The Bird's Nest - Shirley Jackson

 

I've read a little Shirley Jackson (We Have Always Lived in the Castle is reviewed here) but I had no idea she wrote a novel like this.  The Bird's Nest is the tangled psyche of Elizabeth Richmond, a dull 25 year-old orphan who lives with her aunt.  She suffers from back pain and headaches so her family doctor refers her to starchy old Dr Victor Wright who fancies himself adept at psychotherapy.  Wright isn't an actual psychotherapist, you understand, just an enthusiastic dabbler.

Wright hypnotises Elizabeth and unleashes multiple personalities - Lizzie, Beth, Betsy and Bess, who - rivals with one another - unleash chaos.  The trick Jackson pulls off is to tell her story through different characters.  The mark of her genius is that she doesn't do the obvious and split the narrative through the split personalities.  No, she gives us Elizabeth herself, Betsy (the most active of the alternates), Doctor Wright (twice) and fiesty Aunt Morgen.  Moreover, only the verbose, pontificating Wright narrates in the first person.  It's very clever, beautifully done, and totally engrossing.  No wonder The Bird's Nest is a Penguin Modern Classic.

True Bride - Thomas Altman

Thomas Altman was a pen-name of Campbell Armstrong Black (1944-2013), who wrote loads of bestselling thrillers and who is now largely forgotten. He wrote specifically so that he didn't have to endure a 'proper' job but is a much better writer than the motivation might suggest. He was, as his real name suggests, a Glasgow boy from Govan. You would never in a million years guess it from The True Bride (1982), which is entirely set in Arizona.

Ellen is heavily pregnant. She has only recently moved to Arizona for her husband's work, and yet her wealthy mother lives fairly close by. Ellen's mother is wealthy but Ellen lives in some sort of ghastly apartment compound. She has only one friend, Vicky, who is the realtor who sold Ellen and Eric the accommodation. Ellen is fat, unhappy, lonely, scared, as you might expect of a first-time mother. But things turn decidedly weird. Someone steals her best blue blouse and shreds it. Someone takes library books from her car. Someone, presumably the same someone, decapitates a vintage doll and sticks the body in a hole slashed in Ellen's mattress. A woman rings, ostensibly from Eric's workplace, to say he's been taken ill. She dashes into town - only to find the office deserted. In Eric's desk she finds a prescription for lithium.

Here, in short, we have a psychological thriller. True gaslighting in the Patrick Hamilton tradition (the biography of whom arrived, coincidentally, in the mail this morning). Is Ellen losing it or someone really stalking her? Is Eric up to no good? Does someone intend harm to her baby?

Altman displays a tremendous capacity for plotting and structure and keeps us guessing to the end. For me, the revelations along the way seemed perfectly placed. I'd suddenly figure something out and then, instantly, Altman confirmed it in the text. In fact, of course, he'd led me by the nose to an inevitable conclusion. From the prologue onwards - a brilliant hook, by the way - we are taken inside the villain's mind. Again, this is beautifully done. We think it might be Ellen but, if it isn't, there is nothing to give the game away other than 'this person is clearly unhinged'.

The only defect - and I suspect this might be why Altman isn't on everyone's reading list - is that he sacrifices character to plot. His characterisation is not hopeless - you can tell everyone apart and they all have suitable speech patterns so you know who's speaking without needing flags - but there just isn't enough of it. Ellen's mother, for example, is characterised more by her walking frame than by whatever caused her to need it. Eric is a do-gooder, Vicky a home-wrecker, the girl in the apartment complex a complete airhead. The problem is particularly acute with Ellen herself. She is having such a bad pregnancy that half the audience is going to skip those parts. The odd good day, the occasional daydream about the future, would have made all of us care that bit more.

Ellen and Eric's last name, incidentally, is Campbell. Get it?

Grotesque - Natsuo Kirino

I really am in two minds about this book.  On the one hand I read all 467 pages and never thought about packing it in.  On the other, it never gripped me.  The end neither surprised or disappointed me - yet I can't get Grotesque out of my mind and on balance that has to mean Kirino is doing something right.

The blurb on the back tells us Kirino (a pseudonym) is a leading Japanese crime writer.  This seems to be the case, but Grotesque is not really a crime novel.  Our unnamed principal narrator is neither the victim nor the perpetrator.  She is merely a dispassionate observer of the effect the crime has on others.  This is strange and unsettling, given that she is the sister of one victim and a purported friend of the other.  The strange and unsettling tenor of the book is actually what keeps you reading.

It is no secret who killed the sister, Yuriko, but he flatly denies murdering the second, Kazue.  In Japan, apparently, the defendant is expected to write a pre-trial statement, explaining himself and either justifying his legal arguments.  He - the Chinese illegal immigrant Zhang thus becomes the least reliable of our unreliable narrators.  Both Yuriko and Kazue tell their versions through their journals: Yuriko became a prostitute to monetarise her beauty, Kazue does it as a hobby - she is otherwise a successful professional career-woman.  Both do unspeakable things.  That's the kind of novel this is - even the beautiful blind Yurio, Yuriko's abandoned son, is manipulative and utterly bound up in self-interest.

The fact that none of the characters are in any way likeable is what makes Grotesque as book hard to like.  The title is absolutely correct - everyone here is grotesque in one way or another, indeed less than fully human.  What is it actually about?  Well, I suppose in one aspect it is about the dehumanising effect of modern cross-cultural life, particularly on woman.  It is certainly not about the methods women use to carve out an identity for themselves because everyone here has an identity imposed on them by others.  If I had to plump for a single definition it would have to be 'a novel about perversion in the widest sense - social, cultural, psychological.'

The Chimney Sweeper's Boy - Barbara Vine

Ruth Rendell is the greatest of contemporary female crime writers and is never better than when she writes as Barbara Vine.  This, however, is by no means Vine at her best.  The writing is beautiful, the characterisation and back story deep and immersive.  There is clever play with the levels of storytelling, which I particularly liked.  But the mystery upon which all this is hung is no mystery at all.  I'm afraid I figured it out from the get-go and I am usually hopeless.  So it was an enjoyable read but ultimately failed to satisfy on the key trope of its genre.

One of the blurbs on the back of the paperback describes it as frightening.  A conclusion I find inexplicable.