Rattlebone – Maxine Clair

Last year I thoroughly enjoyed my first McNally Editions title – Winter Love by Han Suyin – and was keen to explore more from their catalogue. I settled on Maxine Clair’s Rattlebone which reminded me a bit of Gwendolyn Brooks’ wonderful Maud Martha, although the two books are very different in terms of style and presentation. My verdict? I absolutely loved Rattlebone and its characters who will linger in my mind for a long time.

Maxine Clair’s Rattlebone is a gorgeously written, heartbreaking compilation of eleven interlinked stories that capture slices of life of an African American community in 1950s Kansas City. It sensitively depicts the journey of Irene Wilson our protagonist from when she is eight years old to her last days in high school; she and her friends traverse a particularly rough terrain of tumultuous family life, challenges and heartaches of growing up, and the blight of occasional violence. Irene is often the central feature in each story, at other times she is on the periphery – the points of view sometimes shift and there are stories where the focus zooms on other members of her family or the black neighbourhood of Rattlebone where she resides.

For this review, I have deliberately refrained from writing on all eleven stories but will give a flavour of some of them followed by my overall impressions of the collection as a whole.

Irene is our narrator in the first story “October Brown”, a beautifully rendered tale of an eight-year-old trying to make sense of the complicated grown-up world of adults, the tenacity of familial bonds, and the sweet taste for revenge. We learn of Irene’s mother Pearl who is pregnant with a second child, her father James Wilson, and Irene’s sophisticated, fiery schoolteacher October Brown (“she became our grown-woman schoolteacher, the burnt brown of her left cheek was marked by a wavery spot of white: a brand, a Devil’s kiss”). Through Irene’s eyes, we witness the tumultuous relationship between her parents…

They were on opposite ends of the same track, and I knew from time and again that they would both speed up, bear down until they had only inches left between them, then they would both fall back and rumble until silence prevailed. Later my father would bring home orange sherbet and my mother would rub his back and they would both be laughing.

James and Pearl are fond of one another and yet James embarks on an extra-marital affair with October Brown during Pearl’s pregnancy (another married woman in one of the later stories will remark, “Some men act a fool when their wife is carrying a child“). Things are never quite the same after that but while a perceptible shift in the atmosphere at home is evident to Irene along with its cause, she can’t quite grasp the full meaning of it (“a no-name, invisible something had settled on us”). Afraid of her family breaking apart for good and the loss of quality time with her dad, Irene sniffs an opportunity to make her teacher pay for her actions.

The next story “Lemonade” is about music, differing religious views and beliefs, miracles, and the simple, unfettered gaze of children vis-à-vis complex perceptions of adults. The story begins with a subtle hint at the segregation prevalent in 1950s Kansas City; the neighbourhood of Rattlebone has only five to six inhabitants who are white. One day as Irene and her friends are enjoying their game of Lemonade out on the street, they are greeted by a white woman who preaches to them about the birth of Jesus and the holiness of his mother Mary. Calling herself Sister Joan, there’s a sense that she’s maybe trying to convert them to Roman Catholicism, but while the children don’t shun her, they are aware of where to draw the line. However, Sister Joan’s presence frightens a child of special needs called Puddin (Irene’s friend Wanda’s brother), and during one such encounter, she gifts him a necklace of beads; a gift that has forbidden written all over it and screams black magic to Irene. Meanwhile, we learn of Irene’s budding talent for music, and with the encouragement of their music teacher, she begins to learn and practice piano at Wanda’s home. But then the two girls witness a miracle that not only stuns them but also the community. The occurrence of this miracle culminates in a fierce debate on religious views in which Sister Joan finds herself embroiled – she is maligned by the adults, but the children are more forgiving. 

In “Water Seeks Its Own Level”, the focus shifts to Irene’s father James Wilson, who has just lost a well-paying job in a construction project for daring to protest about the differing treatment of the blacks as compared to the whites. James does not have it in him to head home yet and explain himself to Pearl. Instead, with ample time on his hands, he decides to stroll around the city. Meanwhile, floods have caused the Missouri river to swell dangerously, and while Rattlebone has been lucky to escape nature’s fury, some of the other low-lying areas have been completely inundated. While ambling along the town, James is restless, besieged by thoughts of living an unencumbered life, a life of action and adventure, and a non-paying physical job to sandbank the river offers that window of freedom for a brief period.

“Cherry Bomb” is a piercing, poignant tale of loss, the possibility of love, and growing up. A third-person account, it brims with the whiff of scorching summers, those languid carefree breaks between school terms infused with new friendships and budding romances. During one such summer vacation, Irene gets her first taste of young love, pursued by a boy called Nick who has taken a fancy to her. Nick’s attentions, not always welcome, often torment Irene, but when Nick gifts her cherry bomb, a firecracker that has already caused her cousin to lose an eye in a freak accident, Irene stores it in her secret box of keepsakes. It’s also a summer when Irene has taken to diary writing, and she laments at the fact that Wanda possesses a diary identical to hers, a diary that Wanda seems to have effortlessly purchased, while Irene had to save up to buy hers. When a tragedy subsequently occurs and fuels in Irene a searing sense of loss, her secret box of distilled memories causes her to wonder about things that could have been.

Another fine story is “The Roomers”, a first-person account by a new character called Mrs Pemberton whose husband Thomas Pemberton was introduced to the reader in an earlier story. When this story opens we learn that Mr and Mrs Pemberton have been running a boarding house for a long time, and the type of roomers they select has also changed significantly over the years. The Pembertons, especially Mrs Pemberton, are quite conservative and strict about the decorum to be maintained by their roomers. For this reason, the profile of their roomers is largely made up of teachers who are single, responsible, and not likely to engage in unsavoury behaviour. But the arrival of October Brown changes all that, at least in Mrs Pemberton’s eyes. October Brown is the embodiment of sophistication and elegance, and she has aspirations that are quite at odds with Mrs Pemberton’s traditional viewpoints. But when October Brown starts going out with a married man (“she wasn’t no more to him than a piece of poontang on a Saturday night”), its consequences unexpectedly cause a clash of principles between Mr and Mrs Pemberton – compassion versus keeping up appearances. But could this difference of opinion also be attributed to Mrs Pemberton’s jealousy and Thomas Pemberton’s yearning to be something that fate has denied him?

“A Most Serene Girl” is one of those stories that begins in a certain fashion and ends up in a different place, not what the reader expected. The story begins with a hard-hitting paragraph of violence – a man kills his wife with a knife, a gruesome act that clearly traumatizes his daughter Dorla, the witness to this horrific crime.

Dorla Wooten was the most serene girl in all of Lincoln Junior High. I never saw her talk behind anyone’s back. She never got loud in the lunchroom, or ran wildly when we changed classes. In the halls she glided along close to the walk with her head up and eyes straining forward as though something in the distance had caught her attention. And if you said anything to her, she looked down.

Psychologically scarred, Dorla has retreated into a shell, and out of sympathy Irene tries to befriend her but hits a stone wall. Meanwhile, Irene makes a new friend Geraldine, although the latter is reluctant to invite Irene into her home. The reason is soon clear – Geraldine resides with her mother in a basement flat of a building called a “tourist home” where rooms are rented for couples to have sex. Shame is what makes Geraldine hesitant to invite Irene into their home at first, and Irene is sympathetic. Irene’s feelings of sympathy for both Dorla and Geraldine possibly stems from a sense that she comes from a secure place, a relatively happier home. But then Irene makes a shocking discovery at the tourist home that upends this perceived security and causes her to look at Dorla and Geraldine in an altered light.

 “The Great War” is a short piece on Irene’s mother Pearl, a woman who has always “been waiting”, her mounting frustration with her life pretty evident as she ponders on the elusive meaning of love. “Secret Love” is a finely crafted story on the stigma of mental illness, the breakdown of family life, the angst of separation, and how shared family troubles can become a catalyst for deeper friendships.

Rattlebone, then, is a simmering cauldron of myriad characters whose lives and actions enhance the richness and beauty of this collection and brings to the fore the complex dynamics of communities. The milieu of Rattlebone may appear small and inconsequential but the range of feelings, emotions, and experiences of its inhabitants is universal. Death, trauma, and violence co-exist with kindness and compassion. Wives grapple with their husbands’ wayward ways. Unwed mothers bear the burden of patriarchal thinking and struggle to be accepted. Some children suffer alienation and isolation, others a sense of shame often a consequence of their parent’s actions. But a feeling of community spirit is also palpable – tragedies often bring families together as do wondrous miracles. At the centre of it, is our protagonist Irene Wilson whose personal experiences and relationships will mold her character and influence how she sees the world.

I hated that. I hated to hear her say women have needs. I hated that dark sea of mysterious passions women were supposed to have, that apparently made them behave in uncontrollable ways, like in all those magazines. Some women. I was never going to dip into it.

These are beautiful, sharply-observed stories with their tender portrayal of characters who display a quiet strength, an inner reserve that compels them to dream big and carry on despite obstacles and hardships.

There’s such a variety of themes explored – the meaning of love, the yearning for a stable family life, the excitement of new friendships, the sorrows of growing up, the power of dreams and aspirations, the disappointment of thwarted hopes and desires, the clash between modern and traditional values, the pain of adultery, cheating and shame, death and random violence, and so on.  Ever present is the stain of racism and segregation – it does not always form the focal point of the stories but it does seep in, stubbornly lingering in the background and occasionally coming to the fore.

In terms of structure, every story introduces a new character while familiar characters introduced in the earlier stories reappear in the later ones thereby adding much depth to each of them, and while Irene’s story unfolds linearly, each story feels complete by itself. The writing style is clear and uncluttered, but what also stands out is the musicality of the language – a wonderful symphony of poetic prose and colloquial diction, a singular manner of expression that perfectly captures the thoughts, conversations, and views of a community and makes its characters feel intensely real.

Spring was unraveling everywhere. Summer was coming when I would go hunting for wild greens with my father, when we would be up in the warm, damp mornings taking his gunnysack with us along the railroad tracks all the way to the woods. Summer was coming when he would show me which was dandelion and which was dock, which was pokeberry and which was nettle. We would bring back morels and truffles for my mother to dip in egg and crackers and fry them crispy brown. Summer was coming and maybe my father would come back. 

Profound, gentle, wise, and laced with empathy, Rattlebone is a superb collection of vibrant, bittersweet sketches of small-town life that deserves a much wider audience. Highly recommended!

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Two Months of Reading – April & May 2023

I somehow missed posting about my April reading mostly due to lack of time as we were busy getting ready for our holiday to the Czech Republic. Now since it’s the end of May, it made sense to combine my reading of both months in one post and I’m glad to have read some excellent books. Italy was a dominant theme as four of the eight books are set in the country during and after the Second World War. Four are translated works of literature (written by women) – two Italian, one Catalan, and one Turkish. All eight books are great, but if I had to pick favourites, it would be Céspedes and Ginzburg.

So, without further ado, here’s a brief look at the eight books…You can read the detailed reviews on the first six by clicking on the title links.

THE STONE ANGEL by Margaret Laurence

Set in the fictional region of Manawaka modeled on the province of Manitoba where Margaret Laurence grew up, The Stone Angel is a brilliant, poignant tale of loss, heartbreak, and old age with a fiery, unforgettable female character at its core.

We meet Hagar Shipley, the protagonist and narrator of this Canadian classic, who when the book opens is an old woman in her nineties staying with her eldest son Marvin and his wife Doris, who are in their sixties. Even at that age, Hagar still has her wits about her, and yet there are unmistakable signs that her health is failing, a fact that she is too proud to acknowledge. With the burden of caregiving proving to be quite onerous at least for Doris, they outline plans of shifting Hagar to an old age home where she can receive all the care she needs and it is this intention that ultimately unsettles Hagar. She rebels, both outwardly and inwardly, and makes one last attempt to fight for her independence, relying on her resourcefulness that has helped her move forward in a life that has only doled out disappointments, many of them a direct consequence of Hagar’s stubbornness. Enmeshed with Hagar’s present and attempts to cope with old age are flashbacks and reflections on her past that are often triggered by certain objects or episodes in the current moment – her tumultuous marriage to Brampton Shipley and her complicated relationship with both her sons Marvin and John.

A beautifully observed, haunting tale about a deeply flawed woman, The Stone Angel is a novel I’m glad to have read.

BOULDER by Eva Baltasar (tr. Julia Sanches)

As hot as molten lava erupting from a volcano, Boulder is a tightly compressed, intense novella of love, sex, motherhood, and freedom; a book that derives its strength from the originality of its prose and the unconventionality of its protagonist.

Boulder, a cook on a merchant ship and our narrator meets Samsa, a Scandinavian geologist, at an inn during one of the ship’s regular stops fuelling a desire that is sharp and intense.  A serious relationship ensues although the two women could not have been more different. Samsa is social, successful, earning well, and even the one making major decisions, while Boulder for whom her passion is the driving force, seems okay to just tag along. But then Samsa expresses her wish to have a child that knocks Boulder off-kilter. Samsa is determined to be a mother; she’s past forty and doesn’t want to miss the chance of motherhood. Boulder could not have been more uninterested but is unable to find the courage to express her true feelings.

What makes Boulder so striking is the language – strange, smoldering, feral, and sensual – as it captures the range of thoughts and emotions that rage within our narrator trying to adapt to a slew of significant changes unfolding around her.

ALL OUR YESTERDAYS by Natalia Ginzburg (tr. Angus Davidson)

Set in a smaller town in Italy before and during the Second World War, Natalia Ginzburg’s All Our Yesterdays is simply wonderful; a big-hearted, bustling novel of family, friendships, politics, and war pitted against a backdrop of immense turbulence, and narrated in a style that captures Ginzburg’s customary dry wit.

Essentially a family saga, the book is divided into two sections. In Part One, Ginzburg focuses her gaze on an ensemble cast – two families living in a smaller town in Northern Italy. Much of the story is told from Anna’s perspective although this is not a first-person account. Shy and reserved in nature, Anna’s very young age and reticent demeanour mean that she is hardly noticed in the house, but she notices various aspects of her family the significance of which she does not always comprehend. In Part Two, many of the characters who had a minor presence in the first part become central to the story, while the central figures in Part One get pushed to the periphery although never entirely forgotten. Thus, the spotlight shifts to the considerably older Cenzo Rena (who marries Anna) and he becomes the axis around which much of the plot of Part Two revolves. 

Ginzburg seamlessly places these family dynamics against a wider political backdrop – Fascism, the approaching rumblings of World War Two with the big question of the mode of Italy’s participation, and later on the horrors of the Holocaust. But what is truly astonishing about All Our Yesterdays is the sheer range of humanity on display – each of the characters is beautifully etched, they are endearing in different ways despite their flaws and foibles. 

FORBIDDEN NOTEBOOK by Alba de Céspedes (tr. Ann Goldstein)  

There’s a scene in Forbidden Notebook where Valeria Cossatti, our protagonist and the narrator is having lunch with her glamorous friend Clara at her place, a penthouse apartment in Rome. Divorced from her husband, Clara is now an independent woman and a successful filmmaker, but by then Valeria’s position has become much more complex. Her outward façade continues to be that of a traditional woman confined to the role of a homemaker and catering to the needs of her husband and two children, but inwardly Valeria has begun to seethe and resist these conventional norms she is expected to adhere to. Clara believes that Valeria has been lucky to achieve all that she wanted by marrying, but by then Valeria and the reader know the reality to be entirely different – Valeria has been experiencing a deep sense of disillusionment, a feeling she is unable to share with Clara.

It is this intense conflict, growing resistance, and the dual nature of her thoughts and emotions that forms the essence of Alba de Céspedes’s Forbidden Notebook – a rich, multilayered novel of domestic dissatisfaction and awakening seen through the prism of a woman’s private diary. Set in 1950s Rome, not only does the book boldly challenge the validity of restrictive, orthodox roles thrust upon women, and the heartaches of motherhood, but it also dwells on writing as a powerful tool for a woman to find her voice and be heard when those closest to her fail to do so.

Billed as a feminist classic, Forbidden Notebook is a masterclass of insight and imagination, brilliant in the way it provides a window into a woman’s interior life, an internal struggle that oscillates between the desire to discover her true self and also keep it hidden. 

COLD NIGHTS OF CHILDHOOD by Tezer Özlü (tr. Maureen Freely) 

Cold Nights of Childhood is an unflinching portrayal of a woman’s quest for independence, freedom, sex and love, as well as her struggles with mental illness told in a writing style that is cinematic and impressionistic without conforming to the rigid structures of conventional storytelling.

At barely 70 pages and set between 1950 and 1970, the novella is divided into four chapters and begins with a flavour of our narrator’s childhood and school years in the Turkish town of Fatih. Later, we move on to the time our narrator spends in Istanbul and Ankara, and abroad in Europe’s great capital cities (Berlin and Paris). We learn of her string of lovers, her unsuccessful marriages, and above all her incarceration in mental asylums. This predominantly forms the essence of the book, and yet the narrative is not as linear as it seems. Moody, evocative, teeming with rich visuals and a palpable Jean Rhys vibe, Cold Nights of Childhood is a beautifully penned novella that I’m glad to have discovered. 

THE FEAST by Margaret Kennedy

With its combination of wit, social commentary and mystery, The Feast by Margaret Kennedy is a terrific novel; an excellent upstairs-downstairs drama and comedy set in Cornwall post the Second World War featuring a seaside hotel in danger of being buried, an eccentric ensemble cast with hidden secrets, and the high voltage interactions and tensions between them.

We first learn in the prologue that the Pendizack Manor Hotel lies buried in a mound of rubble after a huge mass of cliff collapses on it. Seven guests perish, one of whom is Dick Siddal, the owner of the hotel, while the others survive. At that point, the identities of the casualties as well as the survivors are not revealed to the reader, and that in essence forms the mystery element of the plot. After the prologue, the reader is then taken back to a week earlier, from whereon the book charts the arrival of the guests at the hotel, its other inhabitants, as well as the chain of events leading up to the tragedy in question.

Displaying a sharp, astute vision, Kennedy’s writing is top-notch as she weaves in elements of a social satire and morality fable with those of a thriller. Her gimlet-eyed gaze on the foibles and failures of her finely etched characters make both the endearing as well as the horrible ones pretty memorable. 

ITALIAN WAR DIARIES: A CHILL IN THE AIR & WAR IN VAL D’ORCIA by Iris Origo 

Set during the Second World War and seen from Italy’s perspective, both A Chill in the Air and War in Val d’Orcia are Iris Origo’s real-time war diaries covering the periods 1939-1940 and 1943-1944 respectively, a record of daily life in her adopted country in conflict. Iris was Anglo-American married to an Italian, and much before the war the couple bought and revived a derelict stretch of the Val d’Orcia valley in Tuscany and created an estate. At the height of the war, and at great personal risk, the Origos gave food and shelter to partisans, deserters, and refugees. While A Chill in the Air captures the mood of the Italian people just before Italy entered into the war reluctantly siding with Germany, War in Val D’Orcia records a slew of events at the height of the war.  Both published diaries are first-hand accounts of the complexity of Italy’s position, the politics prevailing at the time, and the difficulty of going about daily life. These are books filled with a mix of facts, anecdotes, and her astute observations on the extraordinary scenes unfolding around her. I read these thanks to Kim’s #NYRBWomen23 reading project, and plan to put up a detailed post soon. For the time being though I’ll say that these books were brilliant, particularly War in Val d’Orcia.

That’s it for April and May. I plan to begin June with Rattlebone by Maxine Clair and I’ll be joining in for the #NYRBWomen23 read-along of Love’s Work by Gillian Rose. Other than that I haven’t decided anything yet and will pick up books depending on what catches my fancy at the time.

Forbidden Notebook – Alba de Céspedes (tr. Ann Goldstein)

Alba de Céspedes’s Forbidden Notebook has been garnering rave reviews of late and after reading it, I can say that the hype is totally justified. The novel is translated from Italian by Ann Goldstein who was also the translator for Elena Ferrante’s wonderful Neapolitan Novels.

In the later pages of Forbidden Notebook, there’s a scene where Valeria Cossatti, our protagonist and the narrator is having lunch with her glamorous friend Clara at her place, a penthouse apartment in Rome. Divorced from her husband, Clara is now an independent woman and a successful filmmaker, but by then Valeria’s position has become much more complex. Her outward façade continues to be that of a traditional woman confined to the role of a homemaker and catering to the needs of her husband and two children, but inwardly Valeria has begun to seethe and resist these conventional norms she is expected to adhere to. Clara believes that Valeria has been lucky to achieve all that she wanted by marrying, but by then Valeria and the reader know the reality to be entirely different – Valeria has been experiencing a deep sense of disillusionment, a feeling she is unable to share with Clara.

It is this intense conflict, growing resistance, and the dual nature of her thoughts and emotions that forms the essence of Alba de Céspedes’s Forbidden Notebook – a rich, multilayered novel of domestic dissatisfaction and awakening seen through the prism of a woman’s private diary. Set in 1950s Rome, not only does the book boldly challenge the validity of restrictive, orthodox roles thrust upon women, and the heartaches of motherhood, but it also dwells on writing as a powerful tool for a woman to find her voice and be heard when those closest to her fail to do so.

The novel’s opening line “I was wrong to buy this notebook, very wrong” sets the tone of this feverish narrative where one Sunday on a whim Valeria purchases a notebook from a tobacconist’s shop. Thus, in one fell swoop, her action is forbidden on two counts – (a) purchasing notebooks from tobacconists was prohibited on Sundays by law, (b) the very act of diary-writing, hitherto unknown to her, must be shrouded in secrecy without her family ever finding out.

Beginning in November 1950, Valeria’s initial diary entries paint a picture of contented family life, but cracks soon begin to appear on the surface and the growing discontent bubbles forth. We learn that Valeria and her husband Michele are both in their forties with two grown-up children Riccardo and Mirella who are twenty and living with them.

Financially, the family isn’t too well-off. Michele works at a bank and out of necessity Valeria is a working woman too, although privately she enjoys and values her work life with all the sense of pride that comes with it. But it’s a household where Valeria does not have the agency to discuss how meaningful her work is to her, she immediately knows that no one will take her seriously. It is okay for her to publicly admit that she is working to supplement the family income, but she can’t say that her work adds meaning and purpose to her life. Michele does get a promotion and their finances thereafter improve but not significantly enough to improve their standard of living. The strained financial circumstances start impacting Riccardo and Mirella’s outlook too. Riccardo decides to find a job and relocate to Argentina, while Mirella having studied law, starts working in a law firm and begins going out with her colleague, a successful, sophisticated, and much older man who showers her with expensive gifts and instills in her a taste for fine living.

Meanwhile, Valeria is defined by the stereotyped roles of a wife and a mother which imply a life of uncomplaining selflessness and service to others. Dull, monotonous household chores and daily meals take up most of her time, and she struggles to find time for herself, some peace and quiet that she can devote to writing in her notebook. Valeria is aware that even boldly proclaiming her newfound activity will be looked upon incredulously by her family who take her for granted and can’t imagine her indulging in something that is only for herself.

In the beginning, Valeria is tormented by the presence of a secret diary and by its very nature keeping Michele in the dark, and yet she inwardly rebels at the idea of stopping it. She continues to write late into the night but is always fearful of the consequences if her diary is found. Even finding a hiding place for her diary is a challenge, there’s no place in the house that she can truly call her own.

As the novel progresses, we begin to glimpse faults within the family that only fuel Valeria’s growing unhappiness, and the later diary entries reflect her newfound awareness, frustrations with her husband and children, and the growing desire to walk away from it all. She desperately longs for someone to talk to, but having lived a life for so long where her opinions were always moulded by tradition and authority, she can’t quite bring herself to be frank and assertive. In that aspect, the notebook is her silent companion, its pages opening up to her so that she can express herself and her true feelings.

Her children’s behaviour disturbs her too, albeit in different ways. Riccardo grows up to be an unremarkable man with a rigid, limited way of thinking. He begins a relationship with an extremely quiet and docile woman Marina hoping to marry and settle down, a woman who fails to make an impression on Valeria and she wishes Riccardo had chosen a partner who was strong and not meek.  But in light of Riccardo’s growing misogynistic tendencies, his choice of a match is hardly a surprise to the reader – Marina is a woman he can boss and push around.

It is Mirella’s transformation into a fiercely independent woman that is one of the most interesting aspects of the book and the many intense, heated discussions that she has with Valeria regarding her choices are one of the novel’s many highlights.

“That is what disgusts me, mamma. You think you’re obliged to serve everyone, starting with me. So, little by little, the others end up believing it. You think that for a woman to have some personal satisfaction, besides those of the house and the kitchen, is a fault, that her job is to serve. I don’t want that, you understand? I don’t want that.”

Essentially, Mirella becomes what Valeria would have wanted to become but could not. Mirella’s observations and arguments display a keen perception and maturity that unnerve Valeria. By taking up a job and becoming financially independent, by taking on a lover and rejecting the established ideal of marriage, she is an embodiment of a modern woman and a threat to Valeria’s outmoded ideas especially at a time when Valeria’s sense of self and the roles assigned to her begins to crumble and breakdown. During one of their many high-octane conversations, Mirella accuses Valeria of being jealous of the choices she has made, which shocks Valeria at the time, but within the private confines of her diary, she’s forced to admit however difficult, that Mirella may be right.

But at the end of the day, Forbidden Notebook is all about Valeria and her continuous struggle with her outward persona that is more and more at odds with her interior self. It is this duality of character, of trying to keep up with both personalities that cause her much anguish, a tussle incredulously unnoticed by those closest to her as they remain selfishly absorbed with their own problems. If she was perfectly happy being a conventional housewife, life would have gone on as before. If she was sure of her desire to upend her current life and start entirely afresh, she would have taken that step too just like her friend Clara did. But the root of Valeria’s problems is the difficulty in making that decision, of resolving that conflict. She’s caught between a rock and a hard place – her newly discovered self-awareness prevents her from going back to her old life, yet at the same time her hard-to-dismantle old-fashioned and patriarchal outlook prevents her from abandoning it.

Conditioned to adhere to conservative roles, Valeria instinctively chastises Mirella for having a lover and rejecting marriage and children, but at the same time finds herself attracted to her boss who is a married man, an affair she is not ready to terminate. She supports Ricardo’s decision to marry and yet disapproves of his choice of a wife; she wished he had not chosen someone weak like Marina, and yet it is obvious that a strong-willed woman would never have married Riccardo.

Mirella’s gutsy decision to live life on her own terms by rebuking conventionality and the blossoming of a romance with her boss Guido are the two chief catalysts that force Valeria to re-examine her life, particularly her marriage, in a new and altered light. Her relationship with Michele has slid into an all-too-comfortable space, the feeling that they live like siblings rather than as husband and wife. The romance and passion of those initial days of marriage have vanished; the ensuing war and birth of the children thereafter fail to revive that intimacy, although they remain fond of one another.

Maybe that’s what for so many years prevents us from being as we were when we were newly married, or when the children were little and didn’t understand anything: it’s the presence of the children on the other side of the wall. You have to wait until they’ve gone out, you have to be certain you won’t be surprised; and the children are everywhere, in a house. At night you have to resort to darkness, to silence, restrain every word, every moan, and in the morning not remember what happened out of fear that they might read the memory of it in your eyes.

Michele is also full of double standards – there’s a scene where he openly admires Clara for her independence, wealth and success, and yet expresses disapproval of Valeria walking down that same path borne out of the idea that it is okay for other women to lead unconventional lives while his wife must remain conventional.

Enmeshed into these narratives is also her complicated relationship with her mother, who isn’t entirely supportive of Valeria’s life and choices even if, ironically, Valeria has never rebelled the way Mirella has.

The past no longer served to protect us, and we had no certainty about the future. Everything in me is confused, and I can’t talk about it with my mother or my daughter because neither would understand. They belong to two different worlds: the one that ended with that time, the other that it gave birth to. And in me these two worlds clash, making me groan. Maybe that’s why I often feel. that I have no substance. Maybe I am only this passage, this clash.

As a result, Valeria’s sense of loneliness only accentuates even when she’s with the family, as she yearns to break the shackles that have bound her to them for so long. She longs for Venice as a gateway to paradise, first with Michele once the children have left home for good, but then later with Guido to escape the claustrophobic confines of home and the demands it makes of her. But will she go through with it is the million-dollar question.

If she had the courage and wasn’t so influenced by the norms of patriarchy, she could have walked away from her husband who viewed her as just another fixture in the house, and she could have left her children who were capable of fending for themselves, even if society would not have accepted the idea of a woman walking out on her husband and children. But for Valeria it’s not that simple because to undertake such a step would mean to admit that her past life accounted for nothing, and accepting that is much harder.

Thus, in Forbidden Notebook, we see a rich array of themes on display – marriage, family life, the sorrow of children flying the nest, the widening generational gap, the importance and value of wealth and money, the tussle between traditional values and modern ideas, but more importantly the sense of purpose in a woman’s life which is not necessarily defined by her husband and children, and her right to her own private space. Forbidden Notebook also explores the idea of writing as a refuge and private act of confession which in Valeria’s case is a double-edged sword – It gives her that alone time and means of expression not available otherwise, and yet it’s also an act that instills unbearable fear, she remains on tenterhooks afraid of its discovery and along with it the invasion of her private domain. Writing in her notebook allows Valeria to dig deeper into her life and yet her observations and analysis also frighten her, she almost wishes she could destroy her notebook so that life could turn back to what it was – simple compared to the complex emotions and feelings the notebook has stirred.

Because when I write in this notebook I feel I’m committing a serious sin, a sacrilege: it’s as if I were talking to the devil. Opening it, my hands tremble; I’m afraid. I see the white pages, the dense parallel lines ready to receive the chronicle of my future days, and even before I’ve lived them, I’m distressed. I know that my reactions to the facts I write down in detail lead me to know myself more intimately every day. Maybe there are people who, knowing themselves, are able to improve; but the better I know myself, the more lost I become. Besides, I don’t know what feelings could stand up to a ruthless, continuous analysis; or who among us, reflected in every action, could be satisfied with ourself. It seems to me that in life you have to choose a line of conduct, confirm it with yourself and others, and then forget those gestures, those actions, that contradict it. You have to forget them. My mother always says that people with short memories are lucky.

Billed as a feminist classic, Forbidden Notebook, then, is a masterclass of insight and imagination, brilliant in the way it provides a window into a woman’s interior life, an internal struggle that oscillates between the desire to find her own voice and also keep it hidden. Highly recommended!

The Feast – Margaret Kennedy

Margaret Kennedy’s The Feast is the first novel of hers I’ve read, and also a novel I was tempted to buy because of its sumptuous cover. I read it during my holiday in Prague and Cesky Krumlov which was kind of fitting since the novel is set in a seaside hotel which brings together a motlew crew of characters who are on vacation. Luckily, the content inside was wonderful too and I’m eager to explore more of her work particularly The Constant Nymph and Troy Chimneys both of which I have.

With its combination of wit, social commentary and mystery, The Feast by Margaret Kennedy is a terrific novel; an excellent upstairs-downstairs drama and comedy set in Cornwall post the Second World War featuring a seaside hotel in danger of being buried, an eccentric ensemble cast with hidden secrets, and the high voltage interactions and tensions between them.

The book begins with a prologue where Reverend Seddon pays his regular annual visit to Reverend Samuel Bott of St Sody, North Cornwall. It is a time of relaxation for both the priests, enjoying the fruits of their friendship and indulging in their hobbies. But this particular holiday turns out to be different because Seddon much to his chagrin realises that Bott has to write a sermon for a funeral. It’s not something that Bott can get out of either given the strangeness of events leading up to the tragedy, the details of which he proceeds to narrate to Seddon.

The facts are thus – The Pendizack Manor Hotel lies buried in a mound of rubble after a huge mass of cliff collapses on it. Seven guests perish, one of whom is Dick Siddal, the owner of the hotel, while the others survive. At that point, the identities of the casualties as well as the survivors are not revealed to the reader, and that in essence forms the mystery element of the plot. We are told that some months ago before this tragedy, a mine had exploded, and cracks had developed in the mass of cliff over the hotel, although the hotel at that point was unaffected. A survey man, subsequently, examines those cracks, is convinced that it is unsafe, and conveys his findings in a letter to Dick Siddal who doesn’t bother to respond.

Thus, Reverend Bott is now busy scribbling a sermon for the funeral; he describes these developments as an Act of God, but it could very well have been called an Act of Man, given the owner’s irresponsibility in not taking action when required.

After the prologue, the reader is then taken back to a week earlier, from whereon the book charts the arrival of the guests at the Pendizack Manor Hotel, its other inhabitants, as well as the chain of events leading up to the tragedy in question.

We now come to the principal characters of this tale. First and foremost are the Siddals who own the Pendizack Manor Hotel and reside there with their children Gerry, Duff, and Robin. Mrs Siddal is an overworked woman who does most of the heavy lifting concerning the management of the hotel, the guests, as well as preparation of daily meals. Her husband Dick Siddal for the most part loiters around in his boot-hole refusing any form of work and responsibility, and when he does make an appearance in front of his guests, it is to deliver his off-kilter opinions on a variety of topics. Dick Siddal displays a keen perceptive mind and is a man of strange, singular worldviews but he could not be bothered about the daily working of the hotel, a fact that plays a crucial role in his downfall.

But he enjoyed the sound of his own voice, and nobody was likely to interrupt him. ‘I daresay,’ he said, ‘that mankind is protected and sustained by undeserved suffering; by all those millions of helpless people who pay for the evil we do and who shield us simply by being there, as Lot was in the doomed city. If any community of people were to be purely evil, were to have no element of innocence among them at all, the earth would probably open and swallow them up. Such a community would split the moral atom.’ 

As far as the children are concerned, Mrs Siddal is partial towards Duff and Robin, the apples of her eyes, and she has ambitions of getting them into top-notch colleges. Of Gerry with his stocky build and propensity to bore her, she remains a tad contemptuous (“Of her three sons he was the most loving and least loved”), and yet she heavily depends upon Gerry to help around the hotel and bring in the moolah that will fund Robin and Duff’s education.

We are also introduced to the domestic help – the housekeeper Miss Ellis is a spiteful woman prone to poking her nose into other people’s affairs and gossiping about them, with a remarkable flair to shirk her duties. Then there’s the conscientious and straight-talking Nancibel who stays with her extended family nearby and drops into the hotel every day to do the bulk of the work given Miss Ellis’s inclination to avoid it.  Very soon, tensions begin to simmer and erupt between the two women given their contrasting personalities and general attitude towards work.

We then come to the guests. There’s Lady Gifford, her husband Sir Henry Gifford, and their children Hebe, Caroline, and twin boys Luke and Michael. Lady Gifford grapples with poor health, confined to the bed for most of their stay, while her children run wild. The wildest of the lot is Hebe, an adopted child, and who is aware of her adopted status that grieves her greatly. Hebe’s actions often shock Henry Gifford who struggles to bring her under control, a task made difficult by the fact that his wife does not see things his way. Cracks in the relationship between husband and wife are also evident – Henry Gifford believes himself to be a man of principles and cannot fathom his wife’s shallow personality and her craving for the finer things in life.  

Next up is Mrs Cove, the most disturbing character in the book, and her three daughters Blanche, Beatrix, and Maud. Mrs Cove is a cheerless, strict woman who rules her meek daughters with an iron fist. She’s deeply stingy with an ascetic worldview, flaunts the family’s poor circumstances which she believes gives her the right to be acquisitive, and often denies her daughters the simplest of pleasures. There’s something about Mrs Cove’s actions that is quite sinister, particularly when it comes to the bizarre treatment of her daughters, her ulterior motive is gradually revealed to the reader later on. Blanche, Beatrix, and Maud don’t love their mother, but they fear her. However, while they remain deprived of material comforts and bear the brunt of their mother’s cruelty, what sustains them is their imagination – rich, vital, and vivid. The three girls strike up a friendship with the Gifford children and are enamoured by them, their wealth, and their general appearance of well-being. One of their greatest wishes is the desire to do something good for the residents of Pendizack Manor, something like hosting a feast – the central event that lends the novel its name, and is held on the very same day that the landslide strikes.

Then there’s the morally dubious writer Anne Lechane and her chauffeur-secretary Bruce who is kind of a reluctant toy boy. Anne has some kind of hold over Bruce forcing him to remain indebted to her. But the other reason that compels him to work for Anne is his aspiration to become a writer himself, although these state of affairs greatly complicate his budding romance with Nancibel. We are also introduced to the belligerent and controlling Canon Wraxton, notorious for picking up verbal fights at the drop of a hat and making scenes much to the embarrassment and terror of his daughter Evangeline.

Rounding off this oddball lot are the bereaved couple Mr and Mrs Paley, who are initially reserved and largely keep to themselves. The Paleys lost their daughter several years ago, but it’s a grief that runs deep and the two haven’t entirely gotten over it. What’s more, theirs is a shaky marriage, with not much scope for communicating and navigating their personal tragedy. Indeed, at one point Mrs Paley driven to the brink of suicide, has an epiphany, and thereby resolves to take charge of her life beginning with helping the residents of the hotel in any way that she can. And so her role transforms to that of an agony aunt; certain members confess to her their hopes, secrets, and desires whether she offers any advice or not. She particularly makes a big difference in the way Evangeline’s life takes a turn for the better.

Each guest had retired, as an animal retires with a bone to the back of its cage, to chew over some single obsession.

Thus, as the novel progresses various developments occur along the way – a series of petty squabbles between the guests, the blossoming of two romances, a police visit, a near-drowning incident, a stolen artifact, and some other elements that spice up the story as it reaches its inevitable finale.

The Feast excels in that through a rather engaging tale it explores a slew of themes such as greed, evil, sloth, class wars, neglect, bereavement, unexpected friendships, and even romance. The introduction to the novel talks about how the various characters epitomize the Seven Deadly Sins, an interpretation that did not occur to me, although a couple of them are obvious (greed and sloth).

Greed drives the actions of the frightening Mrs Cove, a sin that is also central to Lady Gifford’s wish to relocate to a place where she can avoid paying taxes. On the pedestal of sloth sits Dick Siddal whose actions, or should we say non-action leads to the landslide that buries seven of the hotel guests. Anne Lechene is the embodiment of lechery given her unhealthy designs on Bruce as well as one of the Siddal men, Colonel Wraxton with his bombastic temperament stands for wrath, and so on. The class differences and the characters’ widely differing views on this topic are revealed through myriad heated exchanges between them as they argue about inequality, the rights of the working class, and the entitlement of the upper class among other things. Neglect is also another theme that comes to the fore exemplified by the wild behaviour of the Gifford children, the shabby appearance of the Cove girls, as well as Dick Siddal’s laziness when it comes to the safety of the hotel. It’s a novel of darkness and light, alternately showcasing the darker side of human nature with its generous side, as well as moments of subtle comedy with pure evil.  

Displaying a sharp, astute vision, Kennedy’s writing is top-notch as she weaves in elements of a social satire and morality fable with those of a thriller. Her gimlet-eyed gaze on the foibles and failures of her finely etched characters make both the endearing as well as the horrible ones pretty memorable.  In a nutshell, this is a wonderful novel with an array of rich themes and interpretations; I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Highly recommended!

Cold Nights of Childhood – Tezer Özlü (tr. Maureen Freely)

On our recent travels to the Czech Republic, we had a long layover in the Turkish city of Istanbul. But not so long that we could go outside and explore the city although I would have definitely loved to. Some day in the future perhaps, but in the meanwhile I was happy to immerse myself in some Turkish literature instead with Tezer Özlü’s Cold Nights of Childhood.

In the early pages of Cold Nights of Childhood, our unnamed narrator is toying with the idea of suicide (“Thoughts of death chase after me. Day and night, I think about killing myself”). She is unclear why, but to the reader, her reasons are not entirely obscure. She longs to escape the stifling environment of her home, a conservative society ruled by patriarchal norms. Her father is driven by nationalistic and monetary fervor constantly espousing success and the call of duty to the nation. Her brother enjoys freedom in the house in a way she does not, and he uses that power to his advantage. These thoughts of ending her life suddenly transform into action, and our narrator consumes a bunch of pills wishing for death but wakes up in a psychiatric unit instead. She’s very young then and admits to this incident being her last suicide attempt, and yet it marks the beginning of a series of fear-inducing stints at psychiatric wards in the subsequent years.

Cold Nights of Childhood, then, is an unflinching portrayal of a woman’s quest for independence, freedom, sex and love, as well as her struggles with mental illness told in a writing style that is cinematic and impressionistic without conforming to the rigid structures of conventional storytelling. Originally published in 1980, the novella is filled with autobiographical elements as indicated in the introduction by Ayşegül Savaş and the translator’s note by Maureen Freely.

At barely 70 pages and set between 1950 and 1970, the novella is divided into four chapters and begins with a flavour of our narrator’s childhood and school years in the Turkish town of Fatih. We get an idea of her conservative upbringing, the lack of love between her parents (“what binds them together are their weighty petit bourgeois responsibilities”), soul-crushing daily family routines, and her deep yearning to break free, to travel to big cities and faraway lands. Evenings are spent with a friend reading Russian classics (“how very much these novels resonate with our own world”), while schooling years are spent in a lycee run by nuns whose mysterious workings are beyond our narrator’s grasp.

Later, the novella begins focusing on our narrator’s years in Istanbul and Ankara, and abroad in Europe’s great capital cities (Berlin and Paris). We learn of her string of lovers, her unsuccessful marriages, and above all her incarceration in mental asylums. This predominantly forms the essence of the book, and yet the narrative is not as linear as it seems.

Timelines blur as do places that often merge into one another like colours in a watercolour painting. For instance, in the third chapter titled “The Leo Ferre Concert”, in one moment our narrator is residing in an artist’s residence in Berlin, a house with high ceilings, wide wooden stairs, huge rooms filled with paintings, rich furniture and thousands of books, and in the next moment we find her in a grim hospital room minimally furnished with a dismal wardrobe, iron bedstead and a night table. The time shifts also come without warning. For instance, in the first chapter where our narrator dwells on her childhood, we learn of her grandmother Bunni, ancient in every sense, both in terms of thoughts and deeds, and her untiring attempts at running the daily household, and then we come across a sentence that describes Bunni’s funeral attended by our narrator with her young child.

Cold Nights of Childhood is also remarkable for its frank depiction of sex, not in terms of describing the act itself but the joyful experience of it. Flitting between a stream of lovers, our narrator is uninhibited when talking about the pleasures of sex, and freely expresses the wild desire that gnaws at her. We also get a glimpse of her freethinking personality when she muses on the nature of relationships.

Why can’t we find our way out of all this? Why do we rush into marriage and relationships, without first becoming friends? Is this what people in their early twenties should be doing? Do we have to sign the marriage register in order to have sex? Or live alone, longing for sex and masturbating? Do men have to find sexual excitement not in actual women but in their images? Must the first woman they know carnally be in a brothel? Must husbands and wives regard each other’s bodies as property? It contradicts our physical make-up entirely, all this. From earliest childhood, they stop us from being ourselves, from loving others, from caressing them. They twist us. Rob us.

Some of those fleeting relationships culminate in marriage, but married life proves unsatisfying. In fact, the reason she marries one of her husbands is because of his promise to not subject her again to the frightening yet eerily familiar experience of psychiatric wards, the loss of freedom and sense of self that it entails. All she asks of him if she falls ill is “to stay at home with my books and my records and a few of my favourite things, drinking tea.” The husband, unsurprisingly, breaks that promise.

Interspersed throughout the text are our narrator’s struggles with mental illness, particularly bipolar disorder (“The illness that begins with such joy soon falls into a dark abyss”), and the dehumanising effects of electroshock treatments. She internally resists but is also outwardly aware of the futility of doing so. The isolation of being shut up in a space of utter silence with occasional voices floating in, when just a few steps away from the hospital, the noisy, outside world carries on unabashedly is wonderfully conveyed. This resistance to a kind of torturous imprisonment is also a cry for life, to witness its joys, to fight for individuality, freedom, and the wonder of brand new experiences.

In addition to the main themes above, the novella is also about the clash between conservative ideals and a more progressive, liberal way of thinking as seen in the striking contrast between our narrator’s childhood and life in her twenties. Turkey’s political turmoil and its impact, while not the central focus of the novella, nevertheless remains on the fringes, filtering into the lives of our narrator’s friends and family.

Cold Nights of Childhood reverberates with striking sensory images, atmospheric descriptive passages that evoke the finer things in life as well as a sense of sadness and melancholia – rooms full of books, cafes spilling onto pavements, the languid summers and the blue-green Mediterranean, the streets of Paris gleaming wet with rain, penthouse apartments with paintings on the walls, melancholic Bach violin concertos.

In these great European cities, friends don’t drop by unexpected. When their day’s work is done, when they’ve left their cafes and restaurants, they have the habit of immersing themselves in deep solitude.

A lot of the descriptions also focus on interior spaces, particularly pieces of furniture that define and distinguish one setting from another. There’s a vivid sense of place specifically when it comes to Turkey – the green waters of the Bosphorus, a Turkish village where the sand is golden with sunlight, Istanbul’s bohemian enclaves, yalis (water mansions) lining the shore, lively meyhanes (taverns) where students gather to discuss art and politics.

Our narrator’s wasted years in psychiatric wards pretty much mirror the five years that Tezer Özlü spent in a psychiatric hospital for bipolar disorder. While helpless in an environment that greatly restricted her freedom, at least when it came to writing Cold Nights of Childhood, Özlü fiercely resisted being tied down by the norms of established narratives. This is why when I began reading the book, I found the first couple of pages a tad disorienting but then I nicely settled into its rhythm. Written in a spare, lucid style, the novella is an amalgam of thoughts and impressions where boundaries with regard to timelines and settings do not exist and where occasional instances of dreams blending with reality reflecting our narrator’s drug-induced stupor crop up.

Moody, evocative, teeming with rich visuals and a palpable Jean Rhys vibe, Cold Nights of Childhood is a beautifully penned novella that I’m glad to have discovered. Very much recommended!