Tag: infidelity

Review 2135: The Tortoise and the Hare

~ whatmeread ~ 6 Comments

Imogen Grisham has a relationship with her husband, Evelyn, that is probably not unusual when this novel was written, in the 1950s. His job as a barrister being demanding, she feels it is her job to provide a stress-free home life. Unfortunately, since he is difficult to please and often impatient with her, she placates him. Her young son, Gavin, is like his father and treats her with disdain.

Imogen, who is some years younger than her husband, notices his growing friendship with Blanche Silcox but doesn’t worry about it because Blanche, a spinster, is old and unattractive, to her mind. However, Evelyn and Blanche have more in common, and eventually Imogen finds herself being excluded from occasions in which Blanche is included.

Although I thoroughly disliked Evelyn and Blanche, it was hard for me to be sympathetic at times with Imogen because she is superficial and so passive. For example, there is a situation in which Gavin has a serious problem at school while Evelyn is involved in an important case. Instead of going to school herself, she sends her friend Phil to deal with it, I assume because she believes she will be ineffectual. Even Imogen’s best friend thinks, not that Imogen should have gone herself, but that Evelyn would have respected her more if she’d interrupted him at work. Maybe there’s something about mothers going to school at that time that I don’t understand.

However I felt about the characters, this novel is a realistic portrayal of the breakdown of a marriage with all of its hesitations and heart-rendings on the one side and its self-justifications on the other. It is layered and ultimately affecting.

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Review 1734: Effi Briest

~ whatmeread ~ 2 Comments

Effi Briest is sort of a German version of Madame Bovary. It seems that the last half of the 19th century was a big time for novels about unfaithful wives. However, whereas Anna Karenina was a call for improvement in women’s rights on this issue, Effi Briest seems to accept the unfairness of the laws and societal mores. Nevertheless, I liked this novel more than Madame Bovary, which is more of a character study of a stupid woman.

Effi is only sixteen when the Baron von Instetten, an old suitor of her mother, comes calling. Within an hour, he proposes marriage and is accepted. The Baron is a civil servant, and after their marriage, he takes her home to a seaside village in upper Pomerania. The house is dark and depressing and reputedly haunted. Society is limited, and Effi, who is a gay person who likes to enjoy herself, finds only one congenial inhabitant, the local chemist. The women she has to socialize with are commonplace or spiteful. Effi feels neglected and unhappy.

After the birth of her daughter, the Crampases arrive. Major Crampas is an old schoolfriend of the Baron and a known womanizer. (I wonder if his name’s resemblance to Krampus is a coincidence, considering the Germanic origins of that character.) Although she tries to avoid it, Effi is drawn into an affair with him. When her husband gets a posting to Berlin, though, she is happy to leave and put it behind her. But it is not behind her at all.

I liked the character of Effi very much, but she is the only one in this novel who is fully drawn. The others just seem like placeholders for their actions, except for Rollo the dog. Also, the harsh reactions of everyone when they find out about the affair, even though it is long over with, seem even more extreme than Karenin’s in Anna Karenina.

Even though this novel is 20 years more recent than Anna Karenina, having been published in 1895, it has a much more rigid and judgmental message despite Effi being a sympathetic character. As a person, I liked Effi better than silly Emma Bovary or naïve Anna Karenina, but I found the novel a bit punitive. Fontane was reacting in it to a story he heard of a similar event in which he was struck by the lack of surprise or dismay expressed by society at the harsh treatment of the woman involved, so he is combining an approach to our sympathy with Realism in this novel.

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Review 1468: Swimming Home

~ whatmeread ~ 3 Comments

I didn’t know what to make of Swimming Home because the situation was unbelievable to me. First, there is some timeline confusion because of a short scene dated July 1994 in which Kitty Finch is driving dangerously through the Alpes-Maritimes at midnight with a man. The scene seems threatening, and you get a sense of dread.

Then, the main action of the novel begins with no timeframe, so that you don’t know if the preceding scene comes before or after it or even what year we’re in until there are references later on.

Joe Jacobs, a poet and serial philanderer, has rented for the summer a villa in the Alpes-Maritimes with his wife Isabel, a war correspondent, his young daughter Nina, and another couple. They come home to find a naked woman in the pool, looking dead. She is not dead, she is Kitty Finch, a beautiful but clearly disturbed woman. She makes an unconvincing explanation that the owner lets her stay there sometimes off-season and she got her dates mixed up. It is not off-season, however.

Do they show her off the property? No, they do not. They invite her to stay in the extra room. In particular, Isabel invites her, which gives rise to wondering for the rest of the book.

In fact, it shortly comes out that Kitty knew Joe Jacobs was staying there and wants him to read her poem, “Swimming Home,” which is about suicide. It is clear all the way that the novel is working toward death, but the ending is surprising.

I read the novel for my Booker Prize project, and I’m still wondering about it.

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