My review of The Blue Hour: A Life of Jean Rhys, by Lilian Pizzichini

The Blue Hour: A Life of Jean Rhys

by Lilian Pizzichini

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

A thoughtful friend overseas bought and posted this book to me, unaware of my having read it twice – once after buying it before giving it away, the second on loan from my library. Without hesitation on rereading the life of my favourite author, I became immersed a third time.

Lilian Pizzichini draws much from Carole Angier's Jean Rhys: Life and Work (1990), producing a more condensed product. Her other main primary source is Rhys' Smile Please: An Unfinished Autobiography (1979).

This piece focuses on Jean the person, without the extensive theoretical commentary on her literary technique that so protracts Angier's earlier biography to its 792 printed pages. (The Blue Hour contains basic coverage of Rhys' writing but in a comparatively slender 336 printed pages.)

Indeed, Pizzichini's word economy and 'instinct for form' (among Rhys' own key trademarks) make this biography also a stylistic tribute to Rhys.

On all three readings I was struck by its leaning towards the commentariat's judgmental take on Rhys the dysfunctional woman. Though this seems inescapable, documenting such a broken character, Rhys' staunchest fans would applaud volubly if someone, someday, wrote more sympathetically, less condescendingly, showing a more strident alliance with this unique literary voice.

Admittedly, Pizzichini doesn't go as far in this respect as Carole Angier, who even concludes with a second-hand posthumous diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder. She touches, like Angier, on Rhys' positive character traits, while gesturally rationalising Rhys' dysfunctional side.

Yet I found myself leaping to Rhys' defense at each derisive inference. If still here to comment for herself, Jean would almost certainly call all of her biographers 'smug', 'respectable' and 'sneerers'.

Despite those personal issues I remained hooked by this biography. Where it triumphs over Angier's is in its pace and concision - for those seeking a faster, shorter read, that is. It makes no pretense of supplanting Angier's more fleshed-out 1990 study, still the undisputed definitive model for Rhys aficionados.

Like Rhys' prose, The Blue Hour is captivating, poignant and in parts exhilarating. Though an often patchy echo of Rhys and Angier combined, Pizzichini's work is slickly executed, sticking to factual historic elements, avoiding dry academic commentary and styled in the tradition of its subject: Jean Rhys. Hence my four stars.

Overall, nothing could give me greater pleasure than reading about this extraordinary woman, of whose life and works I have read far less engaging accounts than this.

Absolutely worth a read by any Rhys fan.

My review of Life in a Cold Climate: Nancy Mitford, by Laura Thompson

Life in a Cold Climate: Nancy Mitford

by Laura Thompson

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I sought out this biography after reading Laura Thompson's Take Six Girls: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters. Thompson's work on the famous Mitfords is engaging, entertaining and informative.

Though Nancy was not initially the most famous Mitford (Unity, Diana Mitford Mosley and Jessica Mitford having already attained notoriety with their subversive political antics and men), it was she who later secured the Mitford family myth with her bestselling novels The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate, both (very) loosely based on her family and each still global classics.

As the eldest child of 2nd Baron Redesdale (16 years older than youngest sister Deborah Mitford, she was a prominent socialite long before becoming a famous writer. 

Despite her aristocratic, if rather penniless, beginnings, Nancy was the only Mitford sister besides Jessica Mitford, to attain vocational financial independence, the other surviving sisters marrying lucratively regardless of their various individual talents.

Nancy's later books, after the more frivolous fiction that brought her fame, were historical biographies. These were penned during her Paris years - a staunch Francophile, she made that country her home, first in Paris and later in Versailles.

She was also a notorious tease, both to loved ones and the wider world, causing national furore with her tongue-in-cheek commentary on 'U and Non-U' phraseology in Noblesse Oblige: An Enquiry Into the Identifiable Characteristics of the English Aristocracy, which claimed certain terminology defined a person's class. England missed the joke and bit the bait, but Nancy was above it, across the channel in her adopted homeland.

The most socialist of the sisters, the funniest and most stylish, Nancy had a well-documented sting in her tail and was perhaps secretly the saddest to reach old age (Unity, who died young, being the most straight forwardly tragic), never settling with a truly devoted husband or partner and long hurt by unrequited adoration for the love of her life, politician Gaston Palewski, the close associate of President Charles de Gaulle. 

She suffered a lonely painful death from cancer in 1973, just a year after the French government made her a Chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur and the British government appointed her a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). 

Whilst much of Laura Thompson's material here is recycled from Take Six Girls: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters and much of it generalised Nancy Mitford 'stock' fare from the wide canon of work on her, Thompson's clear fondness for her subject gives it tremendous readability.

I read this book in a just few nights and will no doubt reread it far into the future, Nancy Mitford being one of my all-time favourite personalities.

My review of Smile Please: An Unfinished Autobiography, by Jean Rhys

Smile Please: An Unfinished Autobiography

by Jean Rhys (Introduction by Diana Athill)

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Jean Rhys died aged 87 in 1979 before completing her autobiography, which she had started dictating only months before. Later that year the incomplete text appeared posthumously under this title.

After years of reading and rereading Jean's fiction I, like many, was doubtless it was all pieces of her own life. That was irrelevant to me, yet so relevant too. That presumption - that she needed to borrow from herself rather than create - felt disloyal, insulting to her writing ability. Yet I also feared that by reading this I may be disappointed discovering that her fiction was not, after all, dressed up (or down) fragments her own life.

Such was the dilemma underlying my prevarication in reading this, a slow self-torture not unlike Jean's own which I knew so intimately from her stories. When I mustered the courage to read this it was the milestone I hoped it would be.

Yes, Jean's fictional books were distinguishable here in her real life. But thankfully, as the saying goes, 'truth is always stranger than fiction'. So I was saved, my dilemma redundant.

I had a reticence that this felt intrusive, like rummaging through her drawers when she had gone. However, I consoled myself, she would not have disclosed here what she chose not to, nobody was forcing her to say anything. My mother once said, 'I taught you everything you know ... but not everything I know!' Here was my favourite writer inferring likewise with those deliciously pregnant narrative gaps.

As devotees and biographers have noted, Jean bared her soul in her writing but kept some to herself. I was relieved she did likewise here, retained some small, precious dignity after the literary world had bellowed at her, in her dotage, for forever baring her most intimate truths veiled in gossamer thin fiction.

Many have concurred it was not just what Jean wrote that was so brilliant: it was what she did not write, those gaps left for the reader's mind to fill. Indeed, one biographer who researched her old drafts revealed that Jean always underwent a severe, almost self-lacerating editing process, originally taught her by ex-lover and mentor Ford Maddox Ford. Here she does it one final time as she grinningly waves us farewell, leaving us longing to know what else happened in between these episodes she so tantalisingly punctuates.

In this Jean includes her first poem, penned the first time her adolescent heart broke. It comprises three simple words written three consecutive times: 'I didn't know, I didn't know, I didn't know.'

I will not desist revisiting her works whenever I get those Jean Rhys blues. That would be unthinkable. I need to know her words await me.

This, her last word, was not for this fan the end of Jean Rhys, not something that left me with any disloyal finality or closure on her. Rather, it confirmed that I should start over and read her books from scratch. Again. And again. And again.

My review of Theatre, by W. Somerset Maugham

Theatre

by W. Somerset Maugham

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

After relishing Of Human Bondage, penned 22 years before this and adapted into a career-defining Bette Davis movie, I was surprised on several levels by Theatre, whose 2004 screen adaption scored Annette Bening a Best Actress Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination for Being Julia.

Firstly, I was surprised by its great readability, of the kind that defies conventional analysis; that literary X-factor distinguishing great writers from good ones, their material striking an artful balance between adequacy and audacity. 

Secondly, I was surprised that Theatre's magic is not in its delivery, which is clunky for such a successful wordsmith (he had this published in 1937, forty years after his breakthrough novel, Liza of Lambeth). Nor is his command of vocabulary so apparent here, as was noted by contemporary critics, several of whom were unimpressed by this novel.

Thirdly, I was surprised to see that word economy was not one of Theatre's notable stylistic features. Maugham's evolved indifference to narrative refinement suggests publication teams had become shy of engaging with this giant. Nor is the style, conversely, so flamboyant. 

Perhaps he had simply come to hold less concern for form than his less prolific contemporaries, more confidence in the purity of his storytelling. This is strangely reassuring. 

Those first three questions collectively begged the fourth and ultimate one for me: how did he get away with being so blasé?

I believe the answer is that, like so many prolific masters of the era, Maugham had relaxed into his art sufficiently not to need to prove much anymore. This piece might never have kick started his career, decades before; his vast readership had simply, by 1937, developed a steady appetite for whatever he wrote.

The essence of this fiction lies in its bare substance, rather than its presentation. As such, Theatre defies the discerning reader's better judgement by refusing to be put down despite conspicuous imperfections. Its key strength lies in the authentic characterisation, most notably that of protagonist Julia Lambert. 

Perhaps a crucial ingredient is its triggering of the reader's speculation as to which of this novelist-playwright's countless actress friends Julia Lambert parodies – not that she is a mere parody; on the contrary, here is a finely nuanced and compellingly original heroine. Maugham was famously friends with the likes of Gladys Cooper and Ethel Barrymore, to name but a couple, which lures the inquisitive mind down intriguing paths.

I devoured this roughly crafted gem like a famished hyena and shan't hesitate to reread it down the track.

My review of Wait for Me! by Deborah Mitford

Wait for Me!

by Deborah Mitford

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars

For Mitford sisters' fans, Deborah is essential reading. The youngest, she achieved the highest rank, as Duchess of Devonshire. She was too young to know the earlier Mitford households, Batsford House then Asthall Manor, which were mythologised as 'Alconleigh' by sister Nancy in the bestselling semi-autobiographical novel The Pursuit of Love. 

Instead, Deborah grew up at Swinbrook, which their father built and the older Mitford girls despised due to its lack of historic charm or communal library (which had been most of their autodidactic bedrock).

In some ways therefore a standalone, Deborah lacked her siblings' unfulfilled yearnings for formal education, instead relishing her rural childhood and many animals. She loved horse riding and many of her father's country interests, which the others (except for 2nd eldest Pam) longed to escape.

Perhaps because of these adored formative years, she was arguably the most well-adjusted Mitford girl and was noted for always treating people of every social stratum equally.

When She married Lord Andrew Cavendish, younger son of the 10th Duke of Devonshire, in 1941, there was no thought of him inheriting the dukedom, the couple living in various bucolic settings on the fringes of her in-laws' estates. She otherwise went around England with her army husband, whose military pay was pretty ordinary.

Only when Andrew's older brother William, Marquess of Hartington, was killed in action in 1944 did he unexpectedly become heir. When Andrew became the 11th Duke of Devonshire on his father death in 1950, Deborah was a Duchess!

Post-war inheritance taxes of 80% approx. (a bill of £7 million or £220 million in 2016) meant selling off much of the vast Dukedom of Devonshire estate to pay for retaining the jewel in its crown, historic Chatsworth House.    

As the new Duchess, Deborah faced the mammoth task of restoring Chatsworth, for centuries the Cavendish family seat, which would open to the public to pay for its upkeep. From scratch she learned to restore and maintain one of Britain's foremost stately homes, becoming the face of Chatsworth for decades, at times manning Chatsworth's ticket office herself.

These projects later extended to other heritage listed sites in the estate. In those restorative arts, and in running a stately home, she became an expert, writing around a dozen books on Chatsworth itself, plus numerous works of personal memoir. In 1999, she was appointed a Dame Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (DCVO) by Queen Elizabeth II, for her service to the Royal Collection Trust.

She became Dowager Duchess on her husband's death in 2004 and died herself in 2014 aged 94, the last surviving Mitford sister.

Her memoir Wait for me! takes its title from her being the youngest and therefore the last in early family outings and activities, always running behind trying to catch up on her tiny young legs. Her teasing eldest sister Nancy always said down to earth Deborah had retained the mental age of an eight- or nine-year-old, never acquiring the airs and graces expected of a grand duchess. Of course, this was Nancy's way with all.

Deborah (nicknamed 'Debo' from an early age) entertained and befriended everyone of world importance, from the Kennedys in the '50s and '60s to Prince Charles and Camilla in the new millennium, yet always had some small anecdote about even the humblest servant.

This striking humility, with her gratitude for the good fortune she enjoyed (and quiet stoicism over the losses of three of her seven babies), makes her writing immediate and engaging. Like most of her famous sisters, she had a natural talent for writing and storytelling and was a true eccentric, at strokes fascinating, moving and hilarious.

Not the fanciest Mitford sister, the wittiest or the archest, Debo is the most solid and grounded of those published. Her photographs from over the decades, from angelic infancy to tulle and diamante bedecked debutante, to hostess of twentieth century world leaders, are breathtaking.

Of all Debo's books, this one in particular is the icing on the cake for any Mitford canon devotee. She does not disappoint!

My review of Lady in Waiting: My Extraordinary Life in the Shadow of the Crown, by Anne Glenconner

Lady in Waiting: My Extraordinary Life in the Shadow of the Crown

by Anne Glenconner

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Lady Glenconner's life could arguably not have failed to make unputdownable reading. One might think it impossible for any aristocratic wife of the owner of the island of Mustique, and royal Lady-in-Waiting, to get this wrong, considering readership thirst. Yet being a prominent peeress and socialite does not always a fine author make. Some other daughter of an earl may not have been blessed with this one's magnetic persona or storytelling prowess. Whilst she humbly acknowledges the publisher's support, this articulate and amusing woman is a born raconteuse.

Her words glow with the impish charm and wry wit reminiscent of the late great Nancy Mitford, another highborn Mistress of Anecdote whose work became an industry. Literary critic Raymond Mortimer wrote that Mitford's Madame de Pompadour "reads as if an enchantingly clever woman was pouring out the story to me on the telephone." In Glenconner's Lady in Waiting we find a similar flair. As with Mitford's globally loved works, Lady Anne's narrative makes no stab at literary greatness, instead riding on candour and authenticity guaranteed to entertain.

Her breathtakingly privileged status never once becomes the storytelling liability it could have, in connecting with everyday people. Her frankness and humility win us onside, without an ounce of the pomposity that has been the undoing of some biographers of her rank.

That we can't help but empathise over some of the awfulness life has thrown at her, is testimony to the balance of this piece. Her starchy aristocratic father Thomas Coke, 5th Earl of Leicester, her impossible but fabulous husband Colin Tennant, 3rd Baron Glennconner, her adored yet tragic two sons the Hon. Henry and Charles Tennant, were never going to make Lady Anne's life a walk in the park. But fabulous times she has enjoyed, and she shares these generously with her readers, taking us on the ride of our lives.

Having anticipated this finely polished biography for a year, I drank it up in four nights and was saddened to close the last page.

A classy and delicious read. More please, Lady G.

My review of The Old Wives' Tale, by Arnold Bennett

The Old Wives' Tale

by Arnold Bennett

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars

First published in 1908, this is considered one of Bennett's finest works. His breathtaking detail and description are something to behold.

The story begins around 1840 in the Stafforshire pottery town of Burslem, where young sisters Constance and Sophia Baines work in their parents' draper's shop. They are initially close but contrastingly different girls, Sophie the younger considered incorrigible by the more proper Constance. As they grow up the sister drift, mentally and geographically, apart. Later also set partly in Paris, the tale tracks each sister, separately, into the full bloom of adulthood, the prime of maturity and the frailty of their dotage. It concludes in 1905.

The book divides into four parts. The first, 'Mrs. Baines', introduces the two sisters and those around them, in their bedridden father's combined shop-cum-house overlooking the town square. With their father ill, the sisters' primary parent is their mother. By the end of this section, rebellious Sophia has eloped with a travelling salesman, while obedient Constance has married her parent's shop employee, Mr. Povey.

The second part, 'Constance', follows sensible Constance through to her grey-haired retirement, when she reunites with her long-lost runaway sister. Her unremarkable life is defined not by adventure or outstanding accomplishments, but by deeply personal events, such as her husband's death, her growing worries over her son's life decisions and social behaviour.

The third part, 'Sophia', follows passionate young Sophia after her elopement. Deserted in Paris by her husband, she survives the odds, becoming a successful pensione proprietor.

The fourth part, 'What Life Is', sees the two sisters reunite. Worldly old Sophia finally returns to her Burslem childhood home, which plain old Constance has never left.

It's mindboggling that one man could have created so much intricate detail in these wonderful Victorian characters. How on earth did he achieve this?

In his initial published introduction, Bennett mentioned his debt to Guy de Maupassant's Une Vie (that same introduction originally included a nod to W. K. [Lucy] Clifford's Aunt Anne, but her mention is intermittently omitted from various subsequent editions and is permanently absent by the 1983 edition). Bennett's inspiration for the actual story was triggered by a chance encounter in a Paris restaurant, as he recounts:

'...an old woman came into the restaurant to dine. She was fat, shapeless, ugly, and grotesque. She had a ridiculous voice, and ridiculous gestures. It was easy to see that she lived alone, and that in the long lapse of years she had developed the kind of peculiarity which induces guffaws among the thoughtless.

I reflected, concerning the grotesque diner: "This woman was once young, slim, perhaps beautiful; certainly free from these ridiculous mannerisms. Very probably she is unconscious of her singularities. Her case is a tragedy. One ought to be able to make a heartrending novel out of the history of a woman such as she." Every stout, ageing woman is not grotesque — far from it! — but there is an extreme pathos in the mere fact that every stout ageing woman was once a young girl with the unique charm of youth in her form and movements and in her mind. And the fact that the change from the young girl to the stout ageing woman is made up of an infinite number of infinitesimal changes, each unperceived by her, only intensifies the pathos.'

Perfect in every way, I have never read anything in this category that surpasses this in literary quality or storytelling. Why this is not more famously celebrated I can't imagine. No major updated screen adaption has eventuated since the 1921 film The Old Wives' Tale starring Fay Compton, Florence Turner and Henry Victor, other than the 1988 BBC TV series Sophia and Constance starring Alfred Burke, Lynsey Beauchamp and Katy Behean.

I adore this oft overlooked great classic. Everyone should read it at least once in their life.