A Song and Dance by PJ Kavanagh (1968)

This is to some extent a novel in Eastmancolor. There is a strong sense about it of yellowed sixties-ness. But where other novels with similar takes don't add a lot to that, and feel pretty flat, this one has a whole extra plane brought to it by Kavanagh's beautiful sense of poetic observation. This relatively simple story of a transgressive love affair which very soon reveals itself as a transformative experience for both partners is graced by the author's love of love, mordant and wry explication of life's puzzles, filmic sensibility and light touch. Though Beatrix and Colm's affair is illicit in the sense that it occurs outside her marriage, her honesty with her husband about it is both honourable and empathetic. These are civilised people without being stiffened by it. There are some great subsidiary characters - one in particular, Margaret, the wife of Colm's boss, is a fine study of an unconventional woman of great wisdom. I'm looking forward to seeing if his subsequent three novels can capture more in the way of freshness and immediacy - the slightly crackly soundtrack of this one is its only real failing.

Commonplace Book

'For, in its mythomania, the Crowd today only worships itself. It wants a Hero, but from him asks for a guarantee of absolute mediocrity. Hercules doesn't have to exert himself, nor does he have to prevail. Take a crowd and give it a toss, when it falls it will be in a circle, in order to worship whoever has landed in the center and who ipso facto represents it. Or it will settle down into a pyramid, acclaiming whomever chance has placed at its top...'

from a note in the 1956-1960 section of Occasional Notebooks, in The Via Veneto Papers by Ennio Flaiano

Belchamber by Howard Overing Sturgis (1904)

This is a substantial late Victorian-Edwardian story, with many qualities of what used to be called the sensation novel - a frisson of the slightly dark, of the undercurrents beneath polite society. In this instance it is a sexless marriage and the illegitimate offspring born to it. There is nothing particularly unusual about that; what is unusual is that it is Sturgis who is its author. His published novels, now that I've read them all, fill me with suspicion. His first, the classic of hero-worship-bordering-on-homosexuality, Tim, and his second, the obscure and quite inconsequentially quiet All That Was Possible, were novels with forms of spareness in them and yet vastly different from each other. Now comes this fulsome, conservative, rich family tapestry, with echoes of grand tragedy ringing through it. In other words, if I didn't have the title pages to tell me, I would never believe that these three novels were by the same author. Now, the question is: was Sturgis an extraordinary mimic or chameleon? Did he shift perspective most absolutely with each effort, right down to style? Or are some of these books other people's work? If so, whose? His life-companion, William Haynes Smith? Was one or another of them heavily revised by one of his literary friends? Henry James or Edith Wharton? But, at the end of the day, this is a beautiful, sad book, and its main character a movingly flawed man brilliantly portrayed.

Commonplace Book

'Ah, if I were a poet, it is to those whose existence has been a failure, whose arrows have not reached their mark, who have died without uttering the words they had to say and without pressing the hand destined for them, to all who have loved without being loved, who have sufferred without being pitied, that I would consecrate my verses; it would be a noble task.'

from Mademoiselle de Maupin by Theophile Gautier (Chapter II)

Commonplace Book

'The distress and suspicion normal persons give rise to in a world where only the Exceptional arouses interest, in all its varieties. Thus it comes about that in the upright man one is obliged to see the scoundrel of tomorrow, or a scoundrel who's concealing himself, while in the scoundrel of today one discovers inspiring qualities. Abel's brain is subjected to an autopsy, Cain is invited to write his memoirs.'

from a note in the 1956-1960 section of Occasional Notebooks, in The Via Veneto Papers by Ennio Flaiano

Men and Wives by I. Compton-Burnett (1931)

This accomplished novel has all the hallmarks I am beginning to associate with the author. It has a severe, biting, theatrical small scene where a group of very intense characters have a tendency to bounce one another with surprises, be they lies or truth. The characters in this instance almost flay one another with home truths, all expressed infinitely politely, or at least with an infinite gloss of politeness. Compton-Burnett's theme here is suicide and murder on the outside, but it's really about means of control. This is realised in contrasting ways and exemplified by two main characters, Harriet and Godfrey, who, though married, and well aware of each other's frame of reference in the world, are also at odds temperamentally. While Harriet is weak externally, and prey to nervous tension, she is able to control forcefully a lot of what goes on around her. Godfrey is externally hale and voluble, but temptable and dithering within, and a consistent changer of the story to suit his intentions - he always seems to know that some wholesale change of fortune or interpretation was what he had been thinking all along. The standard Compton-Burnett caveats apply - this book is no more easy reading than the Dalai Lama is a bullfighter.

Commonplace Book

'This was our moment of greatest closeness so far, absurd and true - not telling each other how much we loved and so on, but here in this crowded expense-account restaurant counselling each other to be careful. It was a childish joy to me that so much was so different from all I'd been told. It was like a guarantee that we were on the right track, not inventing. If he'd swept me off my feet, shown me a new world, king-like, with one of those expansive map-unrolling gestures that some men are fond of, I'd have been forced to play the beggar-maid, wrapped in my pretended admiration like a false fur. As it was we were both the same size, small and surprised. This was how I'd always wanted it to be: the smallness of me, the largeness of it, and the chance of both of us growing.'

from A Song and Dance by PJ Kavanagh (Chapter 7)