June 15, 2026 · 6:42 am

Adrienne Mesurat: Julian Green (1927)

Julian Green’s literary creation, Adrienne Mesurat, is not a particularly appealing character, but in spite of that, it’s easy to sympathise with her plight. When the novel opens, it’s 1908 and Adrienne is looking at the “graveyard,” a group of family portraits which hang in the dining room. The Mesurats marry for money, and the portraits are of various Mesurats and two other families–the Serres and the Lecuyers.

You guessed that they had been born, grown to maturity, and disappeared like so many other plants, content with life and no less resigned to death. Their aggregate appearance conveyed nothing, unless perhaps that vacant, wandering and good-natured expression that one catches at times in the eyes of a crowd. It was a common saying that only their money explained their alliance with the Mesurats, and the same people who described these latter as leaders would add that they had swooped upon the Lecuyers and the Serres like falcons on lambs.

18-year-old Adrienne Mesurat lives a dreary life with her father, Antoine and her sickly sister, Germaine in the ironically named Villa des Charmes. Widowed Antoine Mesurat, a retired Parisian writing master is a petty tyrant with his daughters. They exist as accessories to his life, and this translates to both daughters obeying his peevish needs and selfishness without a murmur. When Germaine is too ill to come to the dinner table, she is summoned by her father and forced to eat. Rather than be alarmed by her frailty, Antoine takes umbrage at Germaine’s ill health for it disturbs his universe. There is no question that either girl will marry or even have any outside relationships or interests beyond the walls of the Villa des Charmes.

Suitors had presented themselves, for the Mesurats were not without property. But the young men bore the small town stamp too evidently upon them. Sons of notaries or tradesmen, they had all alike appeared impossible, and their proposals as strange as though made by so many idiots. Adrienne failed to conceive what life would be like in the company of any of them. The very notion made her laugh. Mesurat, too, and in no uncertain fashion, repelled the idea of letting go a daughter to whose company he had grown accustomed. He joined in the merriment as though some enormity, too palpable to be taken seriously, had been proposed. Germaine kept silent. It was from this date that visits from outside became rare events. Confronted by the almost hostile attitude of Mesurat, they gradually ceased completely.

Adrienne “had grown up in a positive apprehension of displeasing old Mesurat,”and in this atmosphere of steely repression, she buries her emotions, “she feared nothing, desired nothing. Boredom and a sort of sullen resignation alone could be read on her face.” There are no friends, there are no social activities; “life had become a series of habits– of fixed gestures accomplished at fixed moments” and she “concealed a restlessness that on one would have suspected.” With all these repressed emotions smouldering under the surface, it’s inevitable that she begins fantasizing, dreaming of a different life. The object of her fantasies is Dr. Maurecourt, a neighbour, a man who recently moved to the town. One day she is walking in the heat in a meadow, her arms full of flowers, and Dr Maurecourt passes by in a carriage. She stares at him and as he glances at her, he “touched his hat with a shy almost furtive gesture.” He’s remote and mysterious enough to become the object of her fantasies, and his literal proximity fuels her growing obsession. Adrienne becomes obsessed with the Doctor and lives for an opportunity to see him through the windows of the Villa des Charmes. Unfortunately, even though Adrienne, a young woman who is used to hiding her feelings, is secretive about her infatuation, it isn’t long before both Germaine and M. Mesurat incorrectly suspect that Adrienne has secret trysts with a man. This supposition leads to horrible consequences and an unexpected liberation. Yet Adrienne’s liberation does not result in her freedom; she becomes entwined in the machinations of an unscrupulous woman.

There are plenty of people in life who are a lot worse off than Adrienne. She’s never hungry or cold. She has no material needs, but she is starved of companionship, kindness, friendship, affection and love. She longs for freedom, but when she has it, she cannot leverage it to her favour. Like a pet out of a cage, she is vulnerable and will be picked off by predators.

Reading Adrienne Mesurat evokes the plight of Madame Bovary–small town life, exploitations of a woman’s weaknesses, and the inability of the main character to avoid the quagmire that sucks her down to her destruction. This is an excellent, if somewhat depressing read. (Note my copy gives the author’s name as JULIAN, but the publisher changed it to JULIEN. He had American parents, spent most of his life in France and wrote mainly in French). Translated by Henry Longan Stuart

5 Comments

Filed under Fiction, Green Julien (Julian), posts

Tagged as , , , ,

May 31, 2026 · 9:20 am

A House in Norway: Vigdis Hjorth

In Vigdis Hjorth’s A House in Norway, Alma is a divorced textile artist in her 50s who lives alone. Her children have grown and left, and there’s a boyfriend in a peripheral role in the background. Alma, working in a niche market, is quite successful. She designs and then makes tapestries and banners. Following her divorce and gaining a small inheritance, she bought a home. The home has a “small adjacent annexe” and the two buildings share a wall. She rents out this second structure, and the income “come[s] in handy as her earnings as a textile artist were uncertain and irregular.” For the past 20 years she has rented out the annexe to a range of tenants, and she’s had problems; she’s a haphazard landlord. There’s a history to how she’s managed the rental property unprofessionally, and her own home suffers neglect due to the intense focus she pours into work. Feeling awkward about bringing up the subject of money, she often fails to secure a deposit from renters, and several tenants have absconded owing back rent. Utilities are included and since the deposit requirement isn’t enforced, so it’s easy to see how things can go wrong. She “didn’t want dogs or small children around” and she “preferred single men who worked around the clock.”

To say that Alma is not a social person would be putting it mildly. She keeps everyone at arms-length: an undemanding boyfriend, whose existence in Alma’s life seems to be predominantly for occasional, non-committed sex with a secondary role as a listening ear. And although her children visit and impose their presence, their mess, their laundry on Alma, they too are kept at arms-length. Alma’s passion exists for her art. Of course, being a landlord is often a messy, complicated business, something she’d rather not deal with:

And although she found placing the adverts and organising the viewings a nuisance, she preferred that to becoming involved with, or having to get to know, her tenant and feeling less free. She wanted to be left in peace to concentrate on her own priorities, her tapestries, the yarns, the wording on the canvas; having to make small talk with her neighbours was not for her.

Alma is not a person whose motivating force is money, but as a landlady who wishes no involvement, it could be easy to interpret her attitude, her frugality, as that of a landlady who wishes to wring the most from her investment. That isn’t true at all. She neglects her own home, so the rental, by extension is neglected too. With the proximity between Alma’s home and the rental, it would be easy to imagine an intrusive landlady, but she doesn’t want to be bothered or involved. She wants to burrow in her art while the world carries on around her.

She didn’t want to have anything to do with her tenants, she didn’t want to see them; she just wanted the money going into her bank account every month and then to forget that they were there.

Good luck with that. …

There are some disasters of course. Abandoned property, filth, criminals, tenants who do a moonlit flit. In one case, Alma had to report the “disappearance” to the police in order to satisfy the paper trail and re-rent the property. A couple of times, Alma commits acts that appear out of her expected moral behaviour. A tenant stiffs her so she takes his stuff, that sort of thing.

The latest tenant is a Polish man and a pregnant woman. Trouble begins almost immediately when the Polish man asks where they can do their laundry. Since the apartment had been vacant for a while, and Almas wants to rent it, she agrees that the new tenants may use the washing machine and dryer in her basement. Two problems here: this will give them access to her house and since utilities are included, her bill just increased. At first, and I’ll call it a honeymoon period, things seem ok, and the Polish man is very helpful with repairs and maintenance. But then there’s the drunkenness, domestic abuse and this stiff formality between Alma and her tenants. Eventually the Polish man is carted off to jail and Alma is left with the woman and the child as tenants. Alma frequently leaves and seeks inspiration at new locations. During these times, she is very comfortable asking her tenant to collect her post. At the same time, she projects negative thoughts and feelings onto the Polish woman. It’s a very unnatural social construct. There should be a simple exchange: shelter given and rent paid, but other elements creep in: Alma imagines that the Polish woman looks down at her since she doesn’t keep her house well maintained. Alma frets over the utility bill, but her tenant doesn’t seem concerned about Alma’s pleas to help her reduce the bill. Alma imagines the Polish woman thinks Alma is rich. The Polish woman seems to harbour some resentments which manifest in unfounded complaints about the floor and living conditions.

It’s a very awkward situation–an unnatural one fraught with difficulties and forced social contact. The Polish woman must rely on financial help from charities in order to survive. Meanwhile Alma lands the biggest, most ambitious commission of her career and finds that her creativity stalls.

This is the fourth Vigdis Hjorth novel I’ve read. I thought Will and Testament was going to be an inheritance story, and it was but it was inheritance through the lens of a toxic family dynamic. I thought If Only was going to be the story of a disintegrating love affair, and it is, but it’s a love affair that almost destroys the woman involved. For some time I wasn’t sure where A House in Norway was taking me. I thought it was going to be a property owner/tenant debacle and it was, but the novel explores how the landlady/tenant relationship negatively impacts Alma as she confronts her belief system: her prejudices, her assumptions and her nasty petty side. A final letter from the tenant to Alma illustrates the vast space and lack of understanding in their relationship.

I’ll say here that I have never rented property as I know I’d be a crap landlord. Plus over the years I’ve heard many, many horror stories. I’ll add one: someone I knew rented out her mother’s home after her mother’s death. She could not bear to sell the house for sentimental reasons. So she arranged repairs and had the entire house painted in neutral tones. Fast forward 9 months… after receiving no rent for some time, she entered the home. The tenants had had several pitbulls which they bred. They had sawed huge holes in the doors so that the dogs could run freely through the home. The walls were painted lime green. The original wood floors were trashed, windows smashed, the entire back lawn was dug up with an elaborate system of tunnels etc., etc. The tenant had been dealing meth. After this experience, and considerable repairs, the owner handed over the property to a professional company who could screen tenants etc. It was a harsh learning experience.

Translated by Charlotte Barslund

2 Comments

Filed under Fiction, Hjorth Vidgis, posts

Tagged as ,

May 9, 2026 · 4:25 pm

The Water’s Lovely: Ruth Rendell

Did middle-aged married man Guy die from accidental drowning in his own bath? Or was he murdered? This is the question that haunts Ismay Sealand. Guy, Ismay’s step-father was ill with a virus at the time of his death, so perhaps he was so weak, he simply slipped under the shallow water and drowned. Or did someone pull his feet up and hold him under the water while he vainly struggled for air? When Ruth Rendell’s novel, The Water’s Lovely opens, Guy’s death is far off in the past. It’s been almost 11 years since he was discovered dead in the bath. On that day, 15-year-old Ismay and her mother Beatrix were shopping for a school uniform while 13-year-old Heather was home alone with Guy. When Ismay and her mother returned, Heather, a very wet Heather, said “I’ve been in the bathroom. You’d better come.”

Although Beatrix, Ismay and Heather were interviewed by the police, Guy’s death is not discussed privately. Troubling details remain which led Ismay to suspect that Heather may have been involved in their stepfather’s sudden death. Before the police arrived, Beatrix instructed Ismay to say that Heather was shopping with them. Plus there’s the rather nasty fact that Heather caught Guy kissing and groping 15-year-old Ismay sometime before his death. Guy’s predatory behaviour towards Ismay was accelerating and Ismay didn’t avoid him–in fact she lingered in order to get his attention. The police accepted the alibi Beatrix and her daughters presented, and so Guy’s death is buried in the past. Now, fast forward almost 11 years. Beatrix, is heavily medicated and mentally ill, her sister Pamela has moved in to care for her, and the upstairs bathroom, the scene of Guy’s death, has been remodeled beyond recognition.

Ismay and Heather live in the bottom section of the house while Pamela lives with Beatrix on the next floor. Ismay feels uncomfortable entering the room is which Guy died, but no one else seems to care or even give it a thought. Ismay believes there’s something not quite right about Heather as there’s a blankness where there should be emotion. There is no boyfriend in sight. Ismay on the other hand is a different story. She has a boyfriend, Andrew, an affluent lawyer and they plan to marry. While Ismay worries that Heather may have murdered Guy, she also worries that Heather may be capable of murdering again. …

Life in the Sealand home changes when male nurse, Edmund asks Heather out as “blocking tackle” to simply escape his controlling mother, Irene’s plans to make a match between Edmund, her only child, and home help/ grifter, Marion. Creepy, sycophantic Marion is older than Edmund and while Edmund thinks she’s after him, she’s far more interested in Irene and her money. Marion is a serial ‘befriender’ of the lonely elderly with the intention of being written in the will, but it’s a problem when these older, well-off people don’t die soon enough.

One of the many things I carried away from this novel is how much people compromise in relationships. All relationships involve compromise, usually in the early stages, but when the need for compromise grows, there may be a problem, and there are several examples in The Water’s Lovely. Ismay, for example, is deeply in love with Andrew–a man who reminds her of Guy. But then all of her boyfriends are similar to Guy in some way–and that’s not a good thing. Yet Andrew seems perfect–as long as he gets his way. Andrew’s ‘perfect’ façade slips when Edmund begins courting Heather. Andrew loathes Edmund, taking Edmund’s visits to Heather as a personal affront, and he illogically holds Ismay accountable for Edmund’s presence in the Sealand home. He very unreasonably wants Edmund AND Heather gone. Then there’s Pam who starts dating again and after several bad starts she tries speed dating and eventually “Romance Walking.” It’s here she meets and the miser Ivan. He has a good job and a decent house, and Pam starts excusing various behaviours.

She was always having to explain to Ivan what she meant. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t understand her–who could really understand somebody else?–or that he saw nothing from her point of view, though both were true, but that most of the time they seemed to be speaking different languages. Though they both worked with money, she wasn’t obsessed with it, while he appeared to see everything in terms of finance.

Everywhere they go, Ivan bitches about the prices so it seems inevitable that Pam starts cooking at Ivan’s, and after all this seems to make him happier–or at least he bitches less. Pam doesn’t even grasp that she was steered to this ‘choice.’ It is easy to think that Ivan is just a miser, a killjoy, but the pathology goes far deeper. What seems like compromise can be training–training to accept the unacceptable.

Rendell weaves the various narrative threads skillfully and seamlessly. The story starts with the Sealands but then quickly snakes out to Edmund, his toxic relationship with his manipulative mother and the encroaching presence of the crafty Marion. The plot encompasses Marion’s intended victims, the mystery of Guy’s death, Ismay and Heather’s romantic relationships and Marion’s homeless, drug addicted brother. There’s a huge coincidence that ties the plot into one piece, but the book was so entertaining, I let it slide.

Leave a comment

Filed under Fiction, posts, Rendell, Ruth

Tagged as , ,

April 16, 2026 · 2:51 pm

Ex-Wife: Ursula Parrott (1929)

“Great lovers–men who’ve ‘known a hundred women’ and boast of it–they remind me of the man who wanted to be a musician and so took one lesson on each instrument in the orchestra.”

When Ursula Parrott’s novel, Ex-Wife opens, 24-year-old Patricia describes the final death throes of her marriage to her newspaper reporter husband, Peter. They were married for four years; they had “loved each other for four years and hated each other half the fourth.” What went wrong? Did they marry too young?

It’s been 4 years since Peter left and Patricia says she does not “precisely understand” his reasons. Peter states many reasons why the marriage was over, and in the run-up to his actual departure, 6 months after his initial announcement that he wants a divorce, Peter isn’t shy about listing those reasons:

At times he said I had lost my looks. At other times he said I had nothing but my looks to recommend me. He said I took no interest in his interests. He said also that I insisted on thrusting myself into all of them.

So he’s contradictory.

Patricia reveals some back history of the relationship. They were young, poor and carefree, enjoying life and imagining only a bright future ahead, and then Patricia becomes pregnant. Peter does not attempt to hide his distress–partly he worries about money, but his distress is deeper than that. He does not want a child. Patricia attempts to minimize the ‘nuisance’ of having the baby by moving back to her parents’ home. She has the baby there, and remains 3 months after his birth, visiting Peter once a week. Peter never mentions the baby. Then the baby dies, and Peter is “exasperated” when Patricia cries about the dead child. Peter is callous about the baby’s death, and it’s clear he had no emotional connection to his son. Later, Peter has an affair and Patricia has one too.

During the marriage, Patricia was aware that her husband kept a little harem of female admirers but she seemed to accept it and be amused even when she caught him snogging another woman at a party. It’s as though Patricia was trying to be ‘modern’ and accept Peter’s behaviour. Of course, Peter followed up with an inevitable affair and then chased it with double standards against Patricia when she does the same.

For this old war horse, I would hazard a guess (bet money) that the marriage collapsed due to a dead baby and infidelity.

Peter left after a tumultuous 6 months of announcing his desire for a divorce. Patricia asked him to stay for 6 months (rather sado-masochistic IMO), imagining that she would “fight” for him and woo him back. The six months are hell with Peter being cruel, repulsive, and abusive. So they split.

Patricia is patching together a new life in an new apartment with divorced roommate, Lucia. Lucia is a tonic for Patricia as she understands exactly how it feels to be an “ex-wife.”

“Not everyone who used to be married is one. There are women about whom it is more significant to know that they work at this or that, or like to travel, or go to symphony concerts than to know that they were once married to someone or other.” She looked at me reflectively.

“You’re an ex-wife, Pat, because it is the most important thing to know about you…explains everything else, that you once were married to a man who left you.“

Lucia has been divorced for some time and she notes that divorced women fall into three classes:

Ex-wives seem to be doing three things. Some go in for celibacy and business success–one necessitates the other almost always, you know simply because there is a limit to the amount of vitality a woman has to expend, altogether. Most women can’t stand the pace of a career and a great love affair (or several in succession managed simultaneously. The careerists will be alright, though in a sense; they’ll save money for their old age and so on. But they won’t have children so the problem ends with them. That is class one.

Lucia states that she’s in class three–ready to marry (sensibly) again.

At present, Pat, you’re in class two, and, I think, on your way to class three, where I am. Class two says ‘Love is over, there remains … adventuring about

Lucia introduces Patricia to a lot of single men, and Patricia notes that “as soon as they get here for dinner they begin arranging to stay for breakfast.” While there are many men in the lives of Patricia and Lucia, there are some constants including Nathaniel, Bill and Kenneth. Kenneth is terminally ill, a doomed absinthe drinker who understands love and loss, Bill is a faithful admirer, “a gentleman of the old school” and according to Lucia, “a great help in small doses.” Nathaniel is a sweet, gauche, naïve man who suffers under his wealthy father’s tyrannical rule.

Ex-Wife explores the complete inadvisability of having an affair –or juggling 2 relationships at once. Peter’s affair seems refreshing (to him) but the ‘other woman’ cannot be evaluated coolly and objectively when she serves as an alternative to marital woes. She’s the opposite of Patricia is every way possible and while that makes her attractive in the short term and accelerates the marriage melt-down, her viability as a partner only exists as a contrast to Peter’s toxic marriage. One person becomes an antidote to the other and perspectives are skewed.

Published in 1929 Ex-Wife seems modern. The problems examined here are universal. Patricia is a divorced woman in a society with shifting moral standards. At one point, Lucia points out that society has changed. She notes that years ago, Patricia would not have had “twenty opportunities for infidelity flung at you in a year,” and that Peter’s affairs would have been “discreet.” Women are now in the workplace with the result:

The principal thing that relieving women from the dullness of domesticity did, was to relieve men from any necessity of offering stability in return for love, fidelity and so on.

Women used to have status, a relative security. Now they have the status of any prostitute, success while their looks hold out. If the next generation of women have any sense, they’ll dynamite the statue of Susan B. Anthony and start a crusade for the revival of chivalry.

Once unmoored form her marriage, Patricia still longs for Peter–something I found annoying. There’s domestic violence here–although the term is not used, and there’s also date rape. No wonder this novel feels so modern.

This is a gem.

2 Comments

Filed under Fiction, Parrott Ursula, posts

Tagged as , , ,

April 1, 2026 · 8:38 pm

Other People: Celia Dale (1964)

“What happens to other people can happen to you too. There’s nothing special about any of us, no special law that says one person has it good all the time.”

In Celia Dale’s novel, Other People, 15 year-old June Baxter lives with her mother who owns and operates a small corner shop in the small town of Havenport. Life has been very predictable and good. June and her mother live above the shop and June helps out after school. It’s just been the two of them for as long as June can remember. Mrs Baxter is always there for June, supporting her in every aspect of her life:

The absolute security of her mother’s presence, that fed, clothed and provided, loved, had made it unnecessary for June to ever fear anything, even to concern herself with anything outside the absorbing world of her own interests.

June’s father is absent, and she’s told he’s in Australia due to poor health and is in a “sanatorium” There are letters and photos locked up somewhere, but since there are no memories of life with both parents, June rarely thinks of him or what life must have been like before Havenport. She “used to ask about him,” but even curiosity has faded.

Life changes abruptly, however, when Mrs.Baxter announces that her husband is returning, and since they need a ‘fresh start,’ she’s sold the shop and they are moving to Bristol. Mrs Baxter has already bought a new home and a new shop, and June must leave her school and her friends behind. During the “adjustment” period (June’s father returning) June is to stay with Auntie Norah, her mother’s best friend, who’s a nurse in London. June is shocked at the sudden upheaval but the promise of change makes the future seem exciting.

Once in Bristol, June is terribly unhappy. Her world is ripped apart. She dislikes the new school and can’t make friends. She was the centre of her mother’s world (or so she thought) and now there’s a rival. She dislikes her father and sees him as an intruder. She is distressed by her mother’s obvious delight that he is home. June realises she hates him:

I hate his voice or I hate his feeble jokes or even, with exaltation, I hate him because he and mum laugh together–this was a dangerous hate, often bringing tears. She would lie sobbing into her pillow, quietly yet hoping perhaps to be overheard.

June, a girl with a great imagination, rebels against the new family structure.. She’s right on the cusp of discovering her sexuality when she becomes aware of Anthony who visits his mother next door. Anthony or Tony is a WWII veteran, and now Tony, in middle age and reduced to working in a London shop, misses those glory days. June’s attention is flattering, but everyone–Tony’s smothering mother, June’s parents, and even Tony realise the dangers of June’s immature sexuality. …

Celia Dale’s crime novels always have an intriguing view of family life and the claustrophobic smothering intensity of pathological familial relationships. Many current crime books take well-worn paths: the husband who suddenly goes missing, leaving his wife as number one suspect, the husband’s first wife who morphs into a super stalker for wifey number 2, the family who go on holiday and return to strangers in their abode-a-wee. These books can be fun reads but they take well-worn paths. Celia Dale explores the pathologies of domestic life while worming her way into the intricacies of seemingly deep relationships which can shatter in a second. She guts these relationships to reveal the inner rot, the burden of buried resentments and the fetid air of unresolved emotional wounds.

Leave a comment

Filed under Dale Celia, Fiction, posts

Tagged as ,

March 18, 2026 · 10:13 pm

Love Over Scotland: Alexander McCall Smith

Back to Alexander McCall Smith’s lively 44 Scotland Street with the third novel in the series: Love Over Scotland. We meet many old friends here including: Bertie and his parents Stuart and Irene, anthropologist Domenica MacDonald, student Pat MacGregor, Matthew Duncan, art gallery owner, Angus Lordie and his dog Cyril, and coffee shop owner Big Lou. The title Love Over Scotland is a clue that romance is one of the book’s themes, but apart from hearts and flowers, there are other adventures afoot.

Readers of the series are familiar with Bertie’s trials and tribulations: in a nutshell, a domineering mother, Irene, who is pregnant, is a devotee of psychoanalyst Melanie Klein, and reading a brief synopsis of Klein’s theories (online) added to the humour of Irene’s hubris and complete lack of introspection. Since Irene is armed with all the answers to childrearing, she is an impossible woman. Bertie longs to have a regular childhood but Irene blocks (or tries to block) any independent choices Bertie tries to make. He is given the role of Captain von Trapp in the school play, The Sound of Music, and while Bertie is dismayed at the prospect, Irene is ecstatic. Bertie, now aged 6, speaks fluent Italian and is a wiz on the saxophone, joins the Edinburgh Teen Orchestra against his will. It’s another one of his controlling mother, Irene’s brilliant ideas.

“But I’m not a teenager,” protested Bertie, helplessly. They’ll all be teenagers, Mummy, I promise you. I’ll be the only one in dungarees.”

Bertie, wearing the infamous pink dungarees, finds himself adrift in Paris.

“Were you allowed to go to the Moulin Rouge if you were only six?” he wondered “Or did you have to be at least ten?“

Gentle, sweet (hapless) Matthew takes control of 4 million pounds gifted to him by his father and immediately makes some unfortunate wardrobe choices, including “crushed-strawberry” coloured trousers and a “distressed oatmeal sweater.” 4 million pounds serves only to highlight his loneliness:

He had heard there were singles’ clubs where everybody went on holiday together. That would be interesting, perhaps, but what if one did not take to the other singles? Besides the very word single sounded a bit desperate.

Matthew is ready for a relationship–and Pat is the sole candidate, but she seems to be interested in someone else.

He wanted someone who would be waiting for him, or for whom he could wait. Somebody he could share things with. And wasn’t that what everybody wanted?

Pat moves into a new flat and faces room-mate issues (again) and ponders if/why she has such poor taste in men. Domenica embarks for foreign parts and an anthropological study amongst pirates, and horror or horrors…Cyril is stolen.

Love is central here–Matthew loves Pat, and that’s awkward as his feelings are not reciprocated–plus she’s his employee. Big Lou has bad luck with men, and her current mistake “borrows” money to open a strip joint. With Domenica absent, Angus feels her loss, but Domenica lends her flat to a friend, Antonia, and Angus makes an effort to make her feel welcome. At first, Angus, who misses Domenica’s company and conversation, has a favourable impression of Antonia. But that impression soon sinks, and Angus finds himself disliking Antonia. Angus decides to make an effort and cook dinner for Antonia. Unfortunately several bottles of wine are consumed before she arrives and … well, Angus certainly manages to make an impression.

It’s extraordinary how the level of a good wine sinks so quickly, he said to himself as he lifted the bottle to the light.

Lard O’ Connor (Glasgow’s infamous yet oddly loveable crime lord) returns to right a few wrongs. Bertie’s therapist, Dr Fairbairn exchanges confidences with Irene, and she finds herself comparing her husband Stuart to Dr Fairbairn. In one session with Bertie, Dr Fairbairn decides that Bertie’s school-mate, Tofu, must be an imaginary friend as “no real child would be called that.” Bertie thinks Dr Fairbairn is quite mad and so this is just more evidence.

As Dr. Fairbairn gazed thoughtfully at Bertie, so too did Bertie gaze at the psychotherapist. When they eventually took Dr Fairbairn off hospital- to Carstairs-thought Bertie would he be able to make friends there?

Perhaps not, but then maybe he would be able to invent a friend too

I wasn’t keen on the sections involving Domenica, but mostly Love Over Scotland is very funny. The sections about Bertie are my favourite parts, and I don’t usually like to read through children’s eyes. Authors rarely get it right, but in this case, Bertie is very entertaining. On one hand, he has a savvy view of his mother and Dr Fairbairn but since he’s six, he’s mostly powerless. He does, however, have an opportunity or two to thwart Irene’s plans. And while Bertie may be a child prodigy he is still only 6, so he draws 6 year old conclusions when confused about the adult world. In one section, a righteous Irene troops off to the police station to report the family car missing, and once there, she asks Bertie when they last saw the car:

Bertie scratched his head. “Last week, I think. Yes, Mummy, it was last week. Daddy was out drinking, remember, and you…”

Later he mentions to the police that Irene said a “bad word” when she noticed the car was missing. I thought a lot about Bertie when I finished the book. Those teen years are in the future. I have to read the rest of the series …

3 Comments

Filed under Fiction, posts, Smith Alexander McCall

Tagged as , ,

March 3, 2026 · 8:30 am

Under the Net: Iris Murdoch (1954)

“We all live on other people’s vices.”

I’ve read one Iris Murdoch previously : The Severed Head. Loved it, so when I saw a blog challenge to read Murdoch, it was just the excuse I needed. I decided to start with her first published novel: Under the Net. Under the Net is a much lighter novel than The Severed Head. It’s madcap and funny–not what I expected. Our hero, and I use that term loosely is Jake (James) Donaghue. Jake is a writer (more on that later) and his main gig is translating bad French novels. He scrapes a living, and this is supplemented by his serial sponging off women. So right away we have a flawed character who, during the cause of the novel discovers his code of morality–a code he didn’t know existed.

When the novel opens, Jake returns from France to the news that he (along with his loyal sidekick and distant relative, Finn) must find a new place to live. Jake and Finn have been living in a flat owned by typist, Magdalen. Jake and Magdalen are/were more than roommates, and this is Jake’s typical cheap tinsel MO. He has some sort of relationship with a woman, then moves in and lives rent-free. These arrangements inevitably come to a bitter end, and then he moves on to his next meal ticket. So poor Jake…he’s thrown into a pit of anxiety when Magdalen tells him to clear off as she’s getting married. She managed that relationship on the sly, but who can blame her? Jake is horrified when Magdalen tells him the name of her fiancé: Sammy Starfield, “the diamond,” bookie who has a bad reputation. Starfield “now did a bit of everything in those regions where money could take him.”

Jake is someone who appreciates someone (or something) only when he’s lost them. When faced with the fact that Magdalen is in a new relationship, he feels a pang of regret, but he “followed [his] rule of never speaking frankly to women in moments of emotion. No good ever comes of this.” Jake finds her choice of fiancé a bit odd.

“Madge is used to consort with tedious but humane city men, or civil servants with bohemian tastes, or at worst with literary hacks like myself.“

Jake thinks it’s highly unlikely that Starfield will actually marry Magdalen, but he has no choice except to move out and so is forced to find a new place to live. Parking his meagre belongings at a newspaper shop owned by the benevolent Mrs Tinckham, Jake asks old friend Dave to let him move in. Dave, whose well-worn advice is “get a job,” doesn’t want a free-loading roommate (or 2) so Finn suggests looking up Jake’s old girlfriend, Anna. Jake hasn’t seen her in years, and with no shame whatsoever Jake seeks her out hoping that she will let him move in (again). Anna, who once had a “singing act” with her sister Sadie, is now running a small theatre in Hammersmith. While Jake excuses his unexpected visit with his sudden desire to see her again, Anna is underwhelmed. Fancy that.

Anna seems changed. Sadder, more cynical:

“There was something detached and theoretical in her eye which I had never noticed there before.”

Jake surmises that there is a man somewhere behind these changes. Anna tells Jake that her actress sister, Sadie, glamorous and famous, needs a housesitter, and that seems like the perfect gig to Jake so he heads out. Sadie, a “notorious liar” not only wants a housesitter but also some sort of live-in bodyguard as she claims she’s “being persecuted by the most frightful man.” And this is how all the fun begins.

Throughout the novel, three women: Anna, Madge and Sadie shape Jake’s decisions as he swims his way through many moral dilemmas. He tries to take the high moral ground against Starfield but finds himself, instead, in a betting frenzy with the savvy, corrupting bookie. Initially Starfield tries to give Jake money to go away but Jake is outraged that he is being “bought off.” He protests and tries to take the moral high ground, tossing in, not so subtly, a reference to Starfield’s humble origins:

“I don’t belong to the social class that takes money in a situation like this.”

But Jake really does want the money Starfield offers, but how to get it without looking like a complete cad? Jake is a slippery character and he soon comes up with a solution that suits both men.

“What prevented the closure of this mutually rewarding deal? My principles. Surely there must be some way round. In similar fixes I had rarely failed to find one.“

In arguably the funniest scene in the book, at Jake’s suggestion, Starfield proceeds to create a betting frenzy in Jake which supposedly nets huge wins. So Jake is bought off but in a way that allows him to save face. At least temporarily, but Jake’s initial corruption by Starfield pales in the corruption that awaits him. Jake must choose to take money (a lot) and a great career move if he betrays the few principles he didn’t know he possessed. Jake’s adventures include a pub crawl, a betting frenzy, flat-imprisonment and dog-napping,

I sat there a long time. At first I kept thinking about the money. I brooded on every aspect of it. I turned it into francs. I turned it into dollars. I shifted it around from one European capital to another. I invested it avariously at high rates of interest. I spent it riotously on château wines and château women. I bought the very latest make of Aston Martin.

And

I had so littered my life already with compromises and half-truths. I could have picked my way through a few more. The twisting hills of falsehood never cease to appal me, but I constantly entered them; possibly because I see them as short corridors which lead put again into the sun.

And

Money. The heart of reality. The rejection of reality the only crime. I was a dreamer. A criminal. I wrung my hands.

Jake has done some questionable things regarding women in the past; he’s used them, and in this novel, he finds himself being used by women. Jake also harbours shame regarding his ex-friend Hugo. Jake feels that he betrayed Hugo (in a literary way) thanks to a book, The Silencer, that Jake wrote using Hugo’s spoken thoughts. Part of Under the Net includes Jake’s frantic avoidance of Hugo and then his desperate pursuit of Hugo. At one point Jake’s even forced to get a job, and to his surprise even though he works with a lot of women, none seem impressed with his charm:

“I noticed that none of them were took me seriously me as a male. I exuded an aroma, which although we got along so splendidly, in some way kept them off; perhaps some obscure instinct warned them that I was an intellectual.“

Jake won me over with his rescue (and subsequent relationship) of/with a dog.

Jake’s avoidance of Hugo and his cavalier behaviour towards women have hampered any progress towards maturity but there’s nothing to compare to making the right moral choices to pave the way to growing up. Sometimes all it takes is being presented with barriers we are unwilling to cross.

Thanks to Cathy and Kim for reminding me to read Iris Murdoch again,

8 Comments

Filed under Fiction, Murdoch Iris, posts

Tagged as , , ,

February 21, 2026 · 9:26 am

The Temptation of Eileen Hughes: Brian Moore

In Brian Moore’s novel, The Temptation of Eileen Hughes, 20-year-old Belfast resident Eileen lives alone with her mother, Agnes. Money is tight, Agnes has poor health, and it seems great luck when Eileen becomes the “pet” of Mona McAuley, the wife of Bernard, a very wealthy man. Mona, a “smashing” blonde, was a pharmacist until she was romanced by Bernard. Now, a deeply discontent wife, she helps him run his many businesses. Eileen was working as a shop girl until she was taken up by Mona. She is promised promotions, invited to parties at Mona’s grand house and even travels with the McAuleys.

When the novel opens, Eileen, Mona and Bernard are on a trip to London. Eileen and her mother think she’s a lucky girl, but it’s a very odd situation. The minute they arrive in London, Mona claims illness and fatigue, and so Bernard ferries Eileen around without the Mrs. Eileen feels uncomfortable about this, and when she happens to discover that Mona isn’t ill but picking up men in the hotel bar, she knows something isn’t right. But Eileen is innocent, she’s in a precarious financial situation, and she’s out of her depth. She knows there’s something off about her role in the McAuleys’ lives but at the same time, seduced by promises, poverty and need, the life the McAuleys offer is tempting and Eileen finds it “easy to get into the habit of being like them.”.

Eileen never had much time for boyfriends in Belfast–all they seem to want was a grope prior to an aborted wrestle for sex. So here she is in London, a virgin, imagining what it would be like to live and work in London–imagining the choices she might have in another life–a normal social life without British occupation. While Eileen has the daydreams of a young girl, the McAuleys hatch plans. Both Bernard and Mona objectify Eileen for their own purposes. For Bernard, Eileen is an obsession. For Mona, Eileen is a tool to prop up her marriage to Bernard. The McAuleys don’t understand Eileen’s stubborn (as they see it) refusal to comply. Here’s Bernard and Eileen:

“You see, not all of us have your moral fortitude.”

“I don’t have moral fortitude.”

“Oh, yes, you do. I suppose I should say I admire that, but I don’t. You’re just another example of a wee girl who is taught, ‘This is right and that is wrong’ and who believes it without thinking, simply because some priest says it’s so. Or the nuns. The nuns in Ballycastle. That’s where you went to school wasn’t it? Ballycastle convent.”

Marriages are impenetrable to outsiders and to Eileen, an innocent 20 year old, the McAuleys’ relationship is both unfathomable and toxic. Brian Moore depicts Eileen’s plight with a deft hand. Eileen doesn’t ‘resist with “moral fortitude” as Bernard states, she resist because she wants her freedom. Alone in London, without her mother’s advice, Eileen must make some difficult choices

In many ways The Temptation of Eileen Hughes reminds me of minds William Trevor’s novel Felicia’s Journey. Both Eileen and Felicia are young, innocent Irish girls alone in London. Eileen is subject to temptation and must make moral choices while Felicia ends up with a serial killer.

3 Comments

Filed under Fiction, Moore Brian, posts

Tagged as ,

February 9, 2026 · 1:57 pm

Waiting for Matindi: Helen Hodgman

“I was just making coffee when Theresa knocked on the door. She looked as you’d expect a woman to look who’d been nearly all the way to Mortdale and back again, siphoning up every drop of dreg in every pub and club and rubbish bin along the way.”

The narrator of Helen Hodgman’s delightfully quirky novel Waiting for Matindi is a woman who is “recovering from an illness.” She’s living in a small Australian town two hours from Sydney with her lover. The narrator is “in love” but it’s quite obvious that the relationship is far from perfect. There’s a distance between the two women.

My lover had asked me once if I was interested in having a baby because she would like one. I suggested we rent one so if it didn’t work out we could return it.

Makes sense to me.

The lover works long hours in the studio area of the house while the narrator tries to keep busy. Is there much of a relationship there?

Not for the first time I asked myself what I thought I was doing here, although I knew the answers anyway. I was recovering from an illness. I had no money. I was in love with the busy occupant of the studio. None of these conditions would last forever. I was lucky. I told myself this. I was living in a pleasant place. I had my lover to myself for the first time in a long time, a state of affairs I had yearned for when it wasn’t possible. I could read all day if I wanted to. something I had not had the freedom to do for years. Obviously I should count my blessings and get on mowing the lawn, so I did and ran over the cord, cut it clean in two. I wasn’t looking and I certainly wasn’t paying attention. Silence from the studio, so at least I hadn’t caused her to go crashing through the worldwide web immediately. While I was thinking about how to break the bad news I put the mower away in the shed.

The narrator drives to Sydney and runs into Theresa, a bouncily exuberant woman she hasn’t seen for a long time. Theresa “used to live in a dark flat beside the fish-and-chip shop. Then she’d disappeared. No one knew where.” Theresa had “been clinging to the wagon” for over three years.

Theresa has put on a great deal of weight.

Her dress sense hadn’t improved either. Thongs. K-mart gray track pants topped, this morning, by a vast T-shirt where a gaudy rhino charged undaunted across the mountains of her breasts. Her hair was dull with salt, still spiky from a swim.

Theresa has just returned from Kenya and a romance with a Kenyan woman named Matindi.. According to Theresa, Matindi is moving to Australia to live with Theresa. …

Change is in the air. The narrator and her lover must find a new place to live. The narrator heads back to Sydney and Bondi Beach to find a new place while the lover takes off solo for an extended Xmas trip to visit family. Once the narrator returns, the lover has an accident, and so fate takes a hand in this insipid relationship. Theresa moves to Sydney while her lover (ex?) recuperates, and so with increased proximity to the drama, the narrator follows Theresa’s murky relationship with the mysterious Matindi.

Matindi has incredible bad luck when it comes to making arrangements to move to Australia. Her bus is hijacked. Her passport is stolen and she is robbed. Then her child is ill. She has to support her mother and sisters and support one of the sister’s children. Matindi’s nose is broken. ….

Delay after delay and Theresa keeps sending money until there is no more money to send. In fact she can’t even pay for a cup of coffee.

“I’m not rich, you know.”

“I know.”

“But I’m afraid it might seem like I am, to her. Anyway, all my savings have gone now, but she doesn’t know that.”

This was the first time I’d heard Teresa to talk sense. I didn’t like it much. I preferred the madder, more amusing version.

So Theresa waits for Matindi to arrive and in the meantime the Legend of Matindi grows. Then she actually arrives

Matindi bounced about, a cartoon figure forever assaulted, having her things stolen, her nose broken, being set light to–and a shameful thought I wished I wasn’t having and wish I’d never had–which was of Matindi crushed nightly under the not inconsiderable weight of Theresa and still managing to bounce back every time.

The plot of Waiting for Matindi underscores the idea that one writer creates tragedy and another comedy. In this case, the narrator’s spiky, transgressive voice creates comedy. The narrator’s life is in turmoil: health issues, relationship issues and there’s nothing quite like distracting yourself from your own issues by concentrating on the disasters in the lives of others. And Theresa isn’t the only one with plagued with problems. There’s “Doug and Sunshine (not her real name”) the narrator’s neighbours, or they were neighbours “until Sunshine fell in love with a big Dutch drug dealer who spirited her away to live with him in Amsterdam, leaving Doug holding the baby, or the four-year-old to be exact.” And then there’s Annette who “was having trouble with her life and the men in it.” She’s married but “in lust” with another man named Duncan whose main appeal is that he “doesn’t even try to be a responsible adult.” Everyone’s life seems to be falling apart.

When did I step over the line dividing a world in which everything sorted itself out somehow into a world in which everything depended on me? At what stage and at what age does that happen? The obvious answer is when you leave home and realize that someone, usually though not necessarily your mother, has been stocking shelves and putting the necessities of life inside the bathroom cupboards shoveling food into the refrigerator, and so on. But that’s not right. For a longtime after you are responsible for such things, you just don’t care. You don’t care if the cat’s out of cat food and most of the lightbulbs need replacing. There is a time when all you care about is, or was in my own case, books, clothes, music, and a particular shade of red lipstick I just never think about anymore and come to think of it, I have not seen it on anyone’s lips lately, which is a pity.

5 Comments

Filed under Fiction, Hodgman Helen, posts

Tagged as

January 26, 2026 · 9:57 pm

The Sequel: Jean Hanff Korelitz

The Plot from author Jean Hanff Korelitz concerned Jake, a creative writing professor who wrote one successful book, another that sank without trace and has several unpublished novels gathering dust. He loathes his job at Ripley College. He finds the students tedious and if life isn’t humiliating enough, one semester, Evan Parker takes his class. Evan is an unappealing student: crass and arrogant, he brags that he has a fantastic plot and has a surefire blockbuster on his hands. After learning of Evan’s death, Jake eventually takes that orphaned plot and makes it his own, but his success is plagued by anonymous accusations of plagiarism. That’s as far as I’ll go with The Plot.

So here we have The Sequel. The Sequel concerns (spoiler alert) Jake’s widow Anna Williams Bonner who writes her own book, The Afterword. With her weepy yet plucky story she is a great media success until… yes the spectre of Evan’s book appears on the horizon. It appears that Jake’s stalker is back. … or is there a second stalker ???

The Plot was fun, but The Sequel, although it picked up where The Plot left off, was retreading old ground–although of course, the back story is now told by Anna and not Jake. Both novels concern discovering the identity of the stalker(s)–Jake’s stalker, Anna’s stalker, but the path is the same. I’m glad I read The Sequel and I doubt anything would have deterred me, but The Sequel wasn’t as much fun. Anna’s voice is delightfully nasty, and the novel unfolds with information that contradicts Jake’s version (Evan’s version), but it’s retread. That said, I would hazard a guess that both books would make great mini-series.

2 Comments

Filed under Fiction, Korelitz Hanff Jean

Tagged as ,