Tag Archives: Anglo-Irish author

Elizabeth Bowen: The Heat of the Day (1948) Literature and War Readalong March 2013

Posted in Books, Literature, Novel, Readalong by

The Heat of The Day

Elizabeth Bowen’s The Heat of the Day introduces us to London during WWII. The novel starts on a Sunday in 1942 and ends exactly two years later. London is a ghostly city. Many houses are but ruins, other’s are abandoned. People’s lives have changed, relationships are formed much more quickly but they end as abruptly too. Social differences become smaller, the society is less strict as a whole. Everything is perceived more intensely. The seasons, the hours of the day, the light. The beauty and spookiness of the time is captured in evocative passages like the one below.

Out of the mists of morning charred by the smoke from ruins each day rose to a height of unmisty glitter; between the last of sunset and first note of the siren the darkening glassy tenseness of evening was drawn fine. . . . The diversion of traffic out of blocked main thoroughfares into byways, the unstopping phantasmagoric streaming of lorries, buses, vans, drays, taxis past modest windows and quiet doorways set up an overpowering sense of London’s organic power–somewhere here was a source from which heavy motion boiled, surged and, not to be damned up, forced itself new channels.

The very soil of the city at this time seemed to generate more strength: in parks the outsize dahlias, velvet and wine, and the trees on which each vein in each yellow leaf stretched out perfect against the sun blazoned out the idea of the finest hour. Parks suddenly closed because of time-bombs–drifts of leaves in the empty deck chairs, birds afloat on the dazzlingly silent lakes–presented, between the railings which girt them, mirages of repose. All this was beheld each morning more light-headedly: sleeplessness disembodied the lookers-on.

In reality there were no holidays; few were free however light-headedly to wander. The night behind and the night to come met across every noon in an arch of strain. To work or think was to ache. In offices, factories, ministries, shops, kitchens the hot yellow sands of each afternoon ran out slowly; fatigue was the one reality. You dared not envisage sleep.

The main story centers on Stella, her lover Robert, her son Roderick and the intelligence agent Harrison. The side story involves two girls, Louie and Connie. It’s a peculiar story. Harrison visits Stella one night and tells her that Robert is a spy working for the Nazis. Harrison could protect him to some extent if Stella was willing to become his lover.

It’s hard to imagine what it would feel like to hear something like this about the man you love. Stella doubts it at first but Harrison has proof and after a few months she accepts it and confronts Robert.

I’m not exactly sure why Elizabeth Bowen chose this topic or why she chose to paint the portrait of a likable Nazi spy. I didn’t feel this was believable at all.

If you put the story aside and concentrate on other elements, you will find an excellent description of wartime London. I liked the many side stories far more than the main story as such. The female characters are all interesting. There is Stella who was perceived as a fallen woman as it was said she had walked out on her husband. Nettie, the wife of a distant Irish uncle lives in a home for mentally ill patients but is perfectly fine. Louie sleeps with various men, to feel closer to her husband who is stationed in India. The status of women has changed a lot at the time, the society is less rigid, many could finally break free,

Robert, although far less of a character than most women in this novel, is interesting because he symbolizes the wounded men who came back after Dunkirk, unfit for future service. Many of these men must have been very bitter. I’m not sure though that an experience like this would have pushed many to become Nazi spies.

All in all this was a disjointed reading experience. I liked the atmosphere and the mood, didn’t care for the story and often had the feeling Elizabeth Bowen cannot write novels. As much as I liked her shorter prose and could forgive her for many convoluted sentences, in this book she went too far. According to Glendinning’s biography, her editor changed many sentences and told her many times to work on them. It’s not that they are long – long sentences hardly bother you when you read German or French literature – but the structure is weird. Let me give you a few examples.

In the street below, not so much a step as the semi-stumble of someone after long standing shifting his position could be, for the fist time by her, heard.

Or her way to break up dialogue and add long complicated tags

“This is certainly,” she agreed, with the affability of extreme disdain, “rather a point.”

This one is hilarious

“Absolutely,” he said with fervour, “not! Though you know I do wish I knew what’s rattled you.”

While I would still recommend to read The Heat of the Day for many different elements, I’m not so keen on reading another of her novels soon unless someone tells me there is one in which the sentences are not as contorted. For the time being I’ll stick to the short stories.

Other reviews

Anna (Diary of an Eccentric)

Lizzy (Lizzy’s Literary Life)

TBM (50 Year Project)

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The Heat of the Day was the third book in the Literature and War Readalong 2013. The next is the WWI novel The Wars by Canadian writer Timothy Findley. Discussion starts on April 29, 2013. Further information on the Literature and War Readalong, including the book blurbs can be found here.

Molly Keane: Two Days in Aragon (1941)

Posted in Anglo-Irish, Books, Literature, Novel by

Grania and Sylvia Fox live in the Georgian house of Aragon, with their mother, their Aunt Pidgie and Nan O’Neill, the family nurse. Attending Aragon’s strawberry teas, the British Army Officers can almost forget the reason for their presence in Ireland. But the days of dignified calm at Aragon are numbered.

I first read about Molly Keane’s Two Days in Aragon on Danielle’s blog. Molly Keane or M.J. Farrell, the pseudonym under which she published her books,  is one of Danielle’s reading projects and after having read Two Days in Aragon I can understand why. I’m trying to put into words what type of book this was but nothing I come up with seems to do it justice. Molly Keane captured beautifully the end of an area, portrayed a social system, drew complex character portraits and incorporated such a wide variety of topics that I’m full of admiration.

I love descriptions of big old houses. They seem to have a life of their own and their majestic presence can be felt so strongly, they are almost characters in their own right. Aragon is exactly such a house. The family home of the Fox’s is grand, old and full of history. There are hidden rooms and the ghosts of the ancestors seem to be hovering around. But Aragon is also a symbol. A symbol for a way of life about to end. Aragon also symbolizes oppression as it is the house of an Anglo-Irish family and as such represents everything that the Irish have come to hate and against which they are fighting in 1920, the year in which the novel takes place.

The end of an era can be brought by many things but war, rebellion, change of government are among the most frequent. All over the world when the colonized stand up against the colonists this signifies the end of a life in beauty and ease for the formerly advantaged. Molly Keane knew very well what she wrote about as she came from such a rich Anglo-Irish family who lived in privilege and never had to work. They loved their horses and hunting and eating well. All this was incorporated into the novel. The descriptions of these two days make one long to have been there, to have experienced the rituals, seen the beauty.

Molly Keane offers more than the description of a house and a way of life about to end. One thing I liked a lot in the novel were the characters. None of them likable, maybe with one exception (Sylvia), but all of them are drawn so vividly and in all their complexity that I was glued to the page.

Grania and Sylvia Fox live in the grand old house together with their mother and Aunt Pidgie. Their father has died after a hunting accident. Grania and Sylvia are very different which is also shown in their choice of men. Grania has an affair with Foley O’Neill, a socially unacceptable choice, while Sylvia is secretly in love with a British officer. One girl is described as a slutty, fat, blond and the other as a neat, groomed and very poised young lady. The mother has a bit of both of them but seems to like her passionate, wilder and slutty daughter far more.

Aunt Pidgie and Nan O’Neill, the house nurse, form a duo. Aunt Pidgie is an unwelcome elderly relative that is kept, far away, in the nursery. This reminded me of the first Mrs Rochester in Jane Eyre. The unwanted, especially women, were often locked away. Aunt Pidgie is a bit crazy but inoffensive. In the beginning we know nothing of her sufferings but when we learn more about Nan O’Neill and her well-hidden side of aggression and cruelty we start to pity this poor bird-like little woman. Nan O’Neill is the most complex and fascinating character. She loves Aragon and everything in it with a fierceness and as if it did belong to her. This has a reason. She is an impressive woman, commanding, extremely good-looking and adept at everything. She is especially good at hiding her true nature. Disappointment and lack of love have made her cruel and pitiless. In her role as nurse she is one of the most powerful characters in the novel. She knows about unwanted pregnancies and how to end them, about subtle ways how to torture someone in keeping them alive but constantly uncomfortable. A very chilling character.

I have read a lot of novels about the end of an era, many have houses in their center. I loved Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited as much as E.M.Forster’s Howard’s End and of course,  Bassani’s The Garden of the Finzi Contini. They are often nostalgic and melancholic books. This isn’t the case here, Two Days in Aragon is completely different in tone and although tragedy strikes all of them I wasn’t sad after reading it but rather full of admiration for Molly Keane and her very unique voice and fascinating approach to tell her story.  And I felt exhausted. She is such a vivid storyteller, I lived in those pages, I almost felt as if I had experienced two very intense days.