An author whose books plumb the absolute depth and breadth of her characters’ humanity, baring every foible, every wound, until she exposes the core goodness beneath slightly cracked but stolid exteriors is Jane Gardam. I am absolutely in awe of her powers. I read God On the Rocks last winter, and thought it was magnificent. In September I read Old Filth and The Man In the Wooden Hat and I think Gardam accomplishes in two short volumes what it takes Anthony Powell twelve books to say in A Dance to the Music of Time. (Not that I discount the beauty, majesty, and genius of this great work — I am just saying Gardam is absolutely as good and these two books blew me away).
I’d really recommend you read Old Filth and God On the Rocks together, because they are parts of a whole story of the marriage of Sir Edward Feathers, a raj-orphan (child of parents serving the Empire in Asia, shipped to England as a very small boy to be schooled) and Betty Feathers, who survived the occupation of Hong Kong during WWII. Gardam’s novels capture their marriage in large and small details, their friendships, their tragedies, their indiscretions. The books are also a portrait of those faithful servants of the British Empire who matured in the post-war years as everything they knew, everything they’d been raised to inherit and rule, was changing.
As with all great literature, the beauty of Gardam’s books is that you don’t have to be a part of the culture she’s talking about to identify with these characters, to admire and love them, to find yourself sympathizing tremendously. One thing that’s especially remarkable about this pair of novels is that I found myself ultimately siding with both Edward and Betty, if there was any side-taking. And Gardam repeats some scenes in the both books, from different perspectives, so I wonder if in fact she too was rooting for both of them and felt she needed to tell both stories?
Another hallmark of a great book for me is that not only are the main characters alive as I read, but also the minor characters. These books are filled with an intriguing supporting cast, and even when a character appears only briefly, Gardam makes him or her walk right off the page into your mind’s eye. The range of human experience and emotion she covers is amazing — family identity and expectation, social standing, national and cultural identity, post-war and then post-modern cultural change, the influence of early childhood in shaping the psyche, longing to belong, longing for love, the jumble of love and commitment and duty and habit that is a long marriage, maternal instinct or its lack, friendship and rivalry, the impact of retirement and old age, the quirky criss-cross and parallel ramblings of shared memories. I simply loved these books.
These were my 5th and 6th Europa reads in 2011 -- one more to Haver level!
You can check out what else I read in September at bookconscious.
