To Be Continued...

To Be Continued:

Jane Gardam and Edward St. Aubyn

Frustrating, but enticing to meet those words when you’re caught up in a book, a television series, or even a movie. Gone are the days when Dickens published his novels chapter by chapter, and crowds of desperate fans in New York waited on the pier for the boat from England that might bring news of whether Little Nell died. But we can feel their pain -- and delicious anticipation -- at the end of each season of Mad Men, Homeland, Game of Thrones. And as that last title tells you, fiction authors haven’t completely lost the knack either.

When Dorothy Dunnett’s two cliffhanging series were coming out, I was among the crowds waiting for the next installment. Airplanes had taken the place of ships, of course. In the 60’s, I ordered each of the Lymond books from Cassell’s in London several months before the American version appeared. (I ordered an extra copy for a friend, so I’d have someone to discuss them with). By the time the Niccolò books were reaching their finale, in the 90’s, an Edinburgh bookshop had undertaken to supply American and Canadian readers the moment the books appeared, and email provided me hundreds of fellow fans for company.

Matters run less smoothly for followers of George R.R. Martin’s Game of  Thrones series. After the first three volumes appeared, production slowed down. Five years, then six passed between books. As the novels grew longer (over 1000 pages each), their author could not resist adding new characters, new plotlines, new countries to his fantasy universe. Now the producers of the HBO series worry that they might catch up before Martin continues the story; many fans wonder if he will ever finish, since he is no longer young; and I myself, a good deal older than Martin, think I am not likely to see the end. Under these circumstances, best just to relax and enjoy the ride (and very enjoyable it is), without fretting too much about the destination.

Not every continuing series, however, involves cliffhangers. I’d like to recommend two multivolume fiction works by English authors, both reaping ecstatic reviews but not enough American readers. The first is Jane Gardam’s Old Filth trilogy. I must confess that, despite the good reviews, I resisted reading it for many years because of the title. But then I learned that it refers not to stomach-churning substances, but to an acronym: Failed in London, try Hong Kong. So that’s all right, then.

“Old Filth” is the nickname of Sir Edward Feathers, a barrister (or rather, Q.C., which is a step up) who has made a successful career in Hong Kong specializing in construction law. When we meet him, he has retired to a Dorset village, St. Ague (names are important in Gardam) where, coincidentally, he meets several of his former associates. Among them is Terry Veneering, his longtime rival, and sometime lover of his late wife. The second novel, The Man in the Wooden Hat, retells the same story from the point of view of that wife, Betty. That sounds pretty conventional -- Evan S. Connell in Mr. Bridge and Mrs. Bridge also told the story of a marriage from the viewpoints of the two partners. But the third novel, Last Friends, promotes the supporting characters, among them Veneering, to starring roles and uses a touch of magic realism to tie all their fates together, and break down the barriers between lives.

The trilogy has been called a tale of the decline of the British Empire, but I think that is the background rather than the main theme. Most of the characters are indeed what has been termed “orphans of empire” -- children whose parents sent them back to England to boarding school at an early age. “It is such a character-forming thing to be separated from one’s parents. I never saw mine for years. I didn’t miss them at all,” says one character to her daughter. But it is not only empire that separates parents from children. Old Filth’s mother died at his birth in Malaysia and he has been searching ever since for the warmth he felt in the impoverished village where his father left him for years. Veneering’s loving working-class mother sends him to Canada to escape the war. Meanwhile, the childless cling to the children of others.

Children in exile are only one aspect of the loneliness that pervades these novels. Barriers of class and the straitjacket of form separate adults from one another, and the lovers Betty and Veneering spend only one night together. One character, Fiscal-Smith, notes accurately that he has never been loved or wanted by anyone. In old age, those who survive see their friends gradually diminish. But the end of the series (and the ends of each book) are not about defeat, but about the courage to change that can be found in extremis. Perhaps the clearest example is the scene of Feathers, locked out of his house on a snowy Christmas morning, making his way at last to the house of his arch-enemy Veneering for help. Afterwards, the two develop a curious friendship that lasts until their death. Fiscal-Smith’s fate -- on the very last page -- is even more surprising. And the sadness these characters feel is leavened throughout by a light, often very funny, prose that sees through its subjects but never mocks them.

But if Gardam’s prose is witty and stylish, she has nothing on Edward St. Aubyn. And if her children suffer, they would have a long way to go to match the fate of Patrick Melrose, the main character of St. Aubyn’s five-book series (Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, Mother’s Milk, At Last). These books are apparently autobiographical and if you haven’t learned from reviews what happens to five-year-old Patrick in the first book, I’m not going to tell you. It might keep you from reading them, and that would be a shame. 

It would be a shame because every page is full of piercing insight and corruscating wit. In his New Yorker review, Michael Wood says that Jane Austen would be happy to have written this sentence: “As a guest, Emily Price had three main drawbacks: she was incapable of saying please, incapable of saying thank you, and incapable of saying sorry, all the while creating a surge in the demand for these expressions.” I’m just being lazy cribbing Wood’s quote, because there are examples on every page that are as good, or almost as good, or even better.

 “I think my mother’s death is the best thing to happen to me since...well, since my father’s death,” says Patrick in the last book, and no reader will quarrel with him. (“It can’t be that simple,” replies his psychiatrist friend Johnny, “or there would be merry bands of orphans skipping down the street.”) Neither Karl Marx, nor John Osborne, nor Ed Miliband could have anything more damning to say about the British aristocracy than St. Aubyn, one of its scions. But although the books are full of accurately and hilariously pinned down villains, there are a few characters one can admire (like Patrick’s wife, Mary), or feel for (like Patrick himself), or simply marvel at, like his two brilliant and eccentric small sons.

It’s tempting to go on quoting:

It was the presence of None the Wiser on Mary’s bedside table that alerted Patrick to his wife’s laborious romance.

“You couldn’t be reading that book unless you were having an affair with the author,” he guessed through half-closed eyes.

“Believe me, it’s virtually impossible even then.”

But I hope, if you love good writing and gimlet-eyed characterization, and maybe if you are a fan of Jane Austen, you will try these novels for yourself. Yes, there are five of them, but they’re short. The first four have been issued together in paperback (and also for Kindle and Nook). Enjoy!