Boyhood by JM Coetzee (1997)

 This is my first Coetzee. I know very little about the arc of his career, aside from the prizes. The first impression is of starkness, a boniness and pared-downness. But not poetry so much, though the prose sings very quietly. The feeling is that anything which was pronounced enough to be labelled 'poetic' would be a little distasteful to him. There are two things which seem critical: the depiction of himself here, and the broad fact that autobiography is reconstructed reality, has narrative structure retro-applied. It's the story of himself when young, in the South Africa of the 40s turning to the 50s. There is some talk of race, some of unthinking conservatism, some of the dryness and leachedness one might expect. Those things decorate a tale of his parents' unhappy marriage, of farms versus proto-suburbia, of family skeletons and melancholy, frustration and wondering. And there is the closer-in perspective of the child's world, dominated by school, and growing apprehension of what the adult world that impinges upon childhood might mean. Here is where both critical concerns come into play. He seems to know a great deal about his parents' crushednesses and fallibilities, seems very involved in their world and its story. This has a glimmer of reconstruction to it, and the concomitant purpose of making retro-fitted sense of what went on - would they have been intelligible in this fashion at the time in the way he portrays? Not a problem if not, if the reasons why have needed an adult mind to establish them, but then why portray himself as having agency in it at the time, and its dominance in his young world, as he does? Perhaps the situation was unusual, and he was involved to that extent. The other concern, that of the depiction of himself, is notable. The image that plays in my mind is a bit fanciful: the young Coetzee here has the resonance of a clay idol, a bit of a tiki. It has the glaring quality that goes with these, and the staring-eyed fierceness - anything could happen with this untamed demiurge, it blazes and is convex with urgency. And lacks a kind of softness and vulnerability, like he's seeing himself extra-starkly and finds engaging with the part of himself which is silly, humorous, even dear, as beyond the pale. Is this the Coetzee story, the 'thing' I need to recognize which is most typifying about his work? The potential shibboleth of extreme honesty works strongly here, with his desires, disgusts and cruelty self-mercilessly examined. Well, who ever knows how much of an autobiography is truthfully flagellatory, as against management for effect?

Tales about Temperaments by John Oliver Hobbes (1902)

 This one includes three long stories and two short plays. They originate mainly from the earlier part of her career in the 1890s. They all have the slight delusion playing in them which a regular Hobbes reader begins to identify early on. This is that her work seems at first glance hopelessly light, a frippery of aesthetic-era dandified talk. Then the subsequent realisation starts to get a little play, as the reader records the fact that tucked into these feathery sentences there is more solid material - there are tinctures and jags in Hobbes which lend the prose a sense of greater directness and sounding. In this instance, however, with that said, the airiness has a tendency to win out a bit more than usual. The overall effect is a little too sheer, let's say. The Worm that God Prepared details an illicit love, and a case of mistaken identity which leads to a stabbing, in a very sudden final change of tone whose unexpectedness is jolting, though effective. 'Tis an Ill Flight Without Wings tells of a dilettante's imagined sole serious love twisting on a simple crux which then falls to pieces as she is revealed to be engaged when finally discovered. Prince Toto was written for the author's son, and involves a bored, never-satisfied fairy prince who needs to be cured by a beautiful neighbouring fairy princess by her becoming extremely ugly through the offices of a witch - all ends well, of course. The first play, A Repentance, is set in the period of contest in Spain between the Carlists and the Christinists, and records the return of a presumed dead count to his countess, in disguise as a friar. He has swapped sides, while she has remained loyal to his old ideas, and thought him a martyr. It ends with him sacrificing himself in capture. The second play, Journeys End in Lovers Meeting (not sure about missing possessives, if there indeed are any), is about two married lovers who struggle through their recent history in a battling conversation while her visitor-who-would-like-to-be-a-lover hides in the next room. It was written for Ellen Terry and performed by her in two runs. Not a prime Hobbes volume, but not dismissable either.

To Whom She Will by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (1955)

 This is her first novel. I have no experience yet of what she achieved later in her career, nothing with which to compare this, intra, only my knowledge of what the literary world was like in the mid 50s, extra. Alongside that, this looks fairly brilliant. It is a familiar-looking tale of naïve New Delhi youngsters caught up romantically in the idea of their love. Their families, true to caste and Indian convention, attempt to control the situation, which is one where he is regarded as too low for her, and she is regarded as not right for him, given that she is independent of spirit and wanting to whisk him off to England to marry. But it quickly becomes evident that neither of them have got down to brass tacks yet: Amrita is absorbed in her small rebellion, which flavours her attitude, and Hari is captivated by the idea of love, to the point of tears and the shadow side of deep emotions, but is more profoundly, but unawarely, connected to the idea of pleasing people and being comfortable. Their delusions remain unchallenged through most of the length of this book, coming into play gradually as the narrative develops. Mothers, sisters, aunts, and occasionally their menfolk, provide an exclamatory chorus of splendid stripe, tics clashing and assumptions raging, many of them to do with class and jealousy. For me it is here where Jhabvala's skill comes into full focus. Her slow unfolding, flavoured with generous doses of satire, and compensating tension, is magnificently controlled. She also dedicates herself to setting out what would have been seen then to be the intimate colours of Indian life, small detail which lends tang. The fact that she has applied these Austenish satiric flavours to an Indian subject with so much precise elan is what gives this a sense of delight. It's assured, and its confidence satisfies. But of course there's an elephant in this room: Jhabvala was of that surname by marriage. She was born in Germany to Jewish parents and (needfully) emigrated to Britain in 1939. So I am imagining that she would be touted in some circles as inauthentic, and very possibly a cultural appropriator. She must have seen a lot through living there and being married to an Indian, which experience, so closely lived, must give some sort of imprimatur. But that experience was not very old when this book was published. I can only say that the wry humour in this, which is both forgiving (broad warmth) and coldly telling (no quarter to errant conceits) is gratifyingly suave and cool-headed.