Book: The man in the wooden hat
Feb. 25th, 2012 08:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livAuthor: Jane Gardam
Details: (c) Jane Gardam 2009; Pub Chatto & Windus 2009; ISBN 978-0-701-17798-0
Verdict: The man in the wooden hat is an emotionally understated yet powerful character piece.
Reasons for reading it: Jane Gardam has been one of my favourite authors since I was a kid, so I'm always happy to find a new book by her. Her recent work often seems to return to a very old retired barrister and his memories of colonial life. I'm not sure this is the topic / person I most passionately want to read about, though I enjoyed the original Old Filth, but Gardam is such a strong writer that I'm willing to try another variation on this theme.
How it came into my hands: I decided it was time to head back to the library, because my reading diet needs more library serendipity as well as intentionally chosen ebooks.
The man in the wooden hat is basically the life of Old Filth's wife, whereas previously we'd only seen her from his POV. It is a story that could be amazingly dramatic; Betty is the child of British parents brought up in Hong Kong, who spent much of her childhood in Japanese POW camps, then worked at Bletchley Park, and married the basically decent but emotionally unavailable Filth, even though she was really in love with his arch-rival Veneering. But most of these big events are just backgrounded, often completely off-stage or if they do occur within the narrative, barely alluded to rather than developed. The story makes a much bigger deal of finding a rat in Filth's kitchen than any of these incidents which make a more typical novel climax. Even the emotional development of the relationship is hinted at rather than described; you get a very vivid picture of how Betty and Filth adapt to eachother and build a long-term relationship, dealing with things like his desire to live in the Far East and his intense devotion to his legal career while she wants to live in England and have a normal family life and take part in her local community, but without much explicit description of Betty's feelings. The book doesn't really talk about how hard it was for a university educated, highly intelligent woman to adapt to the restricted expectations of upper-middle class married life before the sexual revolution; it's there, but you have to read between the lines.
The relationship that gets the most actual emotional attention is not even Betty's imperfectly suppressed passion for her husband's rival, but rather her interaction with the rival's son. And even that is very patchy, Betty and Harry only meet by coincidence once every few decades. There is some emotional development of Betty's feelings about her miscarriage and subsequent inability to have children, but not nearly as much as you'd expect if the book was going to be about that. The book doesn't end with Betty's death, but switches back to Filth's POV to recap of the story from The people on Privilege Hill where Filth and his rival build a kind of uneasy friendship at the very end of their lives.
In some ways I suppose this is typical Gardam; she does very memorable characterization without any emotional fireworks. I did find the book highly readable, even though it's so understated and quiet. I think it would probably work well as a stand-alone if you hadn't read the other Old Filth stuff, though it's not quite as strong a book as the first one. One thing I did find very strange was the introduction of Filth's friend Albert Ross (aka Albatross or Albat Loss). Partly because it's kind of jarring, in a mimetic book published only a couple of years ago, to see a person with a congenital growth limitation (as opposed to a member of a post-Tolkien fantasy race) repeatedly referred to as a "dwarf", though it does make sense from a characterization point of view. Partly because it's not clear whether he's a character or a metaphor, he sort of shows up at random moments and makes Significant Pronouncements (in a Chinese accent, which is referred to rather a lot though thankfully not actively stereotyped). I think he's supposed to the Man in the Wooden Hat of the title, but the story isn't really about him. I'm sure that Gardam is doing something cleverer than having a dwarf hang around being a symbol of Weird as if in a Mediaeval morality tale, but I can't quite tell what.
Details: (c) Jane Gardam 2009; Pub Chatto & Windus 2009; ISBN 978-0-701-17798-0
Verdict: The man in the wooden hat is an emotionally understated yet powerful character piece.
Reasons for reading it: Jane Gardam has been one of my favourite authors since I was a kid, so I'm always happy to find a new book by her. Her recent work often seems to return to a very old retired barrister and his memories of colonial life. I'm not sure this is the topic / person I most passionately want to read about, though I enjoyed the original Old Filth, but Gardam is such a strong writer that I'm willing to try another variation on this theme.
How it came into my hands: I decided it was time to head back to the library, because my reading diet needs more library serendipity as well as intentionally chosen ebooks.
The man in the wooden hat is basically the life of Old Filth's wife, whereas previously we'd only seen her from his POV. It is a story that could be amazingly dramatic; Betty is the child of British parents brought up in Hong Kong, who spent much of her childhood in Japanese POW camps, then worked at Bletchley Park, and married the basically decent but emotionally unavailable Filth, even though she was really in love with his arch-rival Veneering. But most of these big events are just backgrounded, often completely off-stage or if they do occur within the narrative, barely alluded to rather than developed. The story makes a much bigger deal of finding a rat in Filth's kitchen than any of these incidents which make a more typical novel climax. Even the emotional development of the relationship is hinted at rather than described; you get a very vivid picture of how Betty and Filth adapt to eachother and build a long-term relationship, dealing with things like his desire to live in the Far East and his intense devotion to his legal career while she wants to live in England and have a normal family life and take part in her local community, but without much explicit description of Betty's feelings. The book doesn't really talk about how hard it was for a university educated, highly intelligent woman to adapt to the restricted expectations of upper-middle class married life before the sexual revolution; it's there, but you have to read between the lines.
The relationship that gets the most actual emotional attention is not even Betty's imperfectly suppressed passion for her husband's rival, but rather her interaction with the rival's son. And even that is very patchy, Betty and Harry only meet by coincidence once every few decades. There is some emotional development of Betty's feelings about her miscarriage and subsequent inability to have children, but not nearly as much as you'd expect if the book was going to be about that. The book doesn't end with Betty's death, but switches back to Filth's POV to recap of the story from The people on Privilege Hill where Filth and his rival build a kind of uneasy friendship at the very end of their lives.
In some ways I suppose this is typical Gardam; she does very memorable characterization without any emotional fireworks. I did find the book highly readable, even though it's so understated and quiet. I think it would probably work well as a stand-alone if you hadn't read the other Old Filth stuff, though it's not quite as strong a book as the first one. One thing I did find very strange was the introduction of Filth's friend Albert Ross (aka Albatross or Albat Loss). Partly because it's kind of jarring, in a mimetic book published only a couple of years ago, to see a person with a congenital growth limitation (as opposed to a member of a post-Tolkien fantasy race) repeatedly referred to as a "dwarf", though it does make sense from a characterization point of view. Partly because it's not clear whether he's a character or a metaphor, he sort of shows up at random moments and makes Significant Pronouncements (in a Chinese accent, which is referred to rather a lot though thankfully not actively stereotyped). I think he's supposed to the Man in the Wooden Hat of the title, but the story isn't really about him. I'm sure that Gardam is doing something cleverer than having a dwarf hang around being a symbol of Weird as if in a Mediaeval morality tale, but I can't quite tell what.
