February 21, 2026 · 9:26 am

The Temptation of Eileen Hughes: Brian Moore

In Brian Moore’s novel, The Temptation of Eileen Hughes, 20-year-old Belfast resident Eileen lives alone with her mother, Agnes. Money is tight, Agnes has poor health, and it seems great luck when Eileen becomes the “pet” of Mona McAuley, the wife of Bernard, a very wealthy man. Mona, a “smashing” blonde, was a pharmacist until she was romanced by Bernard. Now, a deeply discontent wife, she helps him run his many businesses. Eileen was working as a shop girl until she was taken up by Mona. She is promised promotions, invited to parties at Mona’s grand house and even travels with the McAuleys.

When the novel opens, Eileen, Mona and Bernard are on a trip to London. Eileen and her mother think she’s a lucky girl, but it’s a very odd situation. The minute they arrive in London, Mona claims illness and fatigue, and so Bernard ferries Eileen around without the Mrs. Eileen feels uncomfortable about this, and when she happens to discover that Mona isn’t ill but picking up men in the hotel bar, she knows something isn’t right. But Eileen is innocent, she’s in a precarious financial situation, and she’s out of her depth. She knows there’s something off about her role in the McAuleys’ lives but at the same time, seduced by promises, poverty and need, the life the McAuleys offer is tempting and Eileen finds it “easy to get into the habit of being like them.”.

Eileen never had much time for boyfriends in Belfast–all they seem to want was a grope prior to an aborted wrestle for sex. So here she is in London, a virgin, imagining what it would be like to live and work in London–imagining the choices she might have in another life–a normal social life without British occupation. While Eileen has the daydreams of a young girl, the McAuleys hatch plans. Both Bernard and Mona objectify Eileen for their own purposes. For Bernard, Eileen is an obsession. For Mona, Eileen is a tool to prop up her marriage to Bernard. The McAuleys don’t understand Eileen’s stubborn (as they see it) refusal to comply. Here’s Bernard and Eileen:

“You see, not all of us have your moral fortitude.”

“I don’t have moral fortitude.”

“Oh, yes, you do. I suppose I should say I admire that, but I don’t. You’re just another example of a wee girl who is taught, ‘This is right and that is wrong’ and who believes it without thinking, simply because some priest says it’s so. Or the nuns. The nuns in Ballycastle. That’s where you went to school wasn’t it? Ballycastle convent.”

Marriages are impenetrable to outsiders and to Eileen, an innocent 20 year old, the McAuleys’ relationship is both unfathomable and toxic. Brian Moore depicts Eileen’s plight with a deft hand. Eileen doesn’t ‘resist with “moral fortitude” as Bernard states, she resist because she wants her freedom. Alone in London, without her mother’s advice, Eileen must make some difficult choices

In many ways The Temptation of Eileen Hughes reminds me of minds William Trevor’s novel Felicia’s Journey. Both Eileen and Felicia are young, innocent Irish girls alone in London. Eileen is subject to temptation and must make moral choices while Felicia ends up with a serial killer.

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February 9, 2026 · 1:57 pm

Waiting for Matindi: Helen Hodgman

“I was just making coffee when Theresa knocked on the door. She looked as you’d expect a woman to look who’d been nearly all the way to Mortdale and back again, siphoning up every drop of dreg in every pub and club and rubbish bin along the way.”

The narrator of Helen Hodgman’s delightfully quirky novel Waiting for Matindi is a woman who is “recovering from an illness.” She’s living in a small Australian town two hours from Sydney with her lover. The narrator is “in love” but it’s quite obvious that the relationship is far from perfect. There’s a distance between the two women.

My lover had asked me once if I was interested in having a baby because she would like one. I suggested we rent one so if it didn’t work out we could return it.

Makes sense to me.

The lover works long hours in the studio area of the house while the narrator tries to keep busy. Is there much of a relationship there?

Not for the first time I asked myself what I thought I was doing here, although I knew the answers anyway. I was recovering from an illness. I had no money. I was in love with the busy occupant of the studio. None of these conditions would last forever. I was lucky. I told myself this. I was living in a pleasant place. I had my lover to myself for the first time in a long time, a state of affairs I had yearned for when it wasn’t possible. I could read all day if I wanted to. something I had not had the freedom to do for years. Obviously I should count my blessings and get on mowing the lawn, so I did and ran over the cord, cut it clean in two. I wasn’t looking and I certainly wasn’t paying attention. Silence from the studio, so at least I hadn’t caused her to go crashing through the worldwide web immediately. While I was thinking about how to break the bad news I put the mower away in the shed.

The narrator drives to Sydney and runs into Theresa, a bouncily exuberant woman she hasn’t seen for a long time. Theresa “used to live in a dark flat beside the fish-and-chip shop. Then she’d disappeared. No one knew where.” Theresa had “been clinging to the wagon” for over three years.

Theresa has put on a great deal of weight.

Her dress sense hadn’t improved either. Thongs. K-mart gray track pants topped, this morning, by a vast T-shirt where a gaudy rhino charged undaunted across the mountains of her breasts. Her hair was dull with salt, still spiky from a swim.

Theresa has just returned from Kenya and a romance with a Kenyan woman named Matindi.. According to Theresa, Matindi is moving to Australia to live with Theresa. …

Change is in the air. The narrator and her lover must find a new place to live. The narrator heads back to Sydney and Bondi Beach to find a new place while the lover takes off solo for an extended Xmas trip to visit family. Once the narrator returns, the lover has an accident, and so fate takes a hand in this insipid relationship. Theresa moves to Sydney while her lover (ex?) recuperates, and so with increased proximity to the drama, the narrator follows Theresa’s murky relationship with the mysterious Matindi.

Matindi has incredible bad luck when it comes to making arrangements to move to Australia. Her bus is hijacked. Her passport is stolen and she is robbed. Then her child is ill. She has to support her mother and sisters and support one of the sister’s children. Matindi’s nose is broken. ….

Delay after delay and Theresa keeps sending money until there is no more money to send. In fact she can’t even pay for a cup of coffee.

“I’m not rich, you know.”

“I know.”

“But I’m afraid it might seem like I am, to her. Anyway, all my savings have gone now, but she doesn’t know that.”

This was the first time I’d heard Teresa to talk sense. I didn’t like it much. I preferred the madder, more amusing version.

So Theresa waits for Matindi to arrive and in the meantime the Legend of Matindi grows. Then she actually arrives

Matindi bounced about, a cartoon figure forever assaulted, having her things stolen, her nose broken, being set light to–and a shameful thought I wished I wasn’t having and wish I’d never had–which was of Matindi crushed nightly under the not inconsiderable weight of Theresa and still managing to bounce back every time.

The plot of Waiting for Matindi underscores the idea that one writer creates tragedy and another comedy. In this case, the narrator’s spiky, transgressive voice creates comedy. The narrator’s life is in turmoil: health issues, relationship issues and there’s nothing quite like distracting yourself from your own issues by concentrating on the disasters in the lives of others. And Theresa isn’t the only one with plagued with problems. There’s “Doug and Sunshine (not her real name”) the narrator’s neighbours, or they were neighbours “until Sunshine fell in love with a big Dutch drug dealer who spirited her away to live with him in Amsterdam, leaving Doug holding the baby, or the four-year-old to be exact.” And then there’s Annette who “was having trouble with her life and the men in it.” She’s married but “in lust” with another man named Duncan whose main appeal is that he “doesn’t even try to be a responsible adult.” Everyone’s life seems to be falling apart.

When did I step over the line dividing a world in which everything sorted itself out somehow into a world in which everything depended on me? At what stage and at what age does that happen? The obvious answer is when you leave home and realize that someone, usually though not necessarily your mother, has been stocking shelves and putting the necessities of life inside the bathroom cupboards shoveling food into the refrigerator, and so on. But that’s not right. For a longtime after you are responsible for such things, you just don’t care. You don’t care if the cat’s out of cat food and most of the lightbulbs need replacing. There is a time when all you care about is, or was in my own case, books, clothes, music, and a particular shade of red lipstick I just never think about anymore and come to think of it, I have not seen it on anyone’s lips lately, which is a pity.

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January 26, 2026 · 9:57 pm

The Sequel: Jean Hanff Korelitz

The Plot from author Jean Hanff Korelitz concerned Jake, a creative writing professor who wrote one successful book, another that sank without trace and has several unpublished novels gathering dust. He loathes his job at Ripley College. He finds the students tedious and if life isn’t humiliating enough, one semester, Evan Parker takes his class. Evan is an unappealing student: crass and arrogant, he brags that he has a fantastic plot and has a surefire blockbuster on his hands. After learning of Evan’s death, Jake eventually takes that orphaned plot and makes it his own, but his success is plagued by anonymous accusations of plagiarism. That’s as far as I’ll go with The Plot.

So here we have The Sequel. The Sequel concerns (spoiler alert) Jake’s widow Anna Williams Bonner who writes her own book, The Afterword. With her weepy yet plucky story she is a great media success until… yes the spectre of Evan’s book appears on the horizon. It appears that Jake’s stalker is back. … or is there a second stalker ???

The Plot was fun, but The Sequel, although it picked up where The Plot left off, was retreading old ground–although of course, the back story is now told by Anna and not Jake. Both novels concern discovering the identity of the stalker(s)–Jake’s stalker, Anna’s stalker, but the path is the same. I’m glad I read The Sequel and I doubt anything would have deterred me, but The Sequel wasn’t as much fun. Anna’s voice is delightfully nasty, and the novel unfolds with information that contradicts Jake’s version (Evan’s version), but it’s retread. That said, I would hazard a guess that both books would make great mini-series.

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January 7, 2026 · 9:22 am

The Plot : Jean Hanff Korelitz

I read The Gerts’ review of Jean Hanff Korelitz’s The Plot and, as a sucker for campus novels (or professorial life), I knew this was the sort of book I’d like. The Plot concerns Jacob Finch Bonner (Jake) a creative writing professor at the third rate private university, Ripley College. Jake’s fame as a writer was brief but seductive; he wrote one bestseller, another which sank without a trace, and a number of unpublished novels now gathering dust. Jake is unable to produce anything close to The Invention of Wonder, and his brief glittering writing success, which at this point he’d prefer not to be mentioned, is in the rear view mirror. He’s bitter, so imagine then, his frustration and resentment at having to read abominable stories and first chapters written by his students. Working with eager students who deliriously imagine a writing career was “going to suck his soul.”

If that isn’t bad enough, he also has to deal with various types. His workshop contained not one but two women who cited Elizabeth Gilbert as their inspiration, another who hoped to write a series of mysteries organized around “numerical principles,” a man who already had 600 pages of a novel based on his life (he was only up to his adolescence) and a gentleman from Montana who seemed to be writing a new version of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, albeit with Victor Hugo’s “mistakes” corrected.

But there’s another student Evan Parker (he’d already pissed off Jake at a BBQ the night before). Evan is a smug, arrogant young man, big, brawny, blonde, convinced that no one can teach creative writing and so Jake’s class is hence irrelevant and a complete waste of time. Evan gets under Jake’s skin immediately–and it’s no wonder. The teaching gig is the last shred of Jake’s dignity and here is Evan ripping Jake’s fragile ego-band-aid away. Evan is rude in class, bragging up his book and yet strangely cagey to share it. Immediately there’s a whiff of threatened plagiarism in the air. At first Jake sees Evan as an arrogant bore incapable of writing anything decent but then Evan’s succinct comment begins to make Jake think.

Either it’s a good plot or it isn’t. And if it’s a good plot, the best writing isn’t going to help. and if it is, the worst writing isn’t going to hurt it.

A very skeptical Jake reads a sample of Evan’s novel, and Jake is forced to admit that Evan is a “natural writer.” Evan is sure he has a best-seller, and eventually he tells Jake the plot. Jake is stunned by the twists and turns of the plot and reluctantly acknowledges to himself that yes, Evan has a best-seller on his hands.

Fast forward two and a half years, and Jake is now eking out a humiliating living as a freelance editor; he’s even further down the rung of creative writing. One day, spurred by curiosity, he looks up Evan on the internet and discovers that Evan died. Evan’s parents and sister are also dead. Jake can’t resist using Evan’s plot to create a novel, and so Crib is born, and Jake becomes a bestselling author with tours, an Oprah endorsement, and a movie version in the works. Jake seems to be on the top of the world and then anonymous emails begin to emerge accusing him of stealing Crib. The anonymous messages begin to appear on social media and eventually Jake, at the height of his success, is in the middle of a full-blown scandal.

Initially The Plot seemed to be taking me to some familiar places–an author stalked by some psycho, but The Plot is much cleverer than that, and so I was delighted when Korelitz pulled me into … I’m going to say it … Highsmith territory. Korelitz is quite aware of the Highsmith connection–Jake teaches at Ripley College and the anonymous email author calls himself “Talented Tom.”

Gradually Korelitz reveals Evan Parker’s plot through chapters of Crib. The Plot is a great mystery but it also raises questions regarding plagiarism. Jake ‘stole’ Evan Parker’s idea for a plot but as he explains “the migration of a story is something we recognise and we respect. Works of art can overlap, or they can sort of chime with one another.” Adding “Jane Smiley stole A Thousand Acres from Shakespeare [or] Charles Frazier stole Cold Mountain from Homer.“

All too often a fictional book within a fiction book is drab, but in this case, the tension, pace and mystery are intense. That said, I did guess the BIG MAIN PUZZLE, but then I read a lot of crime books so my mind is twisted.

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December 3, 2025 · 8:47 am

Leaving the World: Douglas Kennedy

“We can never really determine the truth behind the unspoken. A gesture can have any meaning you wish to impose on it. Just as the truth behind an accident will never be fully understood. Just as embracing ambiguity can shield you from so much. […] If you confess to nothing, you provide those around you only with supposition”

Douglas Kennedy’s novel Leaving the World follows the many trials and tribulations of Jane Howard, a woman whose childhood was stained by her parents’ miserable marriage–a marriage which inevitably collapsed but with the unique twist that Jane became the convenient scapegoat excuse. This is a childhood scar which Jane carries forward–a scar which shapes her adult decisions. When the novel opens, Jane is a Harvard PhD student (American Literature) who is having an affair with her doctoral advisor, David. Jane, who worships David, thinks the affair is a well-kept secret but of course everyone on campus knows about the relationship. And possibly, just possibly, David’s wife knows too.

Middle-aged David (late 50s) is a well of misery. And this is a very good argument why a young woman (whose life is still the open road ahead) shouldn’t get mixed up with a married man whose life is a train wreck. David hasn’t written a book in years, his only son ran off at 17 and David spent “over a quarter of a million dollars (‘my entire inheritance from my father’) trying to find him.” The son, who was eventually found, was diagnosed as schizophrenic and now lives in a “managed care facility.” That leaves David’s wife, Polly. According to David his wife, Polly is suicidal, bipolar and has been institutionalized in the past. Polly’s (supposed) refusal to give him sex justifies (to David) his many affairs. Of course, Jane, after hearing about David’s tsunami of personal problems, demands next to nothing from their four-year-long affair. She soothes the many wounds (boo hoo) he carries from his professorial, artistic and lives, and tut tuts over his many woes.

Jane comes up with the brilliant idea of telling Polly that the extra time David spends on affair absences can be explained due to his renewed interest in writing. The lie becomes a truth as David labours over a new novel, and Jane can’t wait to read it. David is hesitant to let Jane read it but then finally agrees:

To say that it was a curious experience reading David’s novel would be to engage in an understatement. You think you know someone so well. Through all your conversations about life and art and the stuff that matters and the stuff that doesn’t matter–and through the intimacies of love–you think you’re pretty darn certain what is churning around in his head; how he reacts to things and the world. And then…then… he turns around and writes something so defiantly weird and unsettling.

David’s novel is bad. It’s the story of a writer/professor in “late middle-age,” he has a wife he “no longer loves,” and he’s having an affair with a young writer/professor. Oh dear.

Jane gives her opinion about the novel and David is hostile–particularly since “Polly thinks it’s a masterpiece.” Yes, David, the man who claimed his wife ‘didn’t understand him’ gave the book to Polly to read first. There’s a shift in Jane’s relationship with David. In Jane’s opinion David should not publish the book, but David prefers the domestic strokes and flattery to Jane’s criticism/ opinion (hmmm.. what was that affair really about) and he publishes.

It’s in Jane’s relationship with David and the decisions she makes after the publication that we begin to see the core elements of her character: Self destruction, flight from trauma, a certain (annoying) passivity with the men in her life, and a far too generous nature (especially with money).

God, how we are all prisoners of our own baggage. Why can we never really free ourselves from its malignant weight and the way it so dictates the way our lives are mapped out?

Following the end of the affair with David, Jane moves (read: edged out with kid gloves) from Harvard to another university job, but instead she enters the financial world (which I struggled with, but for the purposes of following Jane’s character to the end, I decided to shelve my disbelief). It’s in the world of finance that her father, a con-man/felon on the run, slithers back into Jane’s life. Jane connects the world of high finance to her education in early American Literature. Here she is comparing her new boss at the finance company:

Yes, it was crass, but there was something weirdly refreshing about such blatant mercantilism. He was an updated version of the sort of swaggering capitalist buccaneer who peopled so many of the naturalist novels I’d studied: a wholly American construct, with a ferocious energy for the combustible engine that was pure capitalism.

If I had to retitle the novel (it’s a game I play) then I would call it My Life is Shit. With David we see Jane’s self-destructive pattern, and every time she manages to recuperate her life, it all goes to … well … shit. Much of this is her own doing. She has a lot of good luck which is consumed by bad luck (and bad choices). But Jane is resilient. She keeps bouncing back–she also has many lucky breaks that help cushion the impact of the tragedies that swirl through her life.

We lose things and we choose things.

I loved parts of the book but was frustrated by Jane. I wanted to pull her back from the abysses she created and then leapt into. At least I was not an indifferent reader, and Jane’s choices kept me turning the page. The ending is OTT btw.

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November 20, 2025 · 2:58 pm

If Only: Vigdis Hjorth

“You can be aware of your capacity for love before you meet your beloved. Sense your potential for passion before you experience passion itself.”

Will and Testament from Norwegian author Vigdis Hjorth made my Best-of Year list in 2023, and so I was delighted to discover If Only. I love “Will and Inheritance” plots, so Will and Testament checked a lot of boxes for me. It’s a story of siblings fighting over property, but as the plot rolls out, the tale becomes one of rancid familial politics and clashing narratives. If Only is also, like Will and Testament, an intense read, but this is a story of obsession, and just how far an obsession can take someone down the road to ruin. Now that makes it sound as though If Only is a moral tale, and it’s a moral tale as in “wtf were you thinking.” It’s a grim, grueling read and I loved it.

In If Only Ida, a married woman in her thirties, a mother of 2, writes radio plays and edits a magazine, meets Arnold. He’s a translator on his way to a professorship. He’s also a COLOSSAL TWAT. They meet at a seminar and begin an affair which is an off-on-thing over a number of years. Arnold, in his 40s, is married to a much younger wife. He is “a well-established academic “who “critiques contemporary drama. She writes it.”

Arnold sets the boundaries of the relationship with Ida on their second meeting. While Ida, who lives in Oslo is “heading for a divorce,” Arnold, who lives in Trondheim and is on his third marriage says he “can’t handle another breakup.” When Arnold learns that Ida’s marriage is on the rocks and that there’s a scent of divorce in the air, he claims he’s nervous about their involvement. The affair cools but Arnold “keeps[s] her on the rack” always emphasizing that he made no promises and that he can’t handle (yet) another divorce. At one point, the relationship seems to end, and there are drought years when Ida doesn’t see Arnold. She can’t stop thinking about him and ends up in therapy. Ida’s obsession with Arnold is boring to outsiders, and shocking to people who know and care about Ida. Even Ida’s therapist finds her obsession with Arnold boring–he wants to find another subject to discuss. Two and a half years of therapy later and she still isn’t over Arnold.

Something has broken and can’t be mended. Unbearable anxiety trades places with unbearable pain.

During the periods when Arnold cuts Ida off, he dangles himself in front of her, teasing her. For her part, she’s so desperate for news of this dickhead, she finds excuses to create seemingly random conversations about him. She exhausts her friends and family with her Arnold-info seeking behaviour, and so she has to cast her net wider:

She seeks out new environments where they know A [Arnold} and his work. She mentions, casually, a play he has reviewed, an article he has written, a topic he has recently covered on the radio in the hopes that the person she is talking to will mention his name. If she doesn’t get a bite in this way, she will herself bring up the article or the review:

“I read an article the other day, about one of Brecht’s early plays, written by, oh what is his name?”

“Who?”

“The Brecht guy.”

And at this point her interlocuter will usually mention his name, the beloved name: “Arnold Bush?”

“Yes, that’s him.”

And if they don’t, she will introduce it herself: “Something beginning with A. Arnold something or other.”

Of course in the meantime, in a state of limerence, she neglects her children as she becomes consumed with Arnold, thoughts of Arnold and who else he’s having sex with. At one point she begins reading his newspaper horoscope “to find out how he is.” She even calls the creator of the horoscope when the meaning of a sentence is cryptic. When Ida’s toxic relationship with Arnold resumes in an almost lackadaisical way, it’s an Endgame. Arnold is incredibly cruel so theirs is a sado-masochistic relationship. Not in the sense of ‘chains and whips, chips and dips’ but in the sense that he treats her very badly, and she keeps coming back for more. He’s terminally unfaithful and Ida gets into revenge sex.

Ida begins a slide into moral ruin. This is a painful, grueling read … and I loved it for its intensity and unsparing examination of obsession. While the story appears to be written in the immediacy of the present, there are moments that show that this is a retrospective tale with Ida somehow on the other side looking back at this period of madness, obsessive love and moral degradation.

If this all sounds too bleak, it isn’t. There’s a strange, dark humor in the tale’s matter of-fact approach to the craziness as Ida uncovers Arnold’s countless infidelities and violently, vehemently rejects the endless humiliations of their relationship. There’s humour here in Ida’s tirades against Arnold’s excesses. Humour in the awful play they write together (mostly while drunk.) And there’s humour here in Arnold’s petulant, blind arrogance. At one point he has an affair with a student and then lectures her as he doesn’t (oh, the horror!) want to be known as a professor who sleeps with his students. Numerous times, with splendid and righteous passion Ida explodes against Arnold’s behavior only to return and take more and more. When she discovers he’s having sex with a student, she writes an anonymous letter, “drives to the post office and posts the letter before she has second thoughts.”

SHAGGER, SLEEPING WITH YOUR STUDENTS, YOU ABSOLUTE SHIT. I NEVER WANT TO SEE YOU AGAIN

It’s telling that Arnold doesn’t immediately guess the identity of the anonymous letter writer. In his typically blind arrogance, Arnold lectures and reproaches the student who is the sex object du jour. He “summons” her to his office “and talks to her in a professorial voice.”

He “doesn’t want a reputation of being somebody who sleeps with his students He doesn’t want to be the kind of person he is, so please shut up.“

So back to Arnold as an object of obsession. Yes, he’s an academic, yes, so presumably there’s intelligence there, but we see nothing attractive about Arnold. Petulant, selfish and immature, his only interesting and arguably redeeming quality is his sexual stamina, and even that potentially promising facet of his life is negated by his persistent in pursuing any vagina in his sphere.

There’s the implicit idea that Arnold can’t fathom what a shit he is while Ida recognizes his basic worthlessness, but in spite of this, she ploughs on as the relationship peaks and sputters in Arnold’s flagging attempts to create novelty and drama in the rat trap of their toxic domesticity.

Obviously many women fell for the cheap tinsel charm of this lothario which simply encourages him in his inflated idea of his own worth, but in Ida’s case, even she occasionally wonders why she is so obsessed with this unworthy man. Ida is intelligent, has a good career and is attractive, yet she becomes obsessed with a revolving, banal man who seems intent on making them both as miserable as possible. She has other relationships with other (nicer) men (not hard as the Arnold bar is a sub-zero level) using the relationships as distractions or revenge and so the men are simply penis-tools she uses along the way. I suspect most readers can think of a relationship that dragged on–relationships, which in hindsight, they now see as self-destructive, time-wasting, tedious dalliances or associations (legal or otherwise) that should have been severed before things turned as ugly as they did, so in that sense the book is relatable.

If Only asks just how far one woman can lose herself in a destructive relationship. Arnold is mediocre–balding, “with a pot belly” and skinny legs. There’s nothing whatsoever extraordinary about this intensely selfish, immature man. This plays to my personal belief that love is independent of the love object. I’m not a therapist (hats off to those who are) but I see Ida and Arnold as a lock and key. She was rational and grounded before Arnold. She asks herself:

Did he open up an old wound so that the infection could pour out, be released at last so that the wound could be cleansed, rinsed repeatedly with disinfectant, with stinging fluid, right down to the bloody, open sore, the pus drained , no matter how much it hurt so that love could finally die?”

I’ve seen the book described as a tale of romantic love/obsession. I’d take the word ‘Love” out of it. There’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to love, but whatever exists between Ida and Arnold, love it is not. Some people open doors in our psyche–doors we didn’t know existed. In my entirely unprofessional opinion, that’s what happened with Ida.

Translated by Charlotte Barslund

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November 9, 2025 · 5:45 pm

Phineas Redux: Anthony Trollope (1873)

In a literary series, it’s always a pleasure to revisit much loved characters and to see how their lives have progressed. Phineas Redux is volume 4 in the Palliser series. We first met Phineas in volume 2 of the series: Phineas Finn; he’s a young, energetic Irish lawyer who sets his sights on a political career. As the son of a doctor, several unmarried sisters, and no independent income, Finn is taking a huge chance by running for parliament. It’s not a cheap endeavour. In London, Lady Laura Standish, who as a woman is allowed no political life, lives vicariously through dinner parties in which politics are discussed. She takes a fancy to Phineas, and while ostensibly she claims to just want to further his career, there is more afoot. Phineas falls in love with Lady Laura and proposes, but she accepts the hand of Robert Kennedy, a wealthy, dour Scottish landowner. Lady Laura believes she is making the sensible choice, plus she needs to bail out her brother, Lord Chiltern from his many debts. A disappointed Phineas then proceeds to fall in love with heiress Violet Effingham. The problem with this potential match is that Violet has been in love with Lord Chiltern for years (and the feeling is mutual). Phineas naively confesses his love for Violet to the now very unhappily married Lady Laura, and that sends that her into a tailspin. Phineas, while friends with the wild Lord Chiltern, crosses the boundaries of that relationship when he goes for Violet and the two men end up fighting a duel.

Phineas is a chick magnet, and at one point in the novel the eccentric wealthy widow Madame Max Goesler, who replaces Lady Laura as Phineas’s confidante, proposes marriage to Phineas with the idea that her wealth can further his career, but Phineas rejects the offer, and he resigns his political office due to ideological differences (the Tenant Right Bill). The novel, of course, has many sub-plots, but the conclusion of Phineas Finn finds Phineas back in Ireland and reunited with the childhood sweetheart he’d left behind.

But back to Phineas Redux which finds our titular character a widower–his wife died giving birth to their child (who also died), so Phineas is at loose ends.

Phineas is lured back to London with the promise of an easily won seat. Thanks to the dirty tactics of the other candidate, he doesn’t win, but recent political reform at least gives him an avenue to contest the loss. Phineas finds his reentry into London society disorienting. He has experienced terrible loss in the years since he left London, and there has been no contact with any of his old circle. They all welcome him back as if he had just stepped out the door yesterday. Violet is now very happily married to Chiltern who has settled into perpetual foxhunting. Lady Laura, separated from her miserable husband, lives in Dresden, and Madame Max Goesler has become the constant companion of the Duke of Omnium (the uncle of Plantagenet Palliser.

Phineas Redux has elements of the sensation novel: election fraud, bigamy, insanity, murder and a sensational trial. Add to the fray the return of the fickle Lizzie Eustace from The Eustace Diamonds. Poor Robert Kennedy (we met him in Phineas Finn) has gone completely bonkers and his wife, Lady Laura, unable to bear his puritanical control lives in Dresden in fear that he will somehow force her, by legal means, to return to their home. Kennedy is convinced that Lady Laura and Phineas are lovers and a newspaper campaign against Phineas taints his political career. While the ladies love Phineas (that becomes more obvious as the book continues) he has many male enemies. The juicy gossip about Phineas and Lady Laura gives Phineas’s enemies grist to damage his career, and when Phineas’s most outspoken enemy is murdered, the blame falls on Phineas.

Phineas Redux is an incredible read and it’s a great argument for Trollope’s delightful female characters who always seem so much more interesting than the males, and as we see in many Trollope novels, marriage is a hot topic (how women get the short end of the stick). We see two wives trying to escape their husbands: Lady Laura and Lady Eustace–both women whose fortunes are challenged by their husbands. Lady Laura lives in poverty as her dowry is in the hands of the insane Kennedy and Lady Eustace is hounded by her scoundrel of a husband. Of course in Lady Eustache’s case, it serves her right. Also there’s Adelaide Palliser, who has a mere 4 thousand pounds. She should ‘marry for money’ and there’s a suitor who has money: Spooner of Spoon Hall, but Adelaide falls for Gerard Maule, also penniless… well penniless for his class–he lives on an allowance of 800 pounds a year. There’s a lot of humour surrounding Spooner’s earnest, dogged and clumsy pursuit of Adelaide. Poor Spooner seems to throw women and horses into the same category when it comes to understanding behaviour. Spooner hangs around Adelaide, and his clumsy courtship results in Adelaide refusing to walk with him. Spooner, a long time bachelor, lives with his fellow bachelor cousin, Ned Spooner, who gives him advice. “As far as Ned knew the world, ladies always required to be asked a second or third time.”

“She was as hard as nails, you know.” (Mr Spooner)

“I don’t know that that means much. Horace’s filly kicked a few, no doubt.”

“She told me that if I’d go one way, she’d go the other.”

“They always say the hardest things that come to their tongues. They don’t curse or swear as we do, or there’d be no bearing them. If you really like her….”

“She’s such a well-built creature! There’s a look of blood about her I don’t see in any of ’em. That sort of breeding is what one wants to get through the mud with.”

But of all the splendid female characters in Phineas Redux, the superb Madame Max Goesler is my favourite.

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January 17, 2025 · 11:57 am

Vain Shadow: Jane Hervey (1963)

“What a terrible thing it was when love turned to indifference–or worse.”

Jane Hervey’s novel, Vain Shadow begins with the news that the family patriarch is dead. Colonel Winthorpe died during the night with only his nurse present, and while the family had a good idea that the end was nigh, they all opted, with a range of excuses, to stay out of his bedroom. During the course of the novel, it’s clear that although the patriarch is dead, and therefore never present, he still casts a heavy shadow over the family. While some servants loved him, most of his family lived in repression and dread of his ever-present displeasure. His widow is, of course, the most suppressed of the lot and when the servant delivers the news that the Colonel is dead, Mrs Winthorpe can barely conceal the relief she feels:

Never again to have to kiss him goodnight! After fifty-three years of having to kiss him. ….What a blessing it was all over! (A blessing for him, she meant, of course!) All over! Sickness. Health. Till death us do part.

The Colonel had three sons: Jack (the eldest), Brian and then Harry. Jack married a much younger actress, the avaricious immature, Laurine and it’s quite obvious that she knows how to manipulate her husband. Following the marriage, the Colonel threatened to cut Jack from the will and so Jack is eager to know if any money is coming his way. Brian is married to Elizabeth and that seems to be a happy marriage but there are hints of other women. Harry, fussy and peevish is thrilled to take over the estate management, and it becomes clear that while Mrs Winthorpe has lost one controlling presence, Harry is ready to step into that role. When Mrs Winthorpe complains of the cold and wants the temperature in the house raised, Harry nastily and pettily “confiscate{s]” the thermometer.

The Winthorpes also had a daughter, Sylvia, who is dead, and from the way Harry speaks of her, it’s as if her ‘wildness’ brought about her demise. Sylvia’s adult daughter, Joanna arrives at the house. She’s married to the slick psycho Tony. She had a taste of brief freedom with lover, Andrew, but Joanna lacked the courage to break free of Tony–partially as he’s run a campaign to undermine her independence and sense of self-worth. Tony presents a facile, polished front to the world, and his flattery and attention fools Mrs Winthorpe. Brian sniffs a rat but Harry is alarmed by any idea of divorce in the family and finds it more convenient to think that Tony is amazing to put up with Joanna.

The author sharply observes the minutea of family dynamics–the pettiness, the rivalry, and the snide remarks as the narrative moves brilliantly from one mind to another. The novel explores the vast dissonance of how one is supposed to act after the death of a so-called loved one, and the reality of thoughts that cannot be expressed. Harry, for example, is more worried about his boiled egg being cooked properly than his father’s death. Then there’s Jack who just wants to get to the money:

Oh God! How much longer? thought Jack.

This slowness of getting from pillar to post was driving him crazy. It seemed to hinder the process, hold things up–so that they would never get to the funeral and never, never get to the reading of the will.

There are glimpses into Mrs Winthorpe’s mind of the Colonel’s romantic courtship all worn out by 53 years of bombastic, controlling behaviour. Joanna, who suffers from a brand of her own domestic tyranny, understands her grandmother and observes:

The complaints, the displeasure, threats not always veiled, which had closed in on her day by day, month by month, year by year, throughout that long, long marriage, had gradually stifled even the faint tentative fluttering she might once have had made towards freedom, while she had been young, enough and strong enough to escape. Now, she was beaten.

There’s the sense that with the Colonel’s death a vast period of history has slid away, The house is still grand but it’s a lifestyle, complete with lifelong servants, that is slipping away. The subject of death accompanied as it is in this novel by no grief–rather the sense of prison doors that swing open–is a sobering one, but there are moments of humour: when the funeral procession speeds towards the crematorium, the divvying of the spoils of the Colonel’s cabinet, and Laurine pestering Jack to buy insurance in case he dies and she’s left without a penny.

Highly recommended. Vain Shadow is Jane Hervey’s only published novel,

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December 15, 2024 · 9:25 am

Here One Moment: Liane Moriarty

“But the older you get, the less linear the memories, and the more everything seems to circle back to something else.”

Liane Moriarty’s novel, Here One Moment, explores the aftermath of a psychic’s predictions. The first section of the book opens on board a Hobart to Sydeny domestic flight that is delayed. Forty-five minutes into the flight, a middle-aged woman, named Cherry, stands up and begins moving through the plane delivering predictions to the passengers. The predictions have a specific format: Cherry, who is a psychic, later known as the “Death Lady” in the media, systematically delivers the cause of death and the age of death of many passengers. Some people receive “good” predictions: death at 100 years old for example, while others are told their time is short.

Some passengers, especially those with a far-off predicted death, are able to laugh off the incident, but several passengers are emotionally devastated by the experience. The book then follows how these passengers react to these predictions: There’s workaholic Leo Vodnik whose predicted cause of death is a stroke, Ethan, age 29 who is told he’ll die in an assualt at age 30, Paula who is told that her infant son will drown at age 7, Sue whose predicted death at age 66 is uncomfortably close, and Allegra, a flight attendant who is told her death will be self-harm at age 28. And guess what, she’s 28 on the day of the flight.

One theme in books and film is the idea that if you are given a second chance at life (a near death experience let’s say) what would you do? Would you improve your life? Appreciate each day more? Be nicer to people? Here One Moment is that sort of book–except that people are given warnings and some of the passengers try to alter what they see as their fate. No matter how these characters try to minimize the experience on the plane, the predictions are always in their heads, and it’s a heavy burden.

The book goes back and forth between the characters and we also learn about Cherry’s turbulent life. The book is wordy and repetitive in the beginning, and some chopping could have been done. I’ll bet this will become a TV series along with the other author’s books. I’ve enjoyed several of her books and have seen some of the TV adaptations too. Moriarty’s work adapts well to the screen and Here One Moment, an easy, light read, is perfect TV material.

review copy

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November 23, 2024 · 10:53 am

Where’s Wanda?: German TV series

“No one in their right minds wears leather vests!”

Yes! It’s German Literature Month hosted by that intrepid duo: Caroline (Beauty is a Sleeping Cat) and Lizzie () My first contribution to GLM is a German TV series: Where’s Wanda? And here’s a plot synopsis in a nutshell:

It’s the annual Nuppelwocken Festival in the small sleepy German town of Sundersheim. Local legend has it that the Nuppelwocken, a gargantuan, hideous, horned monster, emerges from the forest and snatches maidens. It’s a bit ‘beauty and the beast’ except that there never seems to have been a happy ending for those who were snatched. So here’s the annual festival. That means that the sleepy little town in which nothing ever happens comes alive with tourists and merrymaking. There’s a parade and all the locals seize the chance to don costumes. Wanda (Lea Drinda), the rebellious, mouthy teen daughter of Dedo (Axel Stein) and Karlotta Klatt (Heike Makatsch) has a brief skirmish with her mum and then dashes off on her moped, in costume, to attend the parade. Except she never arrives, She simply disappears. …

Where’s Wanda? is a comedy series, and it’s difficult to imagine a comedy about a missing teenage girl, but this series is funny. Quirky funny. The series starts with Wanda’s disappearance and how the frantic parents react. Dedo and Karlotta, frustrated with the police, feeling that they have to do something, and believing that Wanda is being kept captive in the town, begin to spy on the neighbours with hilarious consequences. It seems as though all the neighbours have dirty secrets, something to hide, and the Klatts, with the help of their deaf, gay son, unintentionally dig up and expose that dirt: a man keeping his wife doped up and a prisoner while he sports with his shallow avaricious mistress, a kinky therapist, a neo-nazi bunker, and the illegal trading of exotic animals. Add to this that the bungling Dedo, suddenly unemployed but hiding that from his wife, feels that he must prove himself. Karlotta’s delightfully weirdo brother, Rudiger (Devid Striesow) my favourite character, is hilarious, and all the characters are well cast. The episodes go back and forth in time showing Wanda’s disappearance and fast forwarding to the current investigation, and while the series occasionally veers into silliness, it’s all good fun. Serious social commentary runs beneath the humour–the vampire media eager for emotional meltdowns, the eagerness of others to connect themselves to the tragedy and the staggering level of insensitivity manifested in a vigil–the Wanda Fest.

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