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Reviews tagging 'Alcoholism'
Saturday Lunch With The Brownings And Other Stories by Penelope Mortimer
1 review
absolutive's review
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
The stories in this collection are delightfully acid, dark, biting, sharp and bleak. They are a riot and well-paced, masterpieces of irony and terror in the banality of the domestic that is a life. They express important truths about middle and upper middle class women in post-war Britain who have to manage their households, children, and professional husbands. In so doing they show us, with humour and at times satiric sympathy, the burdens on women, with an occasional story showing a husband's or a child's perspective. I feel a sort of naughty escapism in reveling in this book.
In "The Skylight," a mother and her child arrive after a long journey to their holiday cottage in the South of France, only to find it locked and apparently abandoned. What ensues is the perfect horror story, worthy of Shirley Jackson.
In "Such a Super Evening" we meet a dashing, stylish celebrity couple with children galore, much like the Mortimers themselves. How do they manage to have it all? Their starstruck hosts return to earth as they realise that for this couple quarrels are "ornaments which they feel undressed without" and the stimulating conversation comes from the mouths of robots who are talking to no one but themselves.
The story "I Told You So" features a couple at the seaside watching their three children climb down a cliff towards the beach. To the man, his wife is full of gestures, not feelings, and she is putting the children in danger by allowing them to make their own path. To the woman, her husband is trying to restrict their freedom just as he restricts hers. As she jumps off the path herself, she wonders: "Why jump when there was a perfectly good path?" "Why not hang on his arm, timidly negotiating the bend, ... arriving, with a little hop, if necessary, on the safer, level ground? They weren't children to be throwing their bodies carelessly about as though they were of no value. They weren't young, for God's sake." Even in her freedom in the breezy outdoors, the vast sea stretching towards the Continent, she feels "the only air, the warm wasted breath of their quarreling."
"Little Mrs. Perkins" is the story of a woman in hospital after the birth of her baby. She shares a room with another woman, whom she observes and whose secret she witnesses with neither husband, doctor, nor woman the wiser. By the time they leave the hospital she can truly say: "I know more about that woman ... than any other person alive."
"The Parson" is like one of Chekhov's bleak novellas about a young man full of feeling, hope and thoughts embarking on what he expects to be his important life, only to fail again and again in his goals and attempts to live authentically to his ideal self. This parson bounces from parsonage to parsonage all over the country, from philosophy to sect, from piety to irreverence, from nudist to communist. His journey, without meaning or reward, eventually becomes a career path. After decades he finally feels he has made it and his life becomes more comfortable: "He had a son and two hundred and fifty pounds a year, he had a study with an armchair, and six days off a week. There was only one thing missing. He no longer believed in God." Most of the stories show the deep well of meaninglessness at the core of modern professional and domestic life. This story shows the analogue in religious life.
"What a Lovely Surprise" is the perfect story. For me it expressed a real nugget of truth that I wouldn't have been able to articulate: How people can insist on controlling you by invoking your own pleasure, making you miserable and resentful in the process, and then, since it was all done for your pleasure, resenting you for not enjoying it and expecting you to make it up to them.
In "The Skylight," a mother and her child arrive after a long journey to their holiday cottage in the South of France, only to find it locked and apparently abandoned. What ensues is the perfect horror story, worthy of Shirley Jackson.
In "Such a Super Evening" we meet a dashing, stylish celebrity couple with children galore, much like the Mortimers themselves. How do they manage to have it all? Their starstruck hosts return to earth as they realise that for this couple quarrels are "ornaments which they feel undressed without" and the stimulating conversation comes from the mouths of robots who are talking to no one but themselves.
The story "I Told You So" features a couple at the seaside watching their three children climb down a cliff towards the beach. To the man, his wife is full of gestures, not feelings, and she is putting the children in danger by allowing them to make their own path. To the woman, her husband is trying to restrict their freedom just as he restricts hers. As she jumps off the path herself, she wonders: "Why jump when there was a perfectly good path?" "Why not hang on his arm, timidly negotiating the bend, ... arriving, with a little hop, if necessary, on the safer, level ground? They weren't children to be throwing their bodies carelessly about as though they were of no value. They weren't young, for God's sake." Even in her freedom in the breezy outdoors, the vast sea stretching towards the Continent, she feels "the only air, the warm wasted breath of their quarreling."
"Little Mrs. Perkins" is the story of a woman in hospital after the birth of her baby. She shares a room with another woman, whom she observes and whose secret she witnesses with neither husband, doctor, nor woman the wiser. By the time they leave the hospital she can truly say: "I know more about that woman ... than any other person alive."
"The Parson" is like one of Chekhov's bleak novellas about a young man full of feeling, hope and thoughts embarking on what he expects to be his important life, only to fail again and again in his goals and attempts to live authentically to his ideal self. This parson bounces from parsonage to parsonage all over the country, from philosophy to sect, from piety to irreverence, from nudist to communist. His journey, without meaning or reward, eventually becomes a career path. After decades he finally feels he has made it and his life becomes more comfortable: "He had a son and two hundred and fifty pounds a year, he had a study with an armchair, and six days off a week. There was only one thing missing. He no longer believed in God." Most of the stories show the deep well of meaninglessness at the core of modern professional and domestic life. This story shows the analogue in religious life.
"What a Lovely Surprise" is the perfect story. For me it expressed a real nugget of truth that I wouldn't have been able to articulate: How people can insist on controlling you by invoking your own pleasure, making you miserable and resentful in the process, and then, since it was all done for your pleasure, resenting you for not enjoying it and expecting you to make it up to them.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Emotional abuse, Miscarriage, and Suicide
Minor: Addiction, Alcoholism, and Child abuse
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