Two book reviews in one post from me today. Not something I usually do, but both these books were read for #readingIrelandmonth21 and one is just a very small novella. It also gives me the opportunity to catch up very slightly. Both novels concern visitors – someone returning after a period of time to a place in Ireland.
Time After Time is one of the novels that Molly Keane published later in life – her writing life spanned many years and there was a big gap in the middle. It came a couple of years after Good Behaviour but is a rather less dramatic novel than that. It is in fact a really quite sophisticated novel – here Keane uses great subtlety, pealing back the layers of complexity within a family of elderly siblings. A dark tragic-comedy shot through with Keane’s wicked sense of humour – it gets off to a slow start but the sense of place and the characterisation are just fantastic.
Living in genteel poverty in rural Ireland in the house their mother left them are the Swifts – three sisters: April, May and June and their brother Jasper. Each of them is maimed in some way, Jasper lost an eye as a child, April is almost completely deaf and May has a deformity to one hand, June is small and naïve – and perhaps what may have been termed a little slow. As Emma Donoghue says in her introduction Keane uses these disabilities ‘to create a sense of the grotesque.’ That was something I was conscious of right away; I was just a little uncomfortable to begin with – yet she balances these disabilities with some wonderful abilities and vibrant personalities. Jasper is a wonderful cook the kitchen is his domain and from it he rules the house. June – still called Baby June by everyone – is practical and looks after the outdoors, she cares for the animals with understanding and love. May restores ornaments and makes beautiful pieces of art out of wool, fabric, and flowers; she is president of the flower arrangers’ guild. April the only one who ever married is still in old age beautiful and elegant makes beauty treatments.
This is not a harmonious household, however. These elderly siblings have little in common save their memories of better days, their beloved mother, and a shared youth. The four of them bicker continually, never happier than when getting one over on one of the others. They each have their little foibles – April smokes the odd joint, May sometimes steals things, June is rather fond of the farm hand, Jasper enjoys consulting with a young monk from the nearby abbey and dreams of creating a truly spectacular garden. They each also have their own pet – the sisters each have their own dog of whom they are very protective while Jasper owns a cat.
Into this world comes Leda, a cousin from Vienna who they haven’t seen in decades – and who they assumed rather callously had perished in the war. Leda is blind now, but still every bit as beguiling as she was in her youth – when she was feted and adored like a fairy-tale princess by each of the siblings. For Leda, the past is still very present, everything and everyone still exists for her as it once was.
“These were the submerged days that Leda’s coming rescued from a deep oblivion. Since she could not see Durraghglass in its cold decay, or her cousins in their proper ages, timeless grace was given to them in her assumption that they looked as though all the years between were empty myths. Because they knew themselves so imagined, their youth was present to them, a mirage trembling in her flattery as air trembles close on the surface of summer roads.”
Leda has a motive for suddenly turning up unannounced – she still feels bitterly about something that happened decades earlier. She is a woman who says and does just what she wants – and that takes some getting used to. By the time she leaves change will have come to the house and to the inhabitants. Molly Keane is so good at just turning the knife a little at the end – not everything is as you think it will be.
I had previously read reviews of Maeve Brennan’s stories and possibly of this novella by other bloggers and was determined to try her soon. Read Ireland month gave the perfect excuse. This lovely little edition comes from New Island books – who I discovered when I bought a couple of Norah Hoult books last year.
The Visitor concerns a young woman, Anastasia King who returns to her grandmother’s house in Dublin after six years in Paris. Anastasia is just twenty-two – when she was sixteen she had followed her mother to Paris after the breakup of her parents’ marriage. Still, she is trying to reconcile herself to that breakup and to abandoning her father. Her mother has recently died and the grieving young woman wants to return to the place she once thought of as home.
However, the welcome that awaits her at her grandmother’s house is less than warm.
“She kissed her grandmother hastily, avoiding her eyes. The grandmother did not move from the door of the sitting room. She stood in the doorway, having just got up from the fireside and her reading, and contemplated Anastasia and Anastasia’s luggage crowding the hall. She was still the same, with her delicate and ruminative and ladylike face, and her hands clasped formally in front of her. Anastasia thought, she is waiting for me to make some mistake.”
Her grandmother, Mrs King is still angry about the breakup of her son’s marriage – a bitterness that increased after he died. She feels Anastasia was disloyal choosing her mother over her father. She blames them both for his death. With her grandmother lives Katharine – some sort of housekeeper – the two have slipped into a sad, joyless routine. Any expectation Anastasia had of a warm home-coming is quickly dispelled. We see the grandmother as a domineering personality – one Anastasia’s mother had to escape, the marriage to her older husband had not been a success – and naturally, their daughter’s loyalty was horribly divided.
That both the past and the present have begun to have an effect on Anastasia becomes all too apparent – and the image we are left with is a striking one.
I don’t want to say too much more – for to do so might be to spoil it. Brennan’s story is sad and a little disturbing, and really quite unforgettable.
This really was a beautifully rendered little novella – not a word is wasted. I really haven’t done justice to it in this short review. It’s really a little masterpiece. Extraordinary that it was discovered in a university archive after Maeve Brennan’s death.
The Visitor does sound wonderfully atmospheric, claustrophobic almost, that clash of warm nostalgic expectations and a cold realistic affront. What a joy for it to have been (re)discovered.
The Visitor is very atmospheric, there is a sense of claustrophobia. I love stories of books being discovered like this.
That quote from The Vistor with its final sentence is so powerful. I’ve been meaning to read Maeve Brennan for some time and this sounds like an excellent place to start.
Yes that quote really stands out, I think you will really like Maeve Brennan.
Both sound really good. I think Maeve Brennan has the potential to become a new favourite… even though I haven’t read her yet.
I ‘m so glad I read this, I definitely want to read her short stories now.
How interesting to hear that The Visitor was only discovered and published posthumously – I wasn’t aware of that! It sounds very much in line with The Springs of Affection stories I read a couple of years ago – striking insightful and beautifully written.
I think The Springs of Affection stories are definitely now on my wishlist. It’s clear Brennan was a master of the short form.
These both sound excellent, and well done on catching up. I caught up a bit TOO much and then only had one review to post this week, it’s a fine balancing act, isn’t it!
Well I have caught up a bit at least, still three books behind myself which is about normal so feel better for that.
So glad you enjoyed The Visitor – I think it’s a wonderful novella – so affecting.
The Visitor is a wonderful novella, it is definitely unforgettable.
I read one of these when it first came out.
Excellent.
A pair of lovely books by the sound of it, Ali. Maeve Brennan is an author I’m particularly keen to read – she sounds so good!
Yes, Maeve Brennan was a good discovery.
[…] also reviewed The Visitor by Maeve Brennan and Time After Time by Molly […]
Two brilliant reads, neither of which have I read, but going straight on to my tbr!
I’m so glad, I really hope you enjoy them.
It seems ironic (and kind of funny) but also sad to think of two older characters having nothing in common except their memories of their lives in the past having been better than their present. Then, again, maybe a lot of us are feeling that way, as we begin to lose track of which numbered lockdown we are negotating! I’ve enjoyed Keane and would like to read more of her. Same with Brennan, really.
I like stories of elderly siblings, but it is sad when they don’t really get along.
I want to read more Brennan now too.
[…] can be when grievances and feelings of selfishness are allowed to putrefy and fester. Heaven Ali has also written about this book; and as ever, her insightful post is well worth reading. Hopefully my piece will expand the […]