Carrie Tiffany - Mateship with Birds

The inaugural winner of the Stella award for Australian women's writing, and this year's winner of the NSW Premier's award, I picked up Mateship with Birds because it was a recent bookclub read (for my second bookclub; we have yet to pick a name for ourselves). I hadn't heard anything about this book when it was first suggested, nor had it yet won the prizes (though it was shortlisted for the Stella). I'm glad it was our pick last month, though, because I don't think I would have read it otherwise and I really enjoyed it.

This is a very Australian novel. I would recommend it to my North American and European readers because it will be unlike anything you have read before (unless you have read Tim Winton or Patrick White), and to my true-blue Aussie readers because parts of it will resonate with you, especially if you have family in the country.

I have a very particular way of describing Australian books that are set in the bush - and that is 'dusty'. This is one of those dusty books. One can feel the characteristic red dirt being kicked up around one's face in the dry heat as one reads. And hear the Kookaburras and Magpies. Tiffany's beautiful writing is incredibly evocative, calling to mind the unusual countryside of Australia and the slow pace of life as it unfolds on the land. For me personally, because I did not grow up here, I don't get a familiarity or true emotional resonance from Tiffany's writing - but I do enjoy reading about the dusty red centre of this unique country.

This is, on the surface, a relatively quiet book centred around the relationship between Harry, a milk farmer and Betty, a nurse, in conservative 1950s rural Victoria. Betty works for an aged care facility in town when she is not busy looking after her two children, Michael and Hazel. As a single mother, Betty has been scorned by the townspeople since she arrived many years earlier, and she leads a calm, lonely life. Harry, who lives on the neighbouring farm, is her only true friend. He too seems lonely, turning to Betty for home-cooked meals, companionship and the unexpected joys of standing in as pseudo-father to Betty's children.

Yet in spite of years of apparent courtship, the friendship between Harry and Betty has never developed beyond the platonic. The 'mates' (friends) have never become mates in the sexual sense - this is one of the quintessentially Australian puns hidden in the title to the book. The other is the play on the use of the Australian vernacular 'bird', which is slang for woman, and also refers to the animal, which features heavily in this portrait of life on the land. Harry's hobby is bird-watching, and he follows with sweet affection the lives of the Kookaburras living on his farm. He keeps an unassuming diary of their goings-on, which he writes in blank verse, and excerpts of which are interspersed throughout the novel. At one point Harry speaks of being able to assess the size of a farm or estate by the size of the Kookaburra family living there, an indication of how closely entwined are the lives of animals with the lives of people in this area of the world.

With the focus on Harry and Betty, one could see this is in some ways as a love story, albeit a very pragmatic one. But it is also, essentially, a story about life in the country, and not just the lives of people, but also the lives of animals. And when I said above that this is only ostensibly a quiet book, that is because beneath the surface, this is a book seething with fertile activity. Although it is absent (for most of the book) between Harry and Betty, sex in all its forms permeates the novel - from the fertilisation of Harry's cows, to the lives of birds and sheep and other animals on the land, to the bizarre tendencies of fellow farmer Mues and the budding sexuality of Betty's children - everything in and around the farm and the earth is seen to be teeming with sexuality in a base, quotidian way that is both reassuring and troubling. One of the girls in my bookclub found that she was unable to enjoy the story as it unfolded because she felt it was overshadowed by a sense of ominousness created by the overt sexuality. I think, though, that the in-your-face fecundity of the landscape can be explained by Tiffany's desire to illustrate how ubiquitous sex is in the country, and how people are really no different to animals. In urban settings one can perhaps mask, or hide, from the sex that is inherent in most of life's activities - one can infuse it, instead, with the human construct of romance, thus disguising our animalistic tendencies. But in the country, Tiffany asserts, our base qualities are almost impossible to avoid. Milk is not produced by non-lactating cows, and lactation is caused by fertilisation. Families of birds don't grow and survive without mateship rituals. Even death is sexualised. Survival, life, sex, death - all of these are part of the same cycle.

In the midst of all this, then, there is not much room for romance. Harry and Betty are clearly close, and they are likeable - both burrow their way insidiously into the reader's heart. I found myself warming to Betty when Tiffany described the way she used her lunch hour to change out of her nurse's uniform and into stockings and a hat in order to visit her elderly dementia patients disguised as their wives, bringing a little joy to their otherwise drab existences. I warmed to Harry when his dedication to Betty's children became clear, through repeated acts of paternal protection and kindness. However, both are such quiet, socially withdrawn personalities, that without a severe interruption of some kind the line between friend and mate might never have been crossed.

I won't give away the ending, even though this is hardly a plot-driven novel. I will say that I found the book moving and rather sweet, in spite of Tiffany's effort to keep the central relationship so pedestrian.

Overall assessment: 4 out of 5. I enjoyed this and read it quickly.

Pros / favourite parts: The writing is beautiful. Many of the passages are absolutely lovely, and these stand out starkly against the brutal reality of the descriptions of life on the land, a contrast that I'm sure was intentional.

Betty's son Michael, on why it is he will one day choose to be a farmer - "He heads out across Foot Foot's paddock towards Harry's and has the sensation that he's walking back into himself. That the day at school - lining up on the asphalt quadrangle, scuffing his shoes on the wooden floors, leaning against the concrete toilet block to smoke at lunchtime - has been a kind of skimming across surfaces; that he's moved through the day without ever putting his weight down. Here, walking across the paddock, he feels his ankles soften to take account of the uneven ground. He picks his way through the clumps of cape weed and over the mounds of dirt left by the plough. There's a rhythm to it. A way of placing your feet so they are receptive to the ground beneath. In two years' time he'll have a bitter argument with his mother about a clerical traineeship in Swan Hill and he won't be able to explain to her why it is he wants to farm."

There is a section, too, describing Harry as a little boy, entranced by the cuckoo clock on his parent's wall. One day, when they are away, curiosity gets the better of him, he finds he can't wait any longer for the little bird to appear, and he stands on a chair and removes the clock from the wall and dismantles it to discover the cogs and springs within: "At the very bottom of the clock case, in each corner, is a leather bellows. Harry pushes one of them with his finger and it makes the second half of the cuckoo sound, but with a puffed sigh at the end. The lungs of the cuckoo bird are not inside the bird itself. They are just a mechanism within the clock. The cuckoo clock is an act of ventriloquism; a callous device - the mute bird skewered to the thrusting arm - forced hour after hour to repeat its trick." This discovery upsets young Harry to the point of tears: "He thinks he might as well cry now, the crying will have to come. There will be the disappointment on his mother's face and his shame at that. But there's something more, too. He feels like he has lost something. He tries to slow his breathing now, to slow everything down, to give himself more time, but the tears have made his nose run and he's having to suck great gulps of air in."

I just love that passage. Watching my small son every day I can see his joy at experiencing things for the first time, his belief in the wondrous nature of the world. And as his mother, I so desperately want to protect him from the disappointment that inevitably comes from realising that the world is not as magical as one thinks. Tiffany's writing here so perfectly and poignantly conveys this moment of recognition for small children - it shows quite remarkable insight and sensitivity.

Cons: I do think Tiffany sometimes goes too far in her effort to portray the baseness of the sexuality in the countryside. I don't think all of the grotesque or ominous scenes were necessary - and as a city dweller myself, I found myself a bit squeamish at times, though I suppose that's the point.

Graeme Simsion - The Rosie Project

Surprisingly, I first heard of this book through the website of my favourite Australian televised book show, the ABC's First Tuesday Book Club, hosted by Jennifer Byrne. I say surprisingly because the story of how this book came to be is such that I feel that I should have heard about it before. Graeme Simsion is an Australian IT consultant in his 50s, and this is his debut novel (although it was originally conceived of as a screenplay). Before it was published Simsion entered the manuscript into the Victorian Premier's Unpublished Manuscript Award, and it won. The book was subsequently picked up by small publisher Text. And it has now earned Simsion over $1.2 million in international advances, with production companies on three different continents fighting over film rights. Amazing. So these things do still happen.

When I first started reading The Rosie Project I thought the tone was a little young adult, a little high school. It took me a while to get beyond that and realise there was more to the novel than the cute exterior which it first presented.

Don Tillman is a genetics professor who lives his life according to precise schedules. It is clear immediately Don has undiagnosed Asberger's Syndrome, though he does not realise this himself, even when he teaches a class on Asberger's to a room full of schoolchildren suffering from autism. There is obvious comedic value in this set-up, which Simsion uses to best advantage. Don is a lovely character, one to whom one warms very quickly. When he sets out to find a wife using a 16 page double-sided questionnaire, because he has determined that, statistically, married men are likely to live longer and consider themselves to be happier than unmarried men, we want him to succeed, as unlikely as that might be. When he meets Rosie, a woman who meets none of his rigorous criteria, who smokes, and has tattoos, and works in a bar, we cheer for the inevitability of their blossoming relationship instead of damning the predictability of the plot. This is because the novel has significant charm. There are scenes, too, that are very funny. I laughed outloud during Don's stellar debut performance as a cocktail waiter and mixologist for a conference crowd of medical professionals. And while some might decry Simsion's approach to the publishing and film industry as cynical - writing the story as a screenplay and then, afterwards, as a novel, so that a production company might be motivated to pick up the film rights - I admit I am looking forward to seeing this reinvented as a film. I think it will be sweet and fun and romantic. Also, these days, I think we need to be forgiving - aspiring authors must do what they need to do, given the current state of the publishing industry.

Overall assessment: 4 out of 5. This is a short review, partly because I read the book in the last few days before Lulu was born and have had little time since to sit down and think about it in any deep way. But it is a testament to Simsion's writing that I was able to read his novel, and read it so quickly, at a time when my mind was squarely focused elsewhere. I really highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a fun, diverting, uplifting read.

Pros: One thing this novel does is point out that there is, in fact, a silver lining to Asberger's. I hope people with autism or with close friends or family with autism, do not take this the wrong way - neither I nor Simsion intend to diminish the seriousness of the condition of autism. What Simsion does, though, is to portray a character in a very real way, without overt sentimentality. Don is not painted as someone we should pity - because he's not. He is someone with many gifts, who also faces more than his fair share of personal challenges, and who is finding his way just like the rest of us. I understand that the book has been well received by people with Asberger's for this reason.

Cons: Like most rom-coms, the story is predictable, and some might say the Rosie Project (the genetics project Don takes on in the book to gain favour with Rosie) is contrived. I was willing to forgive both of these elements in favour of being swept up in the lives of the characters. I actually missed the characters after putting the book down, which makes me think it might be one I will pick up again.

F Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby

As promised, I recently re-read The Great Gatsby and eagerly watched the Colbert Report's discussion of the book last week. As this was proclaimed to be Bibliofilly's first official read-along, I would love to hear from any of you who also chose to re-read the book, in anticipation of the release of Baz Luhrmann's film or for any other reason, or who have recently read it for the first time - let's light up the comments section!

Like many people, I first read The Great Gatsby in high school.  For some reason, along with vague images of Gatsby’s flashy parties, the other thing that really stayed with me was that sign on the highway between Long Island and New York, Doctor T. J. Eckleburg’s outdated optometrist’s sign, the two giant eyes raised across the road watching cars coming and going – “God sees everything!”. I remembered also the general feel of the book, the glamorous portrait of 1920s America, with cocktails and champagne fountains and flapper dresses (of course Fitzgerald is critical of this scene, yet the book portrays the glamour of it all so beautifully that this, ironically, is what remains indelibly fixed in the reader's imagination). And I knew that there was a car accident, and something to do with a mix-up involving two different cars.

But otherwise I had forgotten the details of the plot. And I had forgotten what a wonderful book this is – though that should really come as no surprise, given that The Great Gatsby has become such an American classic.

Nick Carraway, the narrator, is ex-military, home from the Great War, working in bonds in the city (New York), and settled in West Egg, Long Island, an unfashionable neighbourhood popular among the nouveau riche. His own unremarkable house is situated next door to a waterfront mansion owned by the mysterious Mr Gatsby, a wealthy man who throws lavish parties throughout the summer. Nobody knows very much about Gatsby, though anyone who is anyone attends his parties. Rumours about him abound, many unflattering – that he was a German spy, that he has killed a man – but this seems only to heighten his glamorous allure.

Unlike Gatsby, Nick has a foot in the door of respectable society, having friends across the water in fashionable East Egg, an equally wealthy suburb populated by established families with old money. Whilst visiting his cousin Daisy and her husband Tom Buchanan at their house in East Egg, Nick meets the beautiful golf pro Jordan Baker. And when Nick is finally invited to one of Gatsby’s parties, he finds Jordan there. Together Nick and Jordan become confidantes of Gatsby, who tells them a secret he has studiously kept for five years: he is in love with Daisy Buchanan, and has set out deliberately to accumulate his wealth in order to impress her. The location of his mansion is no mistake. From the waterfront of his home he can see the glow of the green light positioned at the end of the Buchanans' dock, a symbol of Daisy's proximity to him. 

With Nick’s help, Gatsby and Daisy are reunited and a love affair begins which is complicated by Daisy’s peculiar marriage to Tom, who is also engaged in an extra-marital affair, and by Gatsby’s stubborn streak. It is not enough for Gatsby that Daisy express a willingness to leave Tom for Gatsby - he wants her also to explicitly deny that she has ever loved anyone but Gatsby himself. Daisy's reluctance to do this causes a stasis whereby she finds herself torn between the two men until tragedy strikes on an unusually hot summer’s day and Gatsby’s wealth and history is revealed for what it is – something less certain, less concrete than the stability that Tom has always offered. In spite of Gatsby’s extraordinary effort to lift himself up to the echelon of society to which Daisy has always belonged, it becomes clear that he will never truly belong there. Whereas Tom does belong, has always belonged, and will effortlessly continue to belong - and this matters to Daisy. She is portrayed as a rather flimsy character, someone to whom material things and physical comfort matter above all else. But, as Jennifer Egan pointed out on the Colbert Report (did any of you watch it?), Gatsby himself is marred by the same flaw - his admiration for Daisy is squarely founded in his desire to obtain the status she represents, he is fixated on her because she embodies a position in society that he has no hope of attaining without her, no matter how much wealth he manages to accumulate. 

Gatsby personifies the American dream, and although he is ostensibly wildly successful in achieving it, Fitzgerald shows that this success is shallow, ephemeral. Gatsby's parties are attended by hundreds of people, but none of them know Gatsby, or care about him. Gatsby's wealth is extraordinary, but beneath the marble bathrooms and beautiful shirts, beneath the extravagant veneer, lies emptiness.   

I had forgotten how sad this book is, and how poignant that last line: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." Nick ultimately recognises how superficial was Gatsby's popularity, how temporary and insignificant his new money and garish lifestyle. Like Tom and Daisy, and in spite of his ultimate disregard for them, he retreats back to the safety of the solid West, where he grew up "in the Caraway house in a city where dwellings are still called through decades by a family's name".  Although Tom and Daisy are painted as the moral villains in this tale, Fitzgerald's story asserts that it is they who will continue to garner respect. It doesn't matter what they have done - they represent the establishment of real America, and their kind will continue to exist even as countless Gatsbys come and go. And as for Gatsby himself, when the party is over - it is well and truly over.

Critics have often said that The Great Gatsby, at its heart, is a scathing critique of the American dream, of new wealth, of people who throw money around for show. But I think it's more than that. Fitzgerald critiques the American dream, yes, by showing that it doesn't work, but he is more critical of America itself - a society able to revel in the temporary wealth and new success of men like Gatsby, but equally able to turn its back on those people once the shine wears off. A society in which men like Tom Buchanan can effectively get away with murder because of the good name they were granted as a birthright. 

This is not a novel in which the characters are well developed - other than Nick they are caricatures, and they are intended to be. By playing Tom and Daisy out against Gatsby, like players on a chess board, Fitzgerald is able to show us just what he thinks of the America of his day - and it's not a positive outlook. 

The fact that this has gone on to be regarded as a 'Great American Novel' is therefore interesting. I don't think it is taught in schools as a cautionary tale. Instead the 1920s era portrayed by Fitzgerald seems to be embraced and lauded as a result of the book. This puzzles me. I would be interested to hear from any American readers of this blog about how they have been taught to regard The Great Gatsby - as a celebration of American society, or a critique of it? 

Overall assessment: 5 out of 5. What can I say? It's a classic for a reason. Luhrmann's film adaptation and the continued interest in Fitzgerald's novel over time make sense when one considers that the critique of society central to the text is as relevant today as it was during Fitzgerald's day. The America of today is a place where anyone can suddenly make it big, in so many different ways - by selling their soul to reality TV, by releasing a sex tape, by filming themselves being hurt doing stupid pranks. And the nation embraces every five minutes of fame and success the ordinary person enjoys, even as it rejoices in smashing that same celebrity in the next breath. The rise and fall of personal wealth is fodder for gossip magazines, just as Gatsby's rise and fall would be if it occurred today. 

Pros / favourite passages:  Fitzgerald's writing is almost painfully beautiful. It reminds me, in its spareness and dry humour, of John Fante's writing in Ask the Dust (although really, I suppose, it would be the other way around). There are so many passages worthy of reproduction, so here are just a couple:

Nick, the narrator, on himself: "Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known." 

On Gatsby's reunion with Daisy: "As I went over to say good-bye to I saw that the expression of bewilderment had come back into Gatsby's face, as though a faint doubt had occurred to him as to the quality of his present happiness. Almost five years! There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams - not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man can store up in his ghostly heart."

The Great Gatsby read-along - with Stephen Colbert!!! (and me)

Bibliohubby and I adore Stephen Colbert. We tape the Colbert Report every night and watch it religiously after Iggy has gone to bed. We complain loudly when he takes a break and the show is put on brief hiatus (we don't begrudge him his holidays, of course not, we just miss him terribly while he's away).  When we planned our last trip to New York, Bibliohubby spent months in advance of our touch-down hunting tickets to the show, and was ultimately - yay! - successful. So along we went, and came away even more impressed by his near-faultless live performance. The man is a genius.

(Also, we are convinced that if he could only meet us and get to know us a little, he would feel as strongly about us as we do about him and we would all become the best of friends and regularly invite each other over for dinner.)

We seriously considered asking him to become Iggy's godfather. Because, you know, he would definitely go for that, even though he's never met us personally and we live on the other side of the world. He just seems like such an all-round good guy, as well as sharing our political persuasions and being crack-up hilarious. Our favourite ever Colbert moment is what we like to call the Munchma Quchi moment. YouTube it, now. You'll see.

Anyway, my fandom only increased when he announced a reading challenge the other night (ostensibly as part of the inauguration of the O Colbert Book Club - a spoof on Oprah's book club). Viewers are encouraged to read The Great Gatsby before his show on 9 May, when he will be hosting Jennifer Egan (!!) and Baz Luhrmann to discuss the text, in anticipation of the launch of the movie.

Huzzah!

Anyone who started reading this blog at the beginning of the year, when it first started, and has stuck with it since (I'm not sure anyone exists who fits this description; if there is - Hello, you fool, I love you!) may remember that re-reading The Great Gatsby was one of my early goals for 2013. And now here we are; yet another reason to get to it. Also, since writing the first draft of this post I have discovered that The Great Gatsby is also The Guardian's May book club pick.

So I'm inviting all of you to join me. Or join Colbert. Or The Guardian. Whatever. Just read the book, watch the show, and then come back here* and tell me what you think / thought of Egan and Luhrmann and Colbert, and what you thought of the book. Fun!

* It occurs to me that there is a high likelihood that no one will take me up on this challenge. Unlike Colbert, I do not have an established fan base. But I will be discussing the book and the show anyway, so you may as well drop by to read that, in early May-ish. Assuming the birth of Baby hasn't thrown everything dramatically off-course by then, which it may well do seeing as today is the due date.

Edward St Aubyn - Some Hope

I hope this isn't too boring for all of you. Once I find an author I like, I can be like a dog with a bone - I like to read through a number of their books immediately,  until I am familiar enough with their work to know if I will want to buy the next-released book as a matter of course, or whether the book I read first was a stand-out anomaly. So I emerged from Edward St Aubyn's explosive Bad News and turned immediately and greedily to his next Patrick Melrose book, Some Hope. I do promise that I will pick up a different writer next, to prevent this blog from becoming exclusively St Aubyn-themed!
This novel opens on Patrick Melrose in his 30th year. I now feel that it would be accurate to describe at least the first three parts of this five part series as the story of Patrick and his relationship with his father. Although his father is dead by the time the second novel begins, the personhood of Patrick throughout his life is obviously shaped by his feelings about his father. In this third instalment, we see Patrick clean, after successfully battling his addictions through numerous stints in rehab, still miserable, trying to find a way somehow to make peace with his dead father so that he can move on and, perhaps, find a way after all to live a useful life.

The backdrop to all of this internal strife is the gathering of various guests for a grand party at a country estate, in honour of Princess Margaret. St Aubyn here returns to the omniscient third narrator he used in Never Mind, and again uses it with wild abandon - the first half of the book leaps around to so many different characters that I found it quite difficult to remember who was who, and started wishing I had kept notes to remind myself. I actually think this would have helped my reading. As it was, I read this far more slowly than I did the first two books, with less absorption. But in the end it didn't matter - eventually the plot coalesced and the description of the party itself is a riotous read, rife with the colourful depictions of grotesque English upper-class arrogance that were so successful in the first book of this series. Really the success of these books is the ability St Aubyn has of defining and commenting so astutely on an entire class and country of people whilst keeping readers meanwhile occupied with the intriguing but smaller story of just one member of this class. As it stands, the Patrick Melrose series is a scathing indictment of the British upper class and what it represents, and how archaic, ineffectual and irrelevant it now is. In this book, St Aubyn flirts with controversy by including royalty in his critique. Princess Margaret is painted as a fatuous, mean-spirited megalomaniac - not very different from many of the other attendees at the party - and I felt as I read the account of her that St Aubyn had probably got it spot-on.

At times while I was reading this I thought nothing much was happening - but then I finished it and realised that actually tons had happened. Patrick determines that perhaps one way of dealing with his past is to be truthful about it, to talk about it, and he takes the giant step of confessing to his great friend Johnny Hall what happened to him as a child. Whilst this doesn't immediately heal all, it does help Patrick realise that forgiveness, something that has been eluding him for years, might not be necessary after all; perhaps a simple acknowledgement and acceptance of the person his father was, and of what had shaped him, was enough. Various characters from the previous two novels in the series return, some quite surprising. Bridget, who was a pretty but common girl brought along to France as the sexual plaything of the contemptible Nicholas Pratt (and so he is) in the first book, reappears after a society marriage as the hostess of the chic party central to Some Hope. Her husband, Sonny Gravesend, has been having an affair that everyone knows about and which will come to a head at the party itself. One of Patrick's acquaintances from the drug years returns in a very unexpected cameo. And the French ambassador to England has an embarrassing and very public moment when he accidentally spills sauce from the dinner he is eating over Princess Margaret's dress and is required by Her Highness herself to kneel before her and clean it up, in front of everybody.

Critics have compared St Aubyn's brilliantly sardonic comic writing to Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene - or an English Philip Roth. Certainly he has a sensational power to paint vivid pictures in the mind, and to draw memorable characters. It is increasingly clear as the series progresses that St Aubyn is also deeply interested in the notion of identity, what it means and where it comes from. Patrick is the perfect vehicle within which to explore this theme, and I look forward to seeing where he takes us next. At the end of this book we are left - as the title would suggest - feeling that there might be some hope for Patrick after all.

Overall assessment: 3.5 out of 5 - not quite the same level, for me, as the earlier two novels in this series, but fascinating nonetheless, and certainly this book does not detract from the genius of the enterprise as an entirety.

Pros / favourite passages: Patrick's obsession with and difficulty escaping from the legacy of his father is brilliantly portrayed. "The memory of his father still hypnotized him and drew him like a sleepwalker towards a precipice of unwilling emulation." "He wanted to break into a wider world, to learn something, to make a difference. Above all, he wanted to stop being a child without using the cheap disguise of becoming a parent." "How could he find any firm ground when his identity seemed to begin with disintegration and go on to disintegrate further? But perhaps this whole model of identity was misconceived. Perhaps identity was not a building for which one had to find foundations, but rather a series of impersonations held together by a central intelligence, an intelligence that knew the history of the impersonations and eliminated the distinction between action and acting." "What could he do but accept the disturbing extent to which memory was fictional and hope that the fiction lay at the service of a truth less richly represented by the original facts?"

On telling the truth about what happened to him as a child: "But which words could he use? All his life he'd used words to distract attention from this deep inarticulacy, this unspeakable emotion which he would now have to use words to describe. How could they avoid being noisy and tactless, like a gaggle of children laughing under the bedroom window of a dying man?"

Cons: The narration here moved awfully quickly and for me prevented a full surrender to the story until quite late in the book.

Also, and this is not really a con, but an observation of something I find troubling: these people are awful towards their children! After the wry observations by David Melrose and Nicholas Pratt in Never Mind, here Bridget represents stiff-upper-lip British parenting: she leaves her young child with a brutal nanny and refuses to spend time with her. She is also awful towards her own mother, which, as a mother myself, I found somewhat hard to believe - if there is anything motherhood teaches you, it is how much you owe your own parents! Interestingly St Aubyn uses the notion of attentive parenting to define Bridget's turn-around towards the end of the book: when she finally, bravely decides to walk out on her appalling husband (at least temporarily), she takes her daughter with her, and her mother, leaving the nanny behind. Perhaps there is hope here, too, although what is fascinating is that this move simultaneously represents a return from upper-class society back to the common origins from which Bridget stems. As though St Aubyn is telling us that belonging to the upper crust of British society is mutually exclusive with real emotion, with genuinely close family relations, with loving one's children.