinks ensue. 

It turns out that, in addition to Aunt Dahlia, others of Bertie’s acquaintance happen to be in the neighborhood. His schoolmate (now a communist agitator) Orlo J. Porter has come to court Bertie’s ex-fiancee Vanessa Cook (now a feminist protester in her spare time). Vanessa’s father disapproves of Orlo, which is why she has been ordered back to the countryside by her father, who also takes a strong dislike to Bertie.

Mr. Cook also has a rivalry with Colonel Briscoe, a friend of Aunt Dahlia’s, over their racehorses, who are set to race in the near future. Aunt Dahlia has foolishly bet a large sum on the Colonel’s horse, and needs to be sure of her victory. To this end, she hires a local poacher to steal a certain cat (friends with Cook’s horse) so as to disrupt the training process. Naturally, this goes very badly, in part because cats go where they want once you let them free. In the meantime, Vanessa, frustrated with Orlo’s timidity, breaks it off with him and gets engaged again to Bertie, who does not want to marry her, but, well, he is Bertie and that’s how things go. 

It will be up to Jeeves once again to unravel the tangled web and set things right. 

As with all Wodehouse books, there is sparkling dialogue, witty repartee, a ludicrous plot, miscommunications, and slapstick humor. One thing I did notice is that Bertie seems a bit less stupid in this book - he actually manages to avoid trouble in some cases, and isn’t completely reliant on Jeeves for survival. I guess even he grew up a tad. Well, not that much, perhaps, but he isn’t stealing police helmets any more. To compensate, there is more equality in the witty exchanges with Jeeves, and the two seem partners in the sport of laughing at everyone else in the book. 

Because Aunt Dahlia is a key character, the nature of Bertie’s interactions are a bit different as well. While he is always trying to stay away from Aunt Agatha and her schemes to get him married, he is rather fond of Aunt Dahlia, despite her tendency to need rescuing from her own overreaching. Thus, you get lines like, “a hearty good morning to you, aged relative.” 

When it comes to Wodehouse audiobooks, there are really only two choices: Martin Jarvis and Jonathan Cecil. I have listened to both, and they both outstanding. Perhaps I would lean toward Cecil for Jeeves, but Jarvis for Lord Emsworth. But that is a matter of taste. You simply cannot go wrong with either of them. Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen was read by Cecil, and was predictably delightful. 

We greatly enjoyed this book, and can recommend it as a good place to start with Wodehouse. 

Swing Time by Zadie Smith

Source of book: Borrowed from the library.

This is my first experience of Zadie Smith. She is a British novelist, born to a Jamaican mother and a white father. From the first page, her British background was obvious. (It took me a minute to remember that “estates” are what we Americans call “apartment complexes.”) Although I certainly have read a lot of British literature over the years, I haven’t really read modern ones. (Unless Waugh counts as “modern”) Although I did read Black Swan Green a few years back, that one was rural. Certainly, I haven’t read any modern British literature with an urban setting. One of those weird gaps, I guess. 

 Zadie Smith

Anyway, Swing Time is set mostly in London and Africa, with a few episodes in New York and other big cities. While the novel is not autobiographical, the unnamed narrator is very similar to the author in biographical details. The black mother, white father, a love for tap dancing, and a complex set of half-siblings are the most obvious. The narrator’s childhood friend, Tracey, is also a bit of Ms. Smith. Although the colors of her parents are switched, she looks a lot like the narrator. Except she is actually talented at dancing, while the narrator is mediocre. While the narrator’s mom is literate and socially ambitious, her father is a plodder, content to work for the postal service. Tracey’s dad is not in the picture (and it is implied that when he does show up, he sexually abuses her.) Her mom is what we would call “white trash” here in the United States: vulgar, overweight, uneducated, tacky - and looks down on the narrator’s parents as much as they look down on her.

The book is written in such a way that you have to piece the timeline together as you go. It keeps switching between the narrator’s childhood and her adult life, and the prologue starts near the end of the story, and isn’t actually explained until near the end. It is a bit disorienting, and you really have to pay attention to narrative details or you miss how things tie together. I think this contributes to the feeling I had that the book was more of a series of episodes than a narrative with an arc and direction. This isn’t meant to be a criticism. If anything, life itself tends to be episodic rather than fit a neat arc. I was reminded a bit of David Copperfield, which also followed a character through his youth in a series of related, yet disconnected episodes. In a way, this very style is an assertion that life isn’t neat, people aren’t simple categories, and events take their own directions, not the ones dictated by artistic considerations.

The basic plot is as follows (spoilers, so skip if you prefer):

The narrator becomes friends with Tracey after they meet at a dance class. They don’t have that much in common, but are the only non-white kids there, and they at least share a love for dance. Later, they drift apart after Tracey gets into a dance-oriented school on scholarship, and the narrator takes a more academic route. They reconnect a few times, but find they have less in common than they thought. Tracey gets some professional dance roles, but never makes it big. Instead, she ends up a lot like her mother, with some kids with different fathers and no real direction to her life.

The narrator, on the other hand, disappoints her mother with mediocre results in school, and a low paying job at the fictional equivalent of MTV Britain. Then, she happens to meet Aimee, an Australian pop megastar (probably patterned after Madonna), who hires the narrator as a personal assistant. She spends the next decade plus at this job, before events cause a shattering break near the end of the book, and the narrator finds herself without a job, having essentially devoted all her time to Aimee. During their time together, Aimee decides to build a girls school in Africa (the place isn’t named, but is probably Gambia.) This turns out to be a bit of a failure because of Aimee’s failure to listen or understand the real needs of the community. As I said, it kind of meanders, just like the narrator tends to drift without a purpose.

The strong point of the book, on the other hand, was the well-drawn characters. The narrator is at the center, obviously. It is odd that her name is never given, even by the other characters. But perhaps not knowing makes it easier to imagine oneself in that place. The narrator’s parents were recognizable people - I’ve met a few like them. I suspect there might be a bit of Smith’s parents in them. They certainly explain how the narrator came to be who she is. The psychological interplay of the characters is quite true to life.

I also thought that Tracey and her family were intriguing. There are a lot of people like them in my part of the world too. I thought the author was perceptive about a couple of things. First, she gives a rather positive picture of a loving (if not always put together) single mother. Tracey’s home is challenging, but her mother is actually a better mother on balance than the narrator’s distant ice-queen mother. Poverty and occasionally questionable decision-making do not overwhelm what is essentially a happy home. In my work in juvenile dependency proceedings, I see the dynamic that Tracey and her mom face. Poverty leaves one with a low margin for error, and thus there is social worker involvement, and more judgment than assistance.

The other thing, though, that the author also gets right is a kind of defensive superiority complex - a defense mechanism against feelings of inadequacy. We all fight our insecurities in our own way, and Tracey’s mom does it by lording what she feels is her superiority over others. It is the flip side of the coin of the narrator’s mom, who goes full on Tiger Mom on the narrator.

There are a few great lines in the book that I want to mention. One is a description by the narrator of her time at the TV station. She doesn’t fit in culturally, both because of her race and because of her background. She is into the old dance musicals, not her own era of music.

In the great piles of glossy magazines, also freebies, left around the office, we now read that Britannia was cool -- or some version of it that struck even me as intensely uncool -- and after a while began to understand that it must be on precisely this optimistic wave that the company surfed. Optimism infused with nostalgia: the boys in our office looked like rebooted Mods -- with Kinks haircuts from thirty years earlier -- and the girls were Julie Christie bottle-blondes in short skirts with smudgy black eyes. Everybody rode a Vespa to work, everybody’s cubicle seemed to feature a picture of Michael Caine in Alfie or The Italian Job. It was nostalgia for an era and a culture that had meant nothing to me in the first place, and perhaps because of this I was, in the eyes of my colleagues, cool, by virtue of not being like them.

The narrator’s taste, throughout, is always toward an older period.

            But elegance attracted me. I liked the way it hid pain.

Another great line comes from Fern, one of the guys who makes Aimee’s Africa project work as well as it does. He is a sympathetic character, as one of the genuinely good-intentioned people in the book. He is also more perceptive than most of the others.

“No one is more ingenious than the poor, wherever you find them. When you are poor every stage has to be thought through. Wealth is the opposite. With wealth you get to be thoughtless.”

This one is so true. Aimee’s biggest problem is her wealth, which allows her to both dictate her life, and assume that everyone else can do so too. In her view, differences in outcomes “were never structural or economic but always essentially differences of personality.” This attitude, too, permeates a lot of middle to upper class whites I know. It is darkly amusing when they complain that poor people can’t budget - when they themselves have far greater incomes and piles of debt. The margin for error is just greater for them…

There is another perceptive observation, this one by the narrator, about her experience in Africa, while visiting the site of a slaving prison.  

All paths lead back there, my mother had always told me, but now that I was here, in this storied corner of the continent, I experienced it not as an exceptional place but as an example of a general rule. Power had preyed on weakness here: all kinds of power -- local, racial, tribal, national, global, economic -- on all kinds of weakness, stopping at nothing, not even at the smallest girl child. But power does that everywhere. The world is saturated in blood. Every tribe has their blood-soaked legacy: here was mine.

Sad, but undeniably true. And true in our time, where children are sacrificed to power and tribalism.

One final quote is on the topic of the narrator’s mother. After a lifetime of trying to make her daughter into the sort of world-conquering superwoman that she envisioned, she is obviously disappointed.

I wondered if some similarly chilly epigraph existed for me: She was not the best daughter, but she was a perfectly adequate dinner date.

It’s the little bon mots like that which add sparkle to this book. Overall, I found that it was hard to put this book down. Good writing, human characters, and a tendency to bestow grace on even the most flawed people in the story.