Three Generations of Angry Women
May. 4th, 2014 07:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtvesselSep 2013
A Fugue in Time - Rumer Godden - Virago, 2013
* * *
Several years ago I had the concept of a story spread over centuries, told from the perspective of the room in which all the action took place. I didn't develop it because I couldn't come up with a compelling tale to tell in that framework, and also because I suspected that it wasn't original enough. I was right - this novel takes almost exactly that approach, even starting with the words "The house, it seems, is more important than the characters". Which means that this is the only book I know where the main criticism that can be levelled against it is summed up in its opening line.
The problem is that it's an idea that appeals to writers rather than readers, who would prefer to hear about people. The opening chapter, entitled "Inventory", is a case in point - it describes the house, 99 Wiltshire Place, in detail from bottom to top, from the grandfather clock in the hall to the brown hair ribbon in the converted bedroom on the second floor. It does introduce the main character, Rolls Dane, an eighty year old man who is about to be evicted due to the expiry of a ninety-nine year lease, and, through his memories, to the other main characters. However the memories are tied to objects in the house rather than to temporal order, making a patchwork that is confusing and alienating for the reader.
The most interesting and developed theme is the depiction of female anger at the roles into which men force them. Rolls' mother, Griselda, is frustrated at not being able to travel and at the expectation that she will produce many children (and her nickname for her husband - "The Eye" - shows how controlling he is). His sister Selina's frustration at her own lack of education is taken out on the hapless Lark, an orphan whom The Eye adopts and with whom Rolls falls in love. Grizel, Rolls' great niece, is an American nurse who comes to stay (the contemporary part of the story is set during the Blitz). She resents her isolation as an outsider and resists her growing attraction to Pax Masterson, a wounded airman who is also staying in the house, seeing it as a romantic duty that she is expected to fulfil.
The writing is elegant and has the concision of poetry, but there are a couple of quirks that are annoying. The descriptive style used for the house bleeds into dialogue, particularly Masterson's, making it sound incredibly stilted. And there is a repeated punctuation fault where commas are omitted before names, for example "Do you take sugar John?" rather than "Do you take sugar, John?" The fact that names crop up so regularly and so unrealistically in the dialogue illustrates the problems that Godden had with keeping who was speaking clear in readers' heads as the action shifts through Rolls' out-of-sequence memories.
Still, it is an interesting development of the stream of consciousness approach of Virginia Wolfe that demonstrates the strengths and weaknesses of a story where a location is the central character. I'm just glad that Godden did it and not me.
A Fugue in Time - Rumer Godden - Virago, 2013
* * *
Several years ago I had the concept of a story spread over centuries, told from the perspective of the room in which all the action took place. I didn't develop it because I couldn't come up with a compelling tale to tell in that framework, and also because I suspected that it wasn't original enough. I was right - this novel takes almost exactly that approach, even starting with the words "The house, it seems, is more important than the characters". Which means that this is the only book I know where the main criticism that can be levelled against it is summed up in its opening line.
The problem is that it's an idea that appeals to writers rather than readers, who would prefer to hear about people. The opening chapter, entitled "Inventory", is a case in point - it describes the house, 99 Wiltshire Place, in detail from bottom to top, from the grandfather clock in the hall to the brown hair ribbon in the converted bedroom on the second floor. It does introduce the main character, Rolls Dane, an eighty year old man who is about to be evicted due to the expiry of a ninety-nine year lease, and, through his memories, to the other main characters. However the memories are tied to objects in the house rather than to temporal order, making a patchwork that is confusing and alienating for the reader.
The most interesting and developed theme is the depiction of female anger at the roles into which men force them. Rolls' mother, Griselda, is frustrated at not being able to travel and at the expectation that she will produce many children (and her nickname for her husband - "The Eye" - shows how controlling he is). His sister Selina's frustration at her own lack of education is taken out on the hapless Lark, an orphan whom The Eye adopts and with whom Rolls falls in love. Grizel, Rolls' great niece, is an American nurse who comes to stay (the contemporary part of the story is set during the Blitz). She resents her isolation as an outsider and resists her growing attraction to Pax Masterson, a wounded airman who is also staying in the house, seeing it as a romantic duty that she is expected to fulfil.
The writing is elegant and has the concision of poetry, but there are a couple of quirks that are annoying. The descriptive style used for the house bleeds into dialogue, particularly Masterson's, making it sound incredibly stilted. And there is a repeated punctuation fault where commas are omitted before names, for example "Do you take sugar John?" rather than "Do you take sugar, John?" The fact that names crop up so regularly and so unrealistically in the dialogue illustrates the problems that Godden had with keeping who was speaking clear in readers' heads as the action shifts through Rolls' out-of-sequence memories.
Still, it is an interesting development of the stream of consciousness approach of Virginia Wolfe that demonstrates the strengths and weaknesses of a story where a location is the central character. I'm just glad that Godden did it and not me.