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3.54 AVERAGE
3.54 AVERAGE
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Great writing; fascinating perspective from 1938; marvelously snarky about classes in Britain (though probably most of that flew right over my American head).
It took me a long time to read this slow, patient novel, but I'm very glad I took the time. An elegaic tribute to lost innocence and a deeply moving meditation on the ways in which adulthood both educates and diminishes our hearts, the novel tells the story of sixteen year old Portia Quayle, a shy and delicate girl who lodges with her well-do-brother Thomas and his wife Anna in Edwardian London following the death of her parents. As Portia falls in love with Anna's acquaintance Eddie and takes a trip to the seaside with family friends, the scales - one by one, with heartbreaking care and patience from Bowen - are removed from her eyes and adulthood, in all its selfish, messy and "mature" guises is revealed to her. The book would undoubtedly bore some, but give it time to sink into you and it will be worth it. A sad and beautiful novel.
This book is beautifully written with lots of psychological insight into characters, but it was such a heartache to sludge through. (In fact, I picked it up in 2017 before a trip to Dublin in an effort to read more Irish writers, and I did not finish 'til spring of 2020.) Portia is a teenage orphan who must go to live with her half-brother and his snobby, emotionally aloof, superficial wife who detests her. She becomes enamored with Eddie, who is the O.G. fuckboy. Perhaps I found this book such an uncomfortable reading experience because I identified with Portia as an outside observer.
A quote that sums up the sadness of Portia: "[Portia's] detachment made her seem to abandon being a woman—she was like one of those children in an Elizabethan play who are led on, led off, hardly speak and are known to be bound for some tragic fate which will be told in a line; they do not appear again; their existence, their point of view has had, throughout, an unreality. At the same time, her body looked like some drifting object that has been lodged for a moment, by some trick of the current, under a bank, but most be dislodged again and go on twirling down the implacable stream" (p. 390).
Some other quotes that stood out:
"[Lilian] walked about with the rather fated expression you see in photographs of girls who have subsequently been murdered, but nothing had so far happened to her..." (p. 61)
"In [Portia's] home life (her new home life) with its puzzles, she saw dissimulation always on guard; she asked herself humbly for what reason people said what they did not mean, and did not say what they meant. She felt most certain to find the clue when she felt the frenzy behind the clever remark." (p. 72)
"Innocence so constantly finds itself in a false position that inwardly innocent people learn to be disingenuous. Finding no language in which to speak in their own terms, they resign themselves to being translated imperfectly. They exist alone; when they try to enter into relations they compromise falsifyingly—through anxiety, through desire to impart and to feel warmth. The system of our affections is too corrupt for them. They are bound to blunder, then to be told they cheat." (p. 133)
"Only in a house where one has learnt to be lonely does one have this solicitude for things. One's relation to them, the daily seeing or touching, begins to become love, and to lay one open to pain." (p. 179)
"Women who shop by telephone do not know what the pleasures of buying are. Rich women live at such a distance from life that very often they never see their money—the Queen, they say, for instance, never carries a purse. But Mrs. Heccomb's unstitched morocco purse, with the tarnished silver corners, was always in evidence." (p. 199)
"After inside upheavals, it is important to fix on imperturbable things. Their imperturbableness, their air that nothing has happened renews our guarantee...These things are are what we mean when we speak of civilisation: they remind us how exceedingly seldom the unseemly or the unforeseeable rears its head." (p. 270)
"No, really, er, Portia, believe me: if one didn't let oneself swallow some few lies, I don't know how one would ever carry the past." -St. Quentin (p. 327)
"This evening the pure in heart have simply got us on toast. And look at the fun [Portia] has—she lives in a world of heroes. Who are we to be sure they're as phony as we all think? If the world's really a stage, there must be some big parts. All she asks is to walk on at the same time...I swear that each of us keeps, battened down inside himself, a sort of lunatic giant—impossible socially, but full-scale—and that it's the knockings and batterings we sometimes hear in each other that keeps our intercourse from utter banality. Portia hears these the whole time; in fact she hears nothing else. Can we wonder she looks so goofy most of the time?" -St. Quentin (p. 407)
A quote that sums up the sadness of Portia: "[Portia's] detachment made her seem to abandon being a woman—she was like one of those children in an Elizabethan play who are led on, led off, hardly speak and are known to be bound for some tragic fate which will be told in a line; they do not appear again; their existence, their point of view has had, throughout, an unreality. At the same time, her body looked like some drifting object that has been lodged for a moment, by some trick of the current, under a bank, but most be dislodged again and go on twirling down the implacable stream" (p. 390).
Some other quotes that stood out:
"[Lilian] walked about with the rather fated expression you see in photographs of girls who have subsequently been murdered, but nothing had so far happened to her..." (p. 61)
"In [Portia's] home life (her new home life) with its puzzles, she saw dissimulation always on guard; she asked herself humbly for what reason people said what they did not mean, and did not say what they meant. She felt most certain to find the clue when she felt the frenzy behind the clever remark." (p. 72)
"Innocence so constantly finds itself in a false position that inwardly innocent people learn to be disingenuous. Finding no language in which to speak in their own terms, they resign themselves to being translated imperfectly. They exist alone; when they try to enter into relations they compromise falsifyingly—through anxiety, through desire to impart and to feel warmth. The system of our affections is too corrupt for them. They are bound to blunder, then to be told they cheat." (p. 133)
"Only in a house where one has learnt to be lonely does one have this solicitude for things. One's relation to them, the daily seeing or touching, begins to become love, and to lay one open to pain." (p. 179)
"Women who shop by telephone do not know what the pleasures of buying are. Rich women live at such a distance from life that very often they never see their money—the Queen, they say, for instance, never carries a purse. But Mrs. Heccomb's unstitched morocco purse, with the tarnished silver corners, was always in evidence." (p. 199)
"After inside upheavals, it is important to fix on imperturbable things. Their imperturbableness, their air that nothing has happened renews our guarantee...These things are are what we mean when we speak of civilisation: they remind us how exceedingly seldom the unseemly or the unforeseeable rears its head." (p. 270)
"No, really, er, Portia, believe me: if one didn't let oneself swallow some few lies, I don't know how one would ever carry the past." -St. Quentin (p. 327)
"This evening the pure in heart have simply got us on toast. And look at the fun [Portia] has—she lives in a world of heroes. Who are we to be sure they're as phony as we all think? If the world's really a stage, there must be some big parts. All she asks is to walk on at the same time...I swear that each of us keeps, battened down inside himself, a sort of lunatic giant—impossible socially, but full-scale—and that it's the knockings and batterings we sometimes hear in each other that keeps our intercourse from utter banality. Portia hears these the whole time; in fact she hears nothing else. Can we wonder she looks so goofy most of the time?" -St. Quentin (p. 407)