SEEING THE WORLD THROUGH BOOKS

“Yes, I played a part in sending antisocial, feeble-minded girls with deviant sexual tendencies to Sprogo. Yes, they were sterilized. And you would do well to thank me for not having to contend with their offspring running around the streets like rats, for I can assure you the police would be at a loss as to what to do about their feral behavior.”–Carl Wad.

In his fourth novel published in the US and UK, Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen again tackles an unusual subject, this one based on Denmark’s past history, the imprisonment of sexually active uneducated or mentally challenged women and young girls, some as young as fourteen, on a tiny island in the Great Belt of the Danish Straits. Most of these benighted inmates were poor, and many had been sexually abused at home or had resorted to prostitution as a way of supporting themselves and/or their families. No escape was possible from this island, and bad behavior, sometimes as a result of further sadistic treatment by the matrons and those in power at Sprogo, was punishable by sterilization. Regarded as “forward-thinking” when it was established in 1923, and considered “better” than the institutions in which these women might otherwise have been incarcerated, the Sprogo facility remained open until 1961, a thirty-eight year experiment in creating racial and social “purity” in which fifteen hundred women participated against their wills.

Author photo by Jens Norgaard Larsen

The novel opens in 1985, with Nete Rosen and her wealthy husband of eleven years, Andreas, leaving a reception. On the way out, Nete is accosted by Curt Wad, an older man deeply involved in the Purity Party, then contending for more influence in Danish government. Without warning, Wad insults her, making references to her sordid past, previously unknown to her husband, but well known to Wad, a physician, who knew Nete, then Nete Hermansen, on Sprogo. From this point on, the novel flips back and forth between 1985, and subsequent scenes in 2010, introducing dozens of characters. It is the job of Detective Carl Morck and his staff in Department Q of the Copenhagen Police Department, a group of misfits working in an office hidden in the Department’s basement, to try to solve the old cases, connecting them to the present whenever possible.

Women's Prison at Sprogo

Within the first fifty pages, seven different plot lines and the characters associated with them, have opened up, with action occurring over the twenty-five years between 1985 and 2010. The opening scene with Nete Hermansen Rosen, her husband, and Curt Wad is followed immediately by a 2010 case in which the owner of an escort service, the sister of a former police inspector, has acid thrown in her face. Then, suddenly, without preamble, a flashback to 1978 reveals questions about the drowning death of Morck’s uncle, and a blackmailing attempt of Morck by his cousin, in cahoots with someone who wants influence over Morck. A few pages later, a representative of the Purity Party, the ultra-right-wing group which has absorbed some of those who once supported the Sprogo facility, meets at a secret building housing records and aborted fetuses and from which the now elderly Curt Wad is pushing for a major role in Danish government. And this is just the beginning.

Bridge now connecting Sprogo with Nyborg and Norsor on the Great Belt. The distinctively striped lighthouse and the red-roofed women's prison are visible on the left.

In subsequent threads, still within the first fifty pages, Rose, a seriously disturbed but diligent researcher for Morck, has discovered connections between the recent acid attack and similar attacks on other women who, over the past twenty-five years have disappeared without a trace. A journalist becomes the first of many to investigate the Purity Party and runs afoul of its members, who will stop at nothing. Questions arise about an unsolved shooting a couple of years ago in which Morck was shot with a nail gun, one of his partners killed, and a third left paralyzed. All these subplots are capped off when Nete Hermansen begins to plan her revenge against six different people, most of whom the reader has not yet heard of.  As each of these threads develops further, the reader is challenged to keep all the time periods, all the characters and all the action straight, at the same time that s/he is also trying to see if there are any connections among all these subplots.

Double-click, then scroll down to enlarge map. Sprogo is slightly NW of the “elbow” in red line through the Great Belt, and is part of a bridge/tunnel connection between the two much bigger islands of Funen (Fyn) to the west and Zealand to the east.

For those familiar with the earlier novels in the series, this novel may be a surprise. Adler-Olsen’s first novel, The Keeper of Lost Causes, introduced lively, vibrant characterizations of Carl Morck and the mysterious and (ironically named) Hafez el-Assad from Syria, whom I described in my review of The Keeper of Lost Causes as “the best side-kick I have come across in years.” Filled with some great humor, heart-pounding excitement, and genuine warmth and emotion which involves the reader, that novel was, in my opinion, “as close to perfect as a mystery can get.” The second novel, The Absent One, concerned itself far less with character than did the first novel, though it introduces Rose, a secretary on “mile-high heels” who has been cheering up the other secretaries with her “infectious humour” and who becomes Morck’s irrepressible assistant. Rose is further developed (and Morck and Assad seem to have even less new development) in the third novel, A Conspiracy of Faith, where her serious psychological problems become an issue, though that idea goes no further in this new novel.

In the The Purity of Vengeance, Adler-Olsen has depended heavily on the characterizations from his earlier novels, adding little to what we already know about Morck, Assad, and Rose, but making quantum leaps in the number of subplots and their complications. The number of complications is so large here that the novel becomes an intellectual exercise, with fewer intense action scenes that involve the reader, and much less feeling and humor (except gross bathroom humor, of which there is plenty). The tight plot of Keeper of Lost Causes allowed the author to explore characters and involve the reader, but that is not possible in this dense and plot-heavy novel. As Nete ages into her sixties during this novel, she evokes pity for the horrors of her life, but we know too little about her transformation – from illiterate, young Sprogo victim to beloved wife of wealthy Andreas Rosen, and then to sociopathic avenger – to identify and sympathize with her. The implausibilities in some of the plot lines culminate in the conclusion, about which the less said, the better. As a fan of Adler-Olsen, I was both surprised and disappointed by the changes that have emerged with this novel, and I am hoping that more careful editing by the author himself as he plans his future novels will bring back the quick paced fun and humor, the characterizations, and the tight, dramatic, and action-packed plotting I celebrated in my review of The Keeper of Lost Causes.

ALSO by Adler-Olsen:  THE KEEPER OF LOST CAUSES, THE ABSENT ONE, THE CONSPIRACY OF FAITH, THE MARCO EFFECT

Photos, in order: The author’s photo by Jens Norgaard Larsen appears on http://www.bt.dk/

The Women’s Prison at Sprogo is from http://www.kulturarv.dk/

The bridge connecting Sprogo to Lyborg and Korsor is photographed by Jeppe Madsen on http://www.trekearth.com/

On this map of the Danish Straits, Sprogo is slightly NW of the “elbow” in red line through the Great Belt, and is part of a bridge/tunnel connection between the two much bigger islands of Funen (Fyn) to the west and Zealand (where Copenhagen is located) to the east.  Just click on the map to enlarge, then scroll down.  On the NASA photo, it is possible to see the bridge that connects Sprogo to the two larger islands. http://www.eoearth.org/

ARC: Dutton

“What would this evening have been like if, no more than an hour ago, I had simply waited downstairs until it was time to go, rather than climb the stairs to Michel’s room? What would the rest of our lives have been like? Would the smell of happiness I inhaled from my wife’s hair still have smelled only like happiness, and not, as it did now, like some distant memory?”

This book by Dutch author Herman Koch has been sitting in my bookcase for almost a year. Occasionally, I have taken it out, when I have read enthusiastic reviews from people whose opinions I respect, but none of the reviews have said much about the action that occurs in this book, and I have always put it away, unread, thinking that the book was probably something like My Dinner with Andre. This week when I picked it up yet again, I opened it and began reading. Seventy-five pages later, I was fully engaged, reading with interest and some excitement, and thoroughly humiliated by my own willingness to jump to conclusions about a book that I had not given a fair chance. And the more I read, the more I understood why none of the reviewers whose reviews I have checked have much to say about the book’s plot: they can’t say anything without spoiling the story.

Herman Koch

The Dinner is a suspense novel, a study of families, an examination of the deepest hopes and dreams and despair of several members of the same family, a drama concerned with each person’s responsibilities to a wider society. Ultimately, it becomes a psychological thriller with an ending which the reader must supply for him/herself, based on his/her own background and beliefs about what is right vs. what is expedient.  It is exciting at the same time that it can be depressing, and hard-hitting at the same time that it often feels contrived. I suspect that everyone who reads this book, however, will have something to share with others who have read it, and it may be the best Book Club book of the year, capable of inspiring intense discussion on many levels, but not necessarily uniform agreement about the conclusion and what it means.

Amsterdam restaurant

Dividing the novel into sections named for the courses of a meal – Aperitif, Appetizer, Main Course, Dessert, and Digestif – the author matches the release of information to the pattern that restaurants follow in releasing food to diners, the story, like a dinner, increasing in interest as the meal becomes heavier and more intense.

Paul Lohman and his wife Claire plan to meet Paul’s brother Serge and his wife Babette at a local restaurant in Amsterdam, a place with pretensions to excellence and a long waiting list for reservations, characteristics which Paul, in particular, finds absurd. Serge is a politician with a high position in government, however, and aspirations to even higher office, and he thoroughly enjoys the perks of his position.  He has, in fact, waited till the afternoon of the night on which he wanted reservations to call the restaurant. He has had no problem getting them, a point of pride for him. Both brothers have fifteen-year-old sons, and Michel (Paul’s son) and Rick (Serge’s son) are close friends, in addition to being cousins. Serge and Babette also have an adopted son, Beau, whom they adopted at a young age from Burkina Faso, and he, too, is often with the cousins.

Serge and Paul avoid the real issue by discussing this Woody Allen film starring Scarlett Johansson.

Author Koch builds the suspense by revealing information at an excruciatingly slow pace during the course of the dinner. During the “Aperitif” section, Paul, the narrator, thinks about something shocking he has found in Michel’s room, though he doesn’t usually pry, and though his discovery involves Rick, his nephew, he does not want to be the first to bring up any unpleasantness at dinner. Instead, as the novel moves on to the “Appetizer” section, the two brothers and their wives talk about films, something Paul regards as “a sign of weakness…something for the end of the evening, when you really don’t have much else to talk about.” Serge is particularly enamored of the films that Woody Allen has made with Scarlett Johansson, particularly “Match Point,” which has just come out. Paul thinks it is “pretty good,” while Serge finds it a “masterpiece,” a statement which immediately sets Paul to thinking of how he can prove that Serge has not understood the film. And when Serge is suddenly hungry and anxious to get his meal, “he reminded [Paul] of an animal that encounters an obstacle in its path: a bird that doesn’t understand that the glass in the windowpane is made of solid matter and flies into it again and again.” They are resentful of each other and tense about the matter regarding their sons, which they avoid discussing.

The Dame Blanche, the dessert chosen by the main characters in this novel, is a glorified Ice Cream Sundae with Chocolate Sauce

The Main Course comes while some of the dinner party is outside. One person has left the table, upset, and needs to regain control. Another is there to try to meet up with his son, who must retrieve something from his father before he meets his friends. It is at this point that the “Main Course” of information – the big problem – is revealed – very awkwardly: “This is what happened. These are the facts,” the author states, injecting himself into the narrative, and referring to flashbacks that disclose a serious crime in which Michel and Rick were involved three months ago. Though this part of the novel is the section upon which all the subsequent action hinges, the information as it is revealed feels contrived and implausible, and some readers may have difficulty believing the evolving complications. The backgrounds of additional family members suggest that some of the characters are not who they appear to be, and as they discuss the boys’ actions, some of them rationalize: “As long as nothing happens [re the police], nothing is happening.” As details emerge and the crisis regarding the boys escalates, the reader is further challenged to accept these events and their complications as natural outgrowths of the plot, instead of deliberate manipulation by the author.

The “Dessert,” shows that the main characters’ personal decisions regarding the future are varied enough to allow virtually any reader to agree with one or more characters regarding the future, one of the reasons this book is ideal for book clubs. Ultimately, the novel becomes a thriller, and though there are some unusual images and some sensitive writing, I, at least, was unable to get past the obvious presence of an author who made me feel as if he were trying to trick me. I don’t mind being tricked by mystery writers – in fact, the best ones do it successfully all the time, and I enjoy it – but the trickery in this one seemed clumsier than in other recent novels, and it kept me from identifying with the characters and their predicament, essential to great mystery writing.

Photos, in order: The author’s photo is from http://www.belfond.fr

A small Amsterdam restaurant, perhaps similar to that which the characters of this novel visited.  http://www.letshavefuninamsterdam.com/

Match Point, one of three films in which Scarlett Johansson worked with Woody Allen, is one that is discussed over dinner in this book, a subject which allowed the brothers to avoid the read issue.  http://jrhysmeyers.com

The Dame Blanche dessert, which some of the characters refuse to eat because it is “watery,” resembles a hot fudge sundaw, presented with more panache.  http://www.stowers5.com/

Note: This novel was SHORTLISTED for the Man Booker Prize for 2013.

“The men driving the bulldozers are laughing.  I hear the adults saying, Why why why, what have we done, what have we done, what have we done?  Then the lorries come carrying the police with those guns and baton sticks and we run and hide inside the houses, but it’s no use hiding because the bulldozers start bulldozing and bulldozing and we are screaming and screaming.”

In this remarkable “novel” which defies genre – feeling like a memoir and structured like a collection of short stories – author NoViolet Bulawayo, from Zimbabwe, revisits her former country and its on-going, horrific history.  Main character, Darling, is only ten; her friends Sbho, Godknows, Bastard, Chipo, and Stina, who has no birth certificate, are all close to her in age.  Though they once attended school, their teachers “have left to teach over in South Africa and Botswana and Namibia and them, where there’s better money.”  They amuse themselves by playing “the country-country game” and “Find bin-Laden.” They take hikes to Budapest, a wealthier neighboring community, to steal mangoes, and they sometimes accompany their mothers and grandparents to evangelical meetings under the mopane tree, and later up “the mountain.”  Their lives are all turned upside down when government-tolerated bullies bulldoze all their houses.  Now they live in a shantytown ironically named Paradise, made from cardboard, tin, and plastic, where their biggest excitement is the arrival of NGO trucks with the food which keeps them from starving.

The author never mentions the name of President Robert Mugabe, a former revolutionary who, with his supporters, successfully fought for independence from the white minority government of Ian Smith in what was then known as Rhodesia, a British colony.  Chosen President of the re-named independent country of Zimbabwe in 1980, he has continued to win Zimbabwe’s disputed elections for the past thirty-four years, despite international sanctions imposed by the West.  Though much of the country’s land was developed and planted by British farmers, some of whom were born there and who lived there for three or four generations, Mugabe instituted a program to “redistribute” their land to his own supporters.  This “redistribution” led to the takeover of virtually all white-owned land and a rule by government-tolerated thugs, some of them under no control at all, as the families of Darling and her friends discovered when their own houses were destroyed and their own land seized by fellow citizens who simply decided to take it.

Evangelical group gathering under a mopane tree for services.

The scenes depicting Darling’s life, as she innocently tells her story, are shocking, not only for the facts which are depicted so graphically, but also for the sense she reveals that these experiences are somehow “normal” and even “ordinary.”  The action, which begins in the late 1980s, shows that nothing is sacred now, and no rules, except the traditions of the old folks, seem to have survived the horrors of “independence,” which might have been a glorious celebration.  Her story becomes especially vivid because she and her friends behave like children the world over, playing games, fighting with each other, searching for excitement, and creating games using sticks and found materials.  Unfortunately, she and her young friends are also naïve about the facts of life, and the pregnancy of one of Darling’s eleven-year-old friends, is a complete mystery and regarded as a problem to be solved by the children themselves.  Even when they decide they will get rid of the friend’s belly (because it makes it “hard to play”), they think of its removal as a game in which they will imitate a program that Darling once saw on TV in Harare: ER. They take new names for the activity:  Dr. Bullet, Dr. Roz, and Dr. Cutter.

Photo of Robert Mugabe by Alexander Joe

“When things fall apart, the children of the land scurry and scatter like birds escaping a burning sky,” the author notes, and Darling is no exception. Her Aunt Fostalina lives in “destroyedmichygen,” in the US, and Darling hopes that she may one day go to live with her. The novel divides into two parts at the midpoint, and the second half does, in fact, take place, first, in “destroyedmichygen” and later in Kalamazoo, 150 miles away, following Darling through school in the US and eventually many years of work. This allows the novel to broaden into a wider story of the immigrant experience and the agonies of displacement, in this case told by a child who misses her friends, her home, and her mother, a child who daily experiences bullying, the materialistic culture of her Aunt and Uncle Kojo, and the many cultural difficulties of speaking a different language and having a totally different background, one so different that she could never have prepared herself for the change.

An assegai, a traditional handmade weapon in Zimbabwe

As her updated story unfolds in the US, Darling and two new friends, one an immigrant like herself, have far too much free time, primarily because their families are away much of time working to send money back to their home countries.  Some new characters, one of them an elderly man from Zimbabwe who has become mentally unbalanced by the shock of leaving home, add further insights into the difficulties of changing cultures, especially since they are all in the US under expired visas.  They cannot return home for a visit because they would have no valid visa to re-enter. Though they always promise their families in phone calls that they will visit, most of these new immigrants know that they will probably never see them again, their deception adding to their difficulties in adjusting to their new world, an agony assuaged only by sending what money they can afford to keep them all alive.

Click to enlarge map.

American urban culture comes in for some comment here, too, based on what appears to have been the author’s own observations.  In one of the novel’s few humorous episodes, one of Darling’s friends insists on speaking “Ebonics,” instead of standard English, requiring Darling to learn yet another dialect (now discredited, academically) as she adjusts to life in an English-speaking world.  Violence in the cities and the ongoing agony of immigrants who came here because it was truly their last chance at life itself – people willing to work hard but unable to get jobs because they are undocumented – add to the drama of this hard-hitting and powerful novel which shows in new, immediate ways the need to think globally.

Note: When Darling and her friends see thugs destroying the large house of a white family, they watch in horror – but understand how it feels.  In this PBS documentary, a family responds to the threats to their farm (“Mugabe and the White African”)

Photos, in order: The author’s photo is from  http://www.theguardian.com

The church meeting under the mopane tree is found on http://www.adventistmission.org/

The Robert Mugabe photo, by Alexander Joe, appears on http://www.theguardian.com

The traditional assegai, a weapon made by hand here by Heather Harvey, is from http://www.heavinforge.co.za

The map of Zimbabwe is from http://www.infoplease.com. Click on the map to enlarge it.

“If you ask me, each of us has two souls, not one, and we take these two souls on our walks. One soul is for the senses, one for the intellect. So, our minds have a soul, which is our point of deepest thinking. And our hearts have a soul, which is our point of deepest feeling. They lead parallel lives, these two souls, never meeting yet connected, and side by side they move into infinity, like legs on a walk.”

In his memoir of his childhood in the Gramercy Park neighborhood of New York City (18th – 22nd Streets between Park Ave. South and 3rd Ave.), award-winning journalist/essayist Roger Rosenblatt uses the conceit of man’s having separate souls – one for the senses and one for the intellect – as the basis of a memoir about growing up in New York City during the 1950s and afterward. Rosenblatt, now seventy-two, is teaching a course in memoir writing at Stony Brook’s Manhattan campus in February, 2011, when he begins his own memoir. He begins walking the streets he walked as a boy, remembering what businesses used to occupy the premises of various buildings, remembering the people he knew who lived there, and tying his own life as a resident of that specific neighborhood to the many writers and actors who also shared the same neighborhood at different times in history. Delightful, filled with insights into how a “real” writer thinks as he lives his childhood, and thoughtful about how our early lives affect not only our (learned) ways of thinking but also our ways of acting, this memoir is a must for those who love writing, think they might want to become writers, or just want a wonderful, complete reading experience created by a writer who started as a devout reader.

Photo by Chester Higgins, Jr. for the NY Times

Giving structure and charm to this memoir, he introduces himself as a boy of eight who fancies himself a detective. He regularly trails unsuspecting strangers on the streets near his house, imagining what they are thinking and conjuring the crimes they may have committed. A detective, he explains from his adult/teacher/writer vantage point, “builds his case on hard facts, ballistics and prints, types of weapons, eyewitnesses…and things that are real and really said.” The writer, by contrast, works primarily with feeling, and “the one thing they both require – the writer and detective – is the desire to see what is not there, and to make it at once orderly and beautiful, as in a flower or the answer to a math problem.” The memoir, as it evolves, shows the boy as he deals with these two aspects of humanity within his own life and eventually becomes a reader and lover of detective novels, a writer, and a teacher of writing who has honed his powers of observation and intuition through his constant observations around the city.

Gramercy Park. Photo by DMadeo.

When he is very young, the author imagines himself as Edgar Allan Poe, and “I could not help but sense that I was also treading a path that had been laid out before me centuries earlier.” He loves the idea of the “private” detective, since he himself leads a solitary life, with little communication going on at home. His father, a physician, is largely silent and ignores him most of the time, and his mother is so obsessed with taking care of his younger brother that he feels he has much in common with the character created by Jack Douglas in My Brother Was an Only Child. No one seems to care or even notice when he spends hours every day wandering around the city alone, letting his imagination run free, thinking of the Empire State Building as “the city’s favorite uncle who just plants himself in the middle of the house,” and imagining King Kong being told by the “big uncle” that “You can be safe with me.”

King Kong on the Empire State Building, an image that haunts the speaker.

As he walks, he decides, “I like living my life without telling anyone,” and he feels intuitively that “I was the world in which I walked.” He believes that “The true walk requires a mind finely balanced between confidence and excitement,” and, in walking, he sees the difference between Europeans and Americans this way: “European explorers return home. American explorers keep walking.” He does realize that “not every tunnel has a light at the end of it,” but as he begins to think about writing, he tries to give some kind of order to his myriad sense impressions and the sometimes invented “memories” coming to him on his walks. He eventually decides that “the best moments of our minds occur at the midway point between poetry and prose…That sweet, solid territory between the two main forms of writing allows for thoughts and feelings not available to each alone…[a place where we can each] tell a tale of high adventure, and sing it, too.”

Strand Bookstore at 12th St. and Broadway, a favorite of the speaker on his walks.

The young walker haunts the 4th Avenue bookstores, and the proprietors treat him with the respect a developing reader deserves in his explorations within the stores. During his childhood, there were twenty-five such bookstores around lower 4th Avenue; now there are only two left, one of them the Strand, which bills itself as a place with “eighteen miles of books.” In his own house, he climbs the shelves in the library, looking at books as he goes, and when he gets to the top shelf, “I could plant my hand against the ceiling, twelve feet off the ground, and look down on my mother rocking Peter…not even knowing I was in the house.”

Birthplace and museum of Teddy Roosevelt, which the speaker enjoyed visiting with his mother, not far from his own home.

The author tells of his several meetings with former teachers, over the years, and what they have meant to him, and he often addresses his own students within the memoir. At one point he tells a story about a group of children who disappeared without a trace from the private, two-acre Gramercy Park, which his house overlooked. No memorial bench preserves their memories, though sixty years have passed since they disappeared. Then: “That story is made up, as you suspected, but not wholly made up…Here, students, is where fact and fiction meld. And a memoir may make use of either or both.” He goes on to say that he could make up all sorts of ‘facts’ about his family and life, or he “could put it all in a novel, and, believe it or not, in a memoir as well. By the time you’ve told any story, fact or fiction, well enough, you’ve made it up anyway…I do not urge you, or even encourage you, to toss wholesale lies into your memoirs – though not from some ethical compunction on my part, or a fear that you’ll be caught in your lies and pilloried and sued. Rather, that the lies are liable to overtake the facts of your story and run away with it.” Lovers of fine writing will appreciate not only the insights gained from this memoir but the concentrated thought which gives it all relevance and intellectual excitement.  Superb.

Note: Here the author is interviewed on PBS by Judy Woodruff:

Photos, in order: The author’s photo by Chester Higgins, Jr., appears in the New York Times:  http://www.nytimes.com/

Gramercy Park  (20th and 21st  St., at Park S. and 3rd Ave.), the only privately owned park in the city, is two acres, owned by the residents whose houses surround it.  Photo by DMadeo.  http://en.wikipedia.org

King Kong on the Empire State Building, an image that dominates the author’s imaginative life:  http://www.thetimes.co.uk/

The Strand Bookstore, still very much in business, seen here: http://en.wikipedia.org

Teddy Roosevelt’s birthplace and museum, near the house where the author lived, was a favorite place to visit.  http://museummonger.wordpress.com/

Note: Australian author Christina Stead was WINNER of the inaugural Patrick White Award in 1974.  Her own Christina Stead Award was established in 1979 and was won that year by David Malouf for An Imaginary Life.

“London’s Times Literary Supplement placed Christina Stead in the company of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Ibsen, and Joyce.  And Clifton Fadiman has said she is the most extraordinary woman novelist produced by the English speaking world since Virginia Woolf.  Christina Stead is perhaps the supreme example today of the writer’s writer, admired by such exemplars of the craft as Robert Lowell, Jean Stafford, and Alfred Kazin.”

Winner of the prestigious Patrick White Award in her native Australia in 1979, Christina Stead (1902 – 1983), acclaimed in England and Australia, still remains unknown to most readers in the United States, and that’s a pity. Her 1973 novel The Little Hotel, given to me by a friend from England, reveals her deliciously twisted sense of humor, her pointed social satire, and her vividly depicted but often very sad characters, and I am now poring through Amazon’s Marketplace listings to find as many of her other sadly neglected novels as I can.  In this novel, set in a small hotel on Lake Geneva in the immediate aftermath of World War II, Stead introduces an assortment of bizarre characters who live at the small Hotel Swiss-Touring for various lengths of time, some of them for a season, and  a few as residents.  Most of them are there because they cannot afford the more elegant accommodations to which they have been accustomed, though the twenty-six-year-old hotelkeeper, Selda Bonnard, and her slightly older husband Roger do their best to meet their guests’ needs.  Touring artists associated with a local nightclub, and the road companies that play the casino, also occupy the hotel, residing on another floor above the guests.

Gradually, through Selda Bonnard’s first person narrative, the reader comes to know the various guests at the hotel.  One, who claims to be the Mayor of B in Belgium, appears to be certifiable, creating numbered documents about his stay in the hotel, going every day to nearby Evian to buy a dozen bottles of champagne at a lower price than he can get locally, and traveling to “the clinic” daily for “injections” and shock treatments.  A Mrs. Blaise, whose husband comes to visit every other weekend from Basel, bringing the drugs she needs for her “illnesses,” claims to have millions of dollars and packets of jewels, acquired from some mysterious provenance during the war, safely stowed in New York banks.  Mrs. Trollope, a dark woman from “the East,” lives with her “cousin,” Robert Wilkins, who is constantly following the exchange rates and suggesting that his “cousin” move her accounts closer to where they live and certainly out of England.  A large packet of her money is in the safe at the hotel, but it is registered there under his name. A strange English woman named Miss Abbey-Chillard, who appears to have almost no money, also appears to have serious health issues and demands special foods.

A little hotel on Lake Geneva, similar to that described in this novel. Artist unknown.

These five permanent guests form the core of the novel, and as they reveal themselves through their conversations and interactions, they begin to resemble characters in a dramatic comedy of manners.  The hotel employees all seem to resent them and their frequently high-handed demands, and an undercurrent of cruelty by the employees toward the guests emerges.  Roger, the husband of Selda Bonnard, is constantly listening in on them and occasionally checking their belongings when they are out, especially when they claim not to be able to pay their bills.  A new employee begins spying at keyholes and appears to be plotting something with one of the maids, another maid deliberately spills food and drink on certain vulnerable female guests, and petty thefts occur.  Even Selda Bonnard does not escape the gossip and nastiness when rumors circulate about an affair in which her husband may be participating.

The Mayor of B provides unintentional comic relief throughout, and when he begins to imitate the strip tease dancer who lives upstairs, his deep-seated problems become public.  Gradually, through the characters’ conversations, the reader learns the nature of the relationships among all the other characters, with most of the action eventually focused on the relationship of Mrs. Trollope and her “cousin,” Robert Wilkins.  All the women at the hotel soon reveal themselves to be unhappy at their inability to lead the kinds of lives they wish for in a society ruled by their men, and in time, some of them begin to seek control of their own lives.

Tour de Peilz, the site of the Swiss Games Museum, near Montreux, "a short ride" from the Little Hotel

All of Stead’s characters are flawed, and since all are shown in intimate scenes in which they reveal themselves, at least to the reader, they inspire a kind of empathy within the reader – and even a pervading sadness – which does not often happen within social satire, which is usually characterized by sterotypes.  Even Mme. Bonnard, the hotel keeper, has her problems, some of them related to her German Swiss background and the attitudes toward Germans which she sees all around her.  Her inflexibility regarding aspects of the hotel management make her a less than sympathetic character at some points, though she is the main, unifying character.  Sadly, her opinion of the hotel differs markedly from reality – and the way guests perceive it.  The Little Hotel, elegant and consummately literary, builds an intense, and sometimes claustrophobic atmosphere through the characters and setting in a Lake Geneva community as they try to live their straitened lives and survive to live another day in a changed world.  Christina Stead, a writer who is among the best of the best of her day, and who can easily hold her own with contemporaries Beryl Bainbridge, Fay Weldon,  Penelope Lively, and Muriel Spark in England, and Thea Astley and Elizabeth Jolley in Australia, deserves much more recognition from the literary public in the U.S.  Had it not been for a close friend’s thoughtfulness in giving me this book for Christmas, I’d never have discovered her at all.  I hope a few readers here will now discover her, too – her work is extraordinary.

Photos, in order: The author photo appears on http://www.theaustralian.com.au/

The picture of the Little Hotel, overlooking a lake, by an unknown artist, appears on the cover of the 1975 US edition of this novel, published by Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.

Tour de Peilz, a community on Lake Geneva near the Little Hotel, near Montreux, is the site of the Swiss Games Museum.  http://www.myswitzerland.com/