AFTER THE ACT - Book review

 

Winston Graham’s suspense novel After the Act was published in 1965.

Playwright Morris Scott has been married for seven years to Harriet, a rich older woman, his muse, who suffers from ill health. Over those years she supported and encouraged him: ‘You ought to be relentless, Morris. Relentless to writing it down. Once the bones are there you can drape them and undrape them at will’ (p63) And now he is successful and planning for one of his plays to appear in Paris.

It had not been planned. ‘I was a man going to meet a girl, surrounded only by the anticipation, tautened like a bow-string with pleasure’ (p17). Inevitably, he has an affair with Alexandra Wilshere, a secretary to a rich couple in France. Passion, obsession... ‘We walked on the quay and walked together through the little town, which was murmurous with people. Cars probed the narrow streets like medical isotopes in a bloodstream...’ (p67)

A budding writer could learn from some of Morris’s observations:

‘Half of writing is gestation’ (p26).

‘You have to be tough to reach the top in any profession these days. Stamina’s an essential part of genius, whether you’re a four-minute miler or a composer of symphonies’ (p27).

‘How easy it is for a writer to lie, the inventions spring to his lips’ (p47).

The suspense deepens when Harriet falls to her death from a Paris hotel balcony. Was it an accident, or murder, or carelessness? ‘We all make mistakes; the error is in trying to hide them’ (p197). That phrase could well be the epitaph of many a politician’s career! The fact is that now Morris is free to wed Alexandra. If his conscience will permit it. ‘To be honest around a central lie is like building a house with the foundations unlevel’ (p135).

Graham the craftsman has delved into life, death and guilt. ‘The sun set. Dusk crept in like the beginning of death’ (p191).

Editorial note:

‘a passionate unsophisticated fumbling in the dark... among the heather and the bickering cicadas’ (p75). Long ago I was corrected: cicadas make their noise in the hot day, crickets make their noise at night, and this seems borne out by my time in Spain.

THE TUMBLED HOUSE - book review

 

Winston Graham’s 1959 novel The Tumbled House is a romantic suspense novel long out of print; my copy is the fourth impression dated 1976.

While dropping in on the empty house of her late father-in-law Sir John Marlowe, Joanna commits adultery with an ex-boyfriend Roger Shorn. It is not an affair; perhaps she was lonely since her husband Don, a feted conductor, was away in the States with an orchestra.

Shortly after Don’s return, a couple of anonymous articles are published in a newspaper, The Gazette, denigrating Sir John, claiming the great man plagiarised a book by an old associate (also deceased).

Don is incandescent and determined to discover the writer’s identity and clear his father’s name. He seeks legal advice but that’s not much help as you can’t libel a dead person. ‘What was the purpose of attacking the reputation of a dead man unless there was someone still alive to care?’ (p73). He has the sympathy of Joanna and his sister Bennie but ignores their suggestion that he forget the whole issue.

Unable to forgive and forget, Don finally learns of the writer’s identity and writes insults against the culprit. The added complication is that Bennie is in a relationship with the son of the writer.

This should be a fairly anodyne court case, but the interweaving of the personalities involved and the minor crimes on the periphery that affect Bennie and her beau Michael keep the reader turning the pages.

What lifts the book above the norm is Graham’s acute observation of character and place. The point of view is omniscient. Here are a few examples.

‘The Red Boar Club... Here the temperature was a uniform seventy-eight winter and summer, and tobacco-smoke hung in cirrus clouds about the room. You broke through them going down the steps like a plane coming in to land’ (p38).

In the club Don approaches the editor of the offending Gazette: ‘He had a square rather distinguished face on which the skin hung loosely as if it had a slow puncture. But there was nothing deflated about the way he looked at Don...’ (p39).

‘Sir Percy... was not expensively dressed and his Cockney accent still clung to him like a home-knitted pullover’ (p59).

‘When he opened the door the sunlight crowded in as if it had been queuing there’ (p72).

‘An artist of course was judged by his art, not by his life. It didn’t matter two-pence if Rembrandt was a rogue or Beethoven a bore... (p100) – though in the idiotic modern age of cancel culture that may no longer apply!

Despite the suspense, and Don discovering Joanna’s infidelity, there are smatterings of humour: asked about Don’s interpretation of Swan Lake, he responded, ‘It could well be the most original. Phone Leningrad and tell them to watch Tchaikovsky’s grave. If there’s movement, it’ll mean he’s turning over in it’ (p128).

‘She stared at him with unwinking eyes, a stout old lady with a bulging face like a purse that has never been opened for charity’ (p148).

‘... when they rode together the sun was slanting, and a breeze that came up from the sea had made the young leaves turn and glint like wild silk’ (p174).

‘... his grey, pachydermous face wearing a weary, dusty expression as if too many years of exposing human frailty had left him without illusions and without hope’ (p298).

Bearing in mind the time of writing, there are two uses of the n-word and an allusion to gays before that term was the acceptable description, none of which are malicious.

Graham describes a death without being mawkish: less is more.

The ending is satisfactory.

GREEK FIRE - Book review

 

Winston Graham’s Greek Fire was published in1957 and was one of several of his early suspense novels re-issued in the 1970s in response to his success with the Poldark series (my copy is dated 1974).

American Gene Vanbrugh is a post-war publisher visiting Athens, Greece. He has a history of fighting with the partisans during the war. ‘You have sad eyes, M. Vanbrugh – as if they have sen many things they would like to forget. But I think you are a man of honour’ (p58).

In the cellar night club The Little Jockey he is watching several people at their tables, including Anya Stonaris who is accompanied by the politician Manos. Anya is the mistress of politician Georg Lascou. There is an election due soon. Politics is dangerous, and there is the post-war grievances and pressure from Communist outfits.

The cabaret is Spanish: ‘Here was some inner truth from Spain stated in terms of the dance, an allegorical picture of the relationship of the sexes, spiritual more than physical but partly both, a statement of a racial anomaly which had existed for two thousand years’ (p11).

One of Vanbrugh’s contacts is a woman he knew during the war, Mme Lindos: ‘There are certain architectures of forehead and nose and cheek-bone which defy the erosions of age. She had them’ (p20). She will prove useful to Gene as things go awry.

One of the Spanish troupe is the victim of a hit-and-run. The police consider it is an accident but the man’s wife Maria thinks differently and enlists Gene’s help. These Spanish performers seem to be linked in some manner with Lascou.

Gene is not a fan of Lascou. ‘I’ve seen Communism at work. I’ve seen the cold mass slaughter, the children dying, the brutality to women, the absolute ruthless callousness in gaining one set objective. Above all, I’ve seen the lies – so that no words have any meaning any more. Nothing that’s worth living for has any meaning any more…  That’s what I want. Just to stop you.’ (p119).

Strange, how times haven’t changed – the lies and double-speak are still with us, though not merely spouted by avowed communists.

There’s quite a lot of Greek politics of the period, not particularly pertinent now, but that does not detract from a page-turning suspense novel with strong characterisation, a hint of romance and a haunting manhunt:

‘A hunted man is like a man at the centre of a cyclone; there are periods of calm when it’s impossible for him to assess the strength of the storm around him’ (p190).

Recommended.

THE LITTLE WALLS - Book review

In the 1950s and early 1960s, Winston Graham had a number of suspense novels published. The Little Walls was published in 1955; my copy is the fourth impression, 1972. (Those were the days when you could see how often a book was reprinted!)

It’s written in the first person and I found it comparable to Hammond Innes in style and tone, though perhaps less technical. Philip Turner’s older brother Grevil’s body was discovered in a canal in Amsterdam. Suspected suicide. Philip can’t believe it and sets out to determine that it was murder. Apparently, on Grevil’s body was a letter from a woman called Leonie, breaking off their relationship. Philip still did not believe his brother would take his own life. Grevil had been on an archaeological dig with a mysterious adventurer called Buckingham.

Philip takes leave from his business in America and enlists the help of Martin Coxon, someone who knew Buckingham some years ago.

Grevil’s death occurred in the insalubrious district of De Walletjes – which translates as ‘the Little Walls’. ‘At one place, in a cellar decorated with modern murals which would have left Freud practically nothing  to interpret…’ (p50).

Dutch Inspector Tholen fears Grevil was involved in some shady dealings and ran foul of local villains. Philip’s investigations take him to Naples and Capri, where he links up with a group of rich individuals with intriguing back-stories and a liking of cocktail parties, which normally were anathema to Philip: ‘The buzz of voices, introductions forgotten as soon as made, remarks which meant nothing drowned by others which meant less…’ (p129).  

Reading the story, one could almost believe it had happened – always the sign of a good narrator. The descriptions of the scenery and characters are well done, and there is a burgeoning romance, a betrayal, a fight to the death, and a twist towards the end.

The cover is one of several that feature a character’s facial close-up, all of which are eye-catching. (Though in this case the female protagonist is fair-haired in the book!). These other covers of books I still have to read are: Greek Fire (1957), The Tumbled House (1959), and After the Act (1965).

The Stranger from the Sea - Book review

 

The eighth Poldark novel by Winston Graham, The Stranger from the Sea was published in 1981. It begins in 1810, ten years after the previous novel, The Angry Tide (published in 1977).

The Angry Tide ended on a philosophical note from Ross Poldark’s wife Demelza, debating on the inevitable end we all must face: ‘The past is over, gone. What is to come doesn’t exist yet. That’s tomorrow. It’s only now that can ever be… We can’t ask more…’ (p612) [In a way, it’s echoing Margaret Mitchell’s Scarlett in Gone With the Wind – ‘Tomorrow is another day’]. So I thought it seemed a good place to leave the Poldark saga for a while, even though I had the rest of the series on my shelf.

Now, some many years later I’ve taken up the saga again from where I left off with The Stranger from the Sea.

Even after such a long absence, I soon became familiar with the characters again, though they have naturally aged, including their children: Jeremy is now nineteen and Clowance is sixteen. Bella was born in 1802, after the previous book ended. George Warleggan is an MP, as is Ross, but their paths have rarely crossed in the last ten years. George’s son Valentine is sixteen. Ross’s cousin Geoffrey Charles is twenty-six and serving with Wellington in Portugal. Ross is presently in Portugal as well, on a fact-finding mission to observe the progress against Bonaparte. Here, he meets Geoffrey Charles and reminiscences: ‘... he was loath to move, to wrench at the ribbon of memories that were running through his brain.’ (p40)

Jud and Prudie Paynter are in their seventies now, no longer in the Poldark household, and still at loggerheads. Jud’s still saying ‘Tedn right. Tedn proper.’ This time his displeasure concerns a duck and her newly hatched ducklings making a mess on their floor. As it happens, there were too many eggs for the mother to cover to hatch, so Prudie stuck three eggs in her cleavage to help them along, which meant Jud had to keep his distance for fear of cracking the eggs. Maybe that’s why he was complaining! (p271)

Both Jeremy and Clowance are at that age where their hearts are being tested by attachments. Demelza can recall being ‘in the grip of the same overpowering emotion. Perhaps it was just stirring in them, a sea dragon moving as yet sluggishly in the depths of the pool. But once roused it would not sleep again. It would not sleep until old age – sometimes, from what she’d heard people say, not altogether even then. But in youth an over-mastering impulse which knew no barrier of reason. An emotion causing half the trouble of the world, and half the joy.’ (p280)

Clowance has at least two suitors. Ben is a local lad, the second is Stephen Carrington, mysteriously washed ashore almost dead, rescued by Jeremy. Dr Dwight Enys brought to mind a Cornish saying: ‘Save a stranger from the sea/And he will turn your enemee.’ (p429) The love complications will not be settled in this book, however.

At this time King George is having fewer and fewer bouts of lucidity and Westminster is in turmoil as the king is incapable of signing anything. Moves are afoot to put the Prince of Wales in the monarch’s stead. Ross is vouchsafed an audience with the prince to report on the state of war in Portugal. ‘The Prince of Wales at last rose from his chair. It was a major upheaval and peculiarly uncoordinated, large areas of bulk levering themselves up in unrelated effort. One could even imagine all the joints jutting out, the utter indignity of a fall. But presently it was achieved and he was upright, heavily breathing, began to pace the room, his thin shoes slip-slop, slip-slop.’ (p133)

Occasionally, an interesting historical snippet is dropped in: ‘A steeplechase… is a form of obstacle race. Over hedges, streams, gates… always keeping the church steeple in view.’ (p63)

At other times there’ll be an amusing observation: ‘The older footman, who always seemed to have wrinkled stockings, let him in.’ (p345)

Or a fanciful description that works: ‘… a fire declared its will to live by sending up thin spirals of smoke.’ (p345)

As ever, Ross doesn’t hold back on his opinions. ‘People who brag of their ancestors are like root vegetables. All their importance is underground.’ (p361)

At this time new inventions were arising. ‘In Ayrshire there is a man called Macadam using new methods.’ (p423) And one of the landed gentry is extolling the near-future that will transform the country. Steam engines and other inventions will create prosperity: ‘… the ordinary man, the working man, the farm boy who has left home to work in the factories – they will all have some share in this prosperity… the level will rise. Not only the level to which people live but the level at which people expert to live. We are on the brink of a new world.’ (p481) In short, in time, the industrial revolution will improve the lot of man- and womankind throughout the world.

It’s good to be transported back to this time, to this family and to Cornwall.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Book review - The Japanese Girl

Winston Graham is one of my many favourite authors. I first encountered him with the paperback Marnie (1961), and then discovered his Poldark novels (the first published in 1945). Side by side with these, I read a number of his suspense and historical novels, too. The Japanese Girl (1971) seems to be his only collection of short stories; their publication dates range from 1947 to 1971, though there is no indication when each individual tale was published.  

It’s a mixed bag, and not all of the fourteen were successful for me; yet it’s definitely a worthwhile read. According to Graham, ‘The Japanese Girl’ stemmed from a chance meeting with a Japanese girl in a train to Brighton. The story indeed begins in this manner, with Jack the narrator smitten by her: ‘You couldn’t call her good-looking but just something about her appealed to me and made me feel queer, and God knows I’m no womaniser…’ (p8)  He is married, though the relationship has gone sour; his wife Hettie ‘was like a may-fly or something, beautiful for a day.’ (p10)

The narrator works as an assistant cashier for a big London dock firm. Boring job, a boring life, really. He engineered another chance meeting with the Japanese girl and invited her to join him for a drink in a ‘quite nice pub… She didn’t say no, and that’s how it all began’ (p12) He embarked on an affair with Yodi, the Japanese girl. As time went on, they dreamed of running away together, travelling abroad. But for that they needed plenty of money. He decided to rob the firm, small sums each week, to build up a nest-egg. She agrees to help him. Inevitably, it doesn’t quite work out.

‘The Medici Ear-ring’ is another first-person story, with the narrator being an impecunious painter. One of his models was Lucille, who ‘had the colouring I like: autumn-tinted hair and short-sighted sleepy eyes with umber depths to them.’ Lucille was the daughter of a friend, Bob who enjoyed showing off an ancient ear-ring his family had acquired. Then, one night, during a card game of chance where money was lost, the ear-ring goes missing. The mystery tried the friendship of all those present. A twist ending; possibly an early foray into the realm of the unreliable narrator concept.

‘Cotty’s Cove’ is set in Cornwall, possibly in the Poldark period. Lavinia Cotty was a 35-year-old spinster. When she could get away from caring for her ailing father, she’d spend time in the quite cove and dream of poetry and a little fiction – until she discovered a man washed up on the shingle. An atmospheric tale about unrequited love. The cove can be found on any large-scale map of Perranporth beach, just south of Wheal Vlow adit.

Graham has the pleasant knack of putting the reader in the scene, whether it’s that cove or elsewhere: ‘… the frost has come down like thin icing sugar on branch and brick and flag, and the pools in the dented road are glazing over like the eyes of a man dying.’ (p80) Or this: ‘The bay windows spread wide like an alderman’s waistcoat.’ (p76)  I particularly liked this: ‘Then with sweat crawling all over him like a nest of worms, he jerked ahead.’ (p86)

‘At the Chalet Lartrec’ comes of ‘being benighted on the Bernina Pass in the first snow of winter’, Graham says. The narrator, Major Vane, a British officer attached to UNESCO found himself caught in a snow-storm. ‘The clouds were lowering all around like elephants’ bellies…’ (p99) He had to get out often so he could clear the windscreen: ‘The snow was soft in my face, like walking into a flight of cold wet moths…’ (p100) He creates eeriness with few words: ‘There was no one about, and the wind whistled through the slit between the houses like an errand boy with bad teeth.’ (p100) He obtains shelter at the chalet Lartrec, where he learns of his host’s recent past in the uprising of Hungary in 1956. Another fine twist in this tale, too.

‘The Cornish Farm’ is about a property the narrator and his wife purchase. There is talk of a violent history in the farm’s recent past. This too has plenty of atmosphere, as well as humour: ‘… it depressed me to discover the squalor in which so many people live. Or perhaps it is only people who want to sell their houses who live that way. It also depressed me to discover the wickedness of estate agents. After a time one gets tired of being shown into the “well-equipped” kitchen to find it dominated by an enormous stove installed about the year of Gladstone’s wedding and smoking from every crack; then, coughing heartily and with eyes smarting, to be led through a broken glass door into the “conservatory” which in fact is a lean-to shed with a little stove of its own where all the real cooking is done…’ (p125) A tale of mystery and perhaps madness; the reader must decide.

‘The Basket Chair’ is a ghost story – or is it? Julian Whiteleaf had his first coronary when he was staying with his niece Agnes and her husband Roy Paynter. He was careful with his money, despite having been bequeathed a vast sum by one of his psychic society’s patrons. Now, he agreed the couple could look after him and he would pay £5 per week towards his keep. Over time, he noticed strange sounds in the house. The basket chair in his bedroom seemed to move of its own volition and creak ever so slightly; he was convinced he was finally witnessing a psychic event… A clever tale in the Roald Dahl tradition.

‘Jacka’s Fight’ concerns Jacka Fawle who moved from Helston in Cornwall to find his fortune in America; when he had done so, he would send for his wife and children. He was a godly man and scrimped and saved to this end. One day in the early 1890s he made friends with a number of Cornishmen who were promoting a fellow in the boxing ring. Temptation is offered, to make a killing… The culmination of the story is the five pages of the big fight: the upstart contender Fitz against the champion Corbett. The telling is as bruising as the fight itself, full of tension: ‘In the fifth round it appears as if Fitz is done. His lips are swollen, the eye half closed, his nose bleeding, his body crimson all over, part with the blows it has received, part from the blood on Corbett’s gloves…’ (p203) An excellent pugilistic tale.

Finally, there’s ‘But for the Grace of God’, a tale of the Christ just before and after the crucifixion, movingly told by the irreverent yet finally enlightened Jesus Bar-Abbas.

At the book’s publication, the Sunday Times said, ‘Real versatility in setting and background.’ That sums up this collection. If you appreciate short story writing, you should enjoy many of these examples. 

[Coincidence: my birthday is the same as his; he was born forty years earlier. He died in 2003, aged 95].

Authors: Don’t expect the BBC to film your book

Here we go again. Paucity of original thought.

The BBC is spending licence payers’ money on filming Agatha Christie novels that have been filmed just a few times already. Last year’s And Then There Were None was very successful (altering the storyline in the process). Next up, The ABC Murders – which features Hercule Poirot and was done very well with David Suchet in 1992. They’re also going to film Ordeal by Innocence, memorably starring Geraldine McEwan as Miss Marple in 2007, though admittedly the story did not feature her character; still it was also a major feature film in 1985. And then there’s Witness for the Prosecution, a two-parter that will feature the always watchable Toby Jones – though there was a feature film in 1957 (and another expected big screen version in the next year or so).  All of the foregoing can be obtained on DVD.

Following the lead of And Then There Were None, it is said that these latest versions are ‘a new way of interpreting Christie for a modern audience’.

A similar excuse is offered when yet another version is released for an Austen, Bronte, or Dickens book: ‘It’s for a new generation.’

And the BBC boss Charlotte Moore says this run of Christie dramas would ‘continue BBC1’s special relationship as the home of Agatha Christie in the UK.’(sic)  Where was she when Marple and Poirot were being aired on ITV: Marple 2004-2013/Poirot 1989-2013. Clearly, at some expense the BBC has acquired the Agatha Christie rights. Spendthrifts. Shame on them.

In truth it’s laziness, mining seams that have already been explored. Far easier to work on old mines  than discover new workings.

Don’t these dramatists, producers and directors read?

Go to a bookshop, or if there aren’t any of those in the town, go to the general library (though there may not be many of those around either); all right, go online, key in ‘books/murder mystery/’ and you’ll be spoilt for choice.

I’m sure thousands of licence payers would happily recommend some of their favourite books to be filmed for the first time.  

One response could be: Well, Hollywood has been doing it for years, so why not the BBC? The difference is, Hollywood gambles their own money, not licence-payers’ fees. The BBC airs enough repeats anyway, and to all intents and purposes these remakes are not far removed from that!

And while the new Poldark series is hugely popular, it is a remake. The author Winston Graham is one of my many favourites. If they want to film a period piece, I’d recommend his Cordelia, a superb novel. There are other historical novels from his pen worthy of transfer to the small screen too. And countless other authors, alive and dead. Sigh. Sadly, that takes imagination… Yes, Hilary Mantel has done well, and Philippa Gregory, so it’s not all bad, granted. Yet there are so many more on those library shelves!