Last time, during my discussion of Samanta Schweblin’s story Eye in the Throat,  an audience member questioned the value of re-reading fiction, and today, I hope to address these concerns. (The audience member has been silenced). I suppose the best reason to re-read a story or novel would be that you like it. I want to argue that because of the complexity of fiction, re-reading also enriches your understanding of a text. Every reading is different, a savant has said. Our friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “You are the book’s book,” meaning, I think, that a book reads you, that is, who you are at the time you read, makes an enormous difference to your reading. If you have the motivation to re-read a text, you will probably get a lot out of the experience. Let’s consider Eye in the Throat . I mentioned that the beginning of the story raises questions that are only answered at the end—specifically, why is the father of the narrator receiving phone calls in which the caller is silent, and who is calling? Related to this, the father believes the caller is a man named Morris, who owns a gas station used by the family—is the father correct? One can certainly read through the whole thing and eventually find the answers to these questions. However, there is considerable foreshadowing along the way, foreshadowing that may be missed if one doesn’t know the story. I believe this is less satisfying. In a sense, Eye in the Throat is a story about the dissolution of a marriage. Of course, it is as much the story of the growing distance between father and son, but neither theme is apparent at the beginning. There, the reader is only confronted with a mystery: the phone call. The first shift from this beginning was discussed last time. We learn that, “almost six months before,” there was a major accident that left the narrator of the story (never named), breathing through his throat after a tracheotomy that has left his vocal cords permanently damaged. Prior to this, the two-year-old narrator and his father were very close, but the father blames himself for the accident and begins to withdraw—something the narrator doesn’t understand. But the reader does understand, having the omniscient perspective of the story that can see into the father’s perspective (as well as the mother’s). Then, we go forward in time, but not as far as the beginning. The family is on a car journey to Buenos Aires to get medical testing done for the narrator. They stop at a gas station and the father encounters Morris—the reader perceives it is the same Morris mentioned in the beginning. Morris says, as the father searches his pockets for money to pay for the gas, “Why am I always the one who has to wait for you?” This comment, which certainly speaks to Morris’ bullying character and the tension between the father and Morris, sets up the reason why the father believes it’s Morris who’s making prank phone calls to him later, also speaks to foreshadowing—it is not just Morris who waits for the father, it is also the son. In a major development, perhaps the story’s main development, we learn that as the parents leave the gas station, the narrator somehow disappears from the parents’ car and reappears at the gas station owned by the enigmatic Morris. The parents blame themselves and each other, and this incident precipitates their separation. It is explicit that the son is in the car at this point: “’I’m sleeping on the other side of the glass, stretched out with my feet touching the car seat…” However, once the parents return to the car and drive off, there is no longer mention of the narrator being with them. When they return to the car, the mother begins to check on the boy, but the father says, “Leave him be,” and she does, getting into the front seat after reassuring herself with the sight of the boy’s blanket. The narration, mentioned last week, is ambiguous, as it is not strictly from the boy’s perspective. “When she closes her door, the light turns off, and the yellow blanket darkens, momentarily putting distance between me and my mother’s worries.” A surface reading of this sentence might make it seem to be from the boy’s perspective, that he is safely beneath the blanket. But a closer reading shows no actual mention of him, only a reference to “my mother’s worries,” which certainly may be part of a looking back analysis. It is only after a number of miles of travel and the mother falling asleep (!) that the parents realize he’s missing. “’He’s not here!’ screams Mom. ‘He’s not here!’” Frantically, the parents retrace their journey to the gas station. “It’s strange not to be there. I am nothing of what remains: not the back seat, not the yellow blanket, not my empty car seat. Still there is something of me in everything that has been mine. Look at me. Look at me. Look at me,  I say to my father.” This is important foreshadowing of the narrator being aware of the growing distance between he and his father. It’s as if the narrator is still there but has become invisible. With his omniscience, he sees inside both his father and mother. And he sees them sitting in the car. “But me—where am I, if not here? The plastic I breathe through (his tracheotomy tube) is an orifice, not a nose. (Yet he’s able to smell things—how can this be?). If I’m here, if here is where I’m smelling and yet I don’t know where my body is, where am I exactly?” “Kay, this is very mysterioso. Where’d this kid go? “From where am I looking at them? Whatever has happened to me, it has turned me into something else. It has disarmed and expanded me, enlarged me. It is a pain that is outside my body. I am an open plastic valve, and whatever is happening inside me emerges and touches others.” The best I can make of this, best B, is that the narrator somehow disappears from his parents’ car and claims he has no understanding of how it happened. A realist might demand more explanation, but there is none. And there is no neat tying up of this mystery by the end of the story. His parents find him back at the gas station, where he’s being cared for by Morris’ wife. She says that her husband, Morris, found the boy and brought him in but doesn’t know where he was found. The boy embraces his mother, but when his father calls him, he stays in his mother’s arms. “My father’s voice calls to me again, But I’m no longer able (to respond). I no longer want to, I think. No, no because no. No because it’s not the same now …How is this possible? The child has never rejected his father. Something has happened…Did someone do something to him?” The family returns home. That night comes the first prank phone call to the boy’s father. As they continue, the narrator describes him: “He thinks he is learning to listen, for the first time in his life. He thinks that a salesman exposed to such meaninglessness can only develop extraordinary listening skills…my father finds that his telephone sessions bring him an unexpected calm. Whatever it is that comes through the receiver begins to seem ever more familiar. He no longer hangs up but wants to be hung up on.” This is a beautiful metaphor for the process of maturing beyond one’s parents. The narrator grows up and is successful. The mother has moved out long ago. The father still gets the calls, only more sporadically. He no longer seems hostile to them. They are reassuring. He lives far away from his son but thinks this distance is good. “He sleeps better knowing the phone isn’t disconnected.” Twenty years later, he visits the gas station again. Morris explains that, at the time of his disappearance from his parents’ car, the narrator wanted to call his father, and Morris pretended to do it, dialing the number and handing him the phone. Although it’s not said explicitly, the reader realizes that it’s the narrator who’s been phoning his father and not speaking—this is what’s shown at the beginning of the story. The story concludes with the narrator describing his reaction to his father’s death seventeen years later. (This story covers a lot of time). “I sit beside his bed…and I tell him in silence: Don’t worry, Dad, we were happy, at first, and that’s enough. Everything’s going to be okay, Dad . And since he doesn’t answer me, since he has never answered me, I put my finger inside that hole that’s like an eye and I touch inside. I touch my father inside, and I let him go.” This refers to an earlier fantasy the narrator had that he could reach inside his tracheotomy opening and somehow touch his parents. Perhaps there is a middle ground between a first reading and a second, and this would be a slow and careful first reading with frequent looks back to what one has already covered. In a story as complex as Eyes in the Throat , this strategy might reveal some of the things mentioned above. Next time, a new one, best B. Till then. #GoodAndEvil #SamantaSchweblin #AlanBray

The second story I’d like to discuss in Samanta Schweblin’s collection Good and Evil and Other Stories is called Eye in the Throat.  It’s long, forty pages, a size that pushes it into novella range. Yes, please note the use of the present tense combined with first person narration. It begins: “My father picks up the phone.” What follows is a description of how the narrator’s father, in 1990s Argentina, received phone calls during the night in which no one spoke. “The silence that calls him every night sticks with him throughout the day and he can’t help but think about Morris. About Morris and the three gas pump islands in the service station in General Acha, about the eighteen hoses hanging from their handles, about the nocturnal lights at that YPF station on the side of the flat, endless highway through the pampa.” We the readers, on a first read through, immediately have questions: who is calling the narrator’s father, why is she/he not speaking? Who is Morris and what is the gas station in General Acha, and why does the father think about Morris when he listens in vain to the telephone? This is classic story stuff, best B; questions raised at the beginning that draw the reader in, expecting answers. And they come, eventually. There’s some nice foreshadowing about the family’s telephone which uses a lithium battery. Then, after a line break, the story establishes that it’s six months earlier and proceeds to tell the story of how the narrator, a toddler age boy, lost his ability to speak. At the beginning of this post, I described the narration as first-person, but it is not quite so simple. A notable feature of this story is the presence of what some might call an omniscient narrator who can “see” into the heads of other characters. This, combined with the first person narration, creates some interesting effects. These excursions into other’s consciousness are often (not always) set off in italics. Thus, in a passage where the narrator describes being bathed by his father, the text reads, “ I have to keep the water out , thinks my father…” The narrator might infer that his father thinks this, although it’s unlikely since he’s two years old, but the comment isn’t presented as an inference, but as a thought. Again, in a passage showing the family making a long car trip, we have, “ Oh, the miracle at last , my mother thinks.” This occurs when the narrator finally falls asleep, a scenario any parent can relate to. Then, when the family stops for gas, we have an extended scene from the father’s perspective. Here, the father encounters Morris, the gas station owner who is mentioned in the beginning, the person the father suspects of making the prank phone calls. (at this point, the reader has no reason to doubt this). Morris impatiently waits for his money which the father has trouble finding in his pockets. “ And all you have to do now is find the money.” The father thinks. Morris says enigmatically: “Why am I always the one who has to wait for you?” This comment refers to a theme in the story, that the father keeps others waiting, often with disastrous consequences. This is shown after the first paragraph break, when the narrator is injured. His father is watching him, but he, being a toddler, swallows the lithium battery for a digital clock while his father is momentarily distracted. In distress, he is rushed to the ER by his parents. The father “checks all the objects I have been playing with. He opens and closes the digital clock on the shelf…opens, but doesn’t close…the small black cover.” An operation is done; the battery is removed, but the lithium has damaged the narrator’s throat. The father blames himself, the mother apparently blames him too, they become estranged and eventually separate after another traumatic incident involving the narrator. While the family is traveling by car (and encountering Morris) the two-year old narrator disappears from the back seat while the parents are at the gas station. They don’t notice he’s missing till they are several miles down the road and turn back, searching for him frantically. All these events are recounted by a narrator who is an adult in the future, a narrator who tries to make sense of why his father withdrew from him after they were very close. But this narration does raise the question: How could a two-year old understand his family and himself the way an adult would? Is the story all about an adult looking back and imagining his very first years, perhaps relying on parents’ stories for the details? I don’t think so, best B. It is our old friend the implied author who is telling the story, darting around and getting into the heads of the different characters. Let’s stop there today and resume next week. Suddenly, an audience member stands up and shouts: “Mr. Speaker! Mr. Speaker! I have a question. Why is this important? Who cares about the so-called implied author and the narrative style? What a snooze fest! If you want to read the story, just read it! Shut up and read it—and once is enough. Am I right?” The member looks around the audience, nodding, apparently trying to enlist others to his cause, but most people turn away, shaking their heads. Someone shouts: “Sit down!” “Order! Order, please, I’d like to respond to this question—indeed, what is the point of this analysis?” (indistinct shouting) “All right, please settle down. It certainly is possible to read any work of fiction without being aware of the mechanics of how it is done. It certainly can be quite satisfying and sufficient to read a text once only, responding, perhaps, on an emotional level. One can read a book or short story and enjoy it without thinking why. I do not mean to criticize this sort of reading but only to say there are different ways to read, ways that probably do require more than one reading. Eyes in the Throat  provides an excellent example. But I have been warned about making these posts over-long, so again, let me stop and pick up next time. Till then. #GoodAndEvil #SamantaSchweblin #AlanBray

Hello to all. Today, I want to write about Samanta Schweblin’s brand new collection of long short stories, translated as Good and Evil  from the Spanish El Buen Mal . I will discuss two of the stories, first William in the Window  and then An Eye in the Throat . Samanta Schweblin has published two novels and, counting Good and Evil , three short story collections. She is originally from Argentina.   The Spanish speakers among us might say, “Hold up! Good and Evil is not a literal translation of El Buen Mal.” I don’t know what to say. Ms. Schweblin must have approved the translation. El Buen Mal does seem more like The Good Bad Person, which would give the title a different meaning—stories about a bad person (or people) doing good things. Hmm. It is of significance—story titles and book titles are not randomly picked. They have meaning. Both stories under consideration—as well as most of Ms. Schweblin’s work—are written with a first-person narrator, an “I” who uses the simple past tense to tell the story as if it happened to her/him, a testimonial if not a confession, if you will. Of course, this is true with a lot of modern fiction, some might even say it’s a necessary part of the current style. We may take it for granted, but it does have some interesting implications. The use of first-person narration establishes a persona, a character-narrator who is very self-conscious. Solipsistic come to mind. "’Solipsistic’ describes someone or something that is extremely self-centered, to the point of believing only one's own mind is sure to exist . In a philosophical sense, it relates to solipsism, the theory that only one's own consciousness is certain to exist. In a more common, everyday usage, it describes extreme egocentricity, selfishness, and a focus on one's own needs and desires while disregarding others.” Well, that is kind of a negative take on first-person narration, a blanket condemnation. But in these stories there is an isolation, a sense of an “I” struggling with loneliness. A sense that no one else—even intimates—really understands the narrator. The stories present an “I” suffering from a feeling of alienation and of how she/he resolves it, often by finding connection. William in the Window  begins with “I went to Shanghai a few months after we got the news of his illness and shortly before his treatment started.” The narrator is a writer trying to complete a novel who journeys from Buenos Aires to Shanghai to attend a writer’s retreat. Her husband, Andres, has cancer and may die. As explanation for leaving him, the narrator says, “I was frightened by the suspicion that if Andres died, I might die with him.” This, best B, is the heart of the story. Can one survive the loss of a mate? The narrator befriends another writer at the retreat, Denyce, and learns Denyce is very concerned about her elderly cat, William, who remains in Ireland with Denyce’s husband. At Denyce’s birthday party, Denyce learns William has died. She asks the narrator to return later and confesses she believes William is present there in Shanghai as a sort of ghost. The narrator initially reacts with disbelief but then hears the sound of a cat scratching.    “Then I heard it. Clear and crackling, a slow scratch over soft fabric, like hundreds of tiny bubbles exploding in the air…My heart was pounding just like it had when I’d told Denyce about the marks Andres left in the bathroom.” (This refers to what the narrator said when asked why she loves Andres—she names a particular detail of their life together, that when he stands before the toilet to urinate, he touches the tiled wall, leaving a mark). The narrator becomes quite upset, hearing William’s “call” in Shanghai. “What if Andres was already dead but no one had been able to reach me? What if I was crazy too and I was losing all control over my life? What if I really did die when Andres died, but alone and twelve thousand miles away?” Then she realizes: “The cat was dead but Denyce was still alive.” She winds up talking to Andres on the phone, standing in the bathroom the way he does before the toilet. She wants to tell him that she’ll be on the flight home tomorrow. Here’s the last line: “And then I saw him. William in the Kilkenny window, upright and attentive, finally turning toward me, recognizing me, granting me the certainty of his gaze. Like Denyce, she will survive. Thinking back to the story collection’s title, is the narrator a bad person doing good things? It’s a stretch to try to fit this story into that meaning, my friends. The narrator worries that she’s wrong to leave her husband, however, it’s never made explicit that she abandoned him, more that her departure was agreed on. Her husband never seems to blame her. We the readers get a sense of her inner turmoil, and most of all, her fear that with Andres’ death, her life will end. Denyce’s experience seems to reassure her and perhaps allow her to return to Buenos Aires, less afraid. Till next time. #GoodAndEvil #SamantaSchweblin #AlanBray

Last time, I wrote about the ambiguity of certain elements in Daphne Du Maurier’s Don’t Look Now , and I’d like to continue—especially since we’re dealing with scary scenes, and it’s a week closer to Halloween! I gave away the ending last time, so there’s no use pretending I didn’t. John, the narrator, pursues a figure he thinks is a child in peril who turns out to be an adult murderer (a dwarf) who kills John. The last thing he remembers is the vision he had of his wife Laura returning to Venice in the company of the two psychic sisters who had foreseen he was in danger. At the end, he understands the vision’s meaning: Laura is returning to his funeral, accompanied by the sisters. And in the reality of the story, it is a vision—a paranormal thing indeed. By the way, best B, if the narrator dies at the end, who is, in retrospect, telling the story? Hmm? (I detect the implied author lurking). When John “sees” Laura returning to Venice, he does what the reader does and tries to make sense of it. “What the hell had happened? There must have been a holdup with the charter flight and it had never taken off, but in that case why had Laura not telephoned…? And what were those damned sisters doing?…He could think of no explanation.” John then seeks this explanation, interrogating hotel and restaurant managers and finally going to the police. Laura is nowhere to be found. It seems here, in contrast to the initial incident of the sisters telling Laura her dead daughter is present, there is less ambiguity. John’s vision is pretty straightforward and there is nothing overtly supernatural about it in the moment. John sees his wife with the two sisters—she does not see him and seems oblivious. It is really as it would be if someone were seen at a distance—a real person, not a vision. And John’s reaction is, again, quite logical. There is nothing so far to make the reader think there is anything “spooky.” However, John takes a call from England regarding his son and is shaken when Laura gets on the line: “’Darling? Darling, are you there?’ He could not answer. He felt the hand holding the receiver go clammy cold with sweat. ‘I’m here,’ he whispered. … ‘I thought,’ he said slowly. ‘I thought I saw you in a vaporetto with those two sisters.’ … ‘How could you have seen me with the sisters?’ she said. ‘You know I’d gone to the airport. Really, darling, you are an idiot.’” After this call, John drinks heavily. We the readers (through John) are presented with a logically impossible situation (a person being in two places at once) but so far, are not encouraged to view this as a supernatural phenomenon. Our puzzlement is mediated by John’s growing unease, and this begins to suggest something spooky. After he realizes he’s falsely accused the pair of sisters of wrongdoing, John apologizes. The blind sister tells him: “You saw us,” she said, “and your wife too. But not today. You saw us in the future.” However, she is characterized by the other sister as tired and frail. The other sister fears her sister might go into a trance and need days to recover. Again, as we saw last time, the person who presents “spooky” material in this story is marked as unreliable and compromised, calling the accuracy of what they say into question. When John and the sisters reach the sisters’ hotel, the blind one takes John’s hand. “’The child,’ she said, speaking in an odd staccato voice, ‘The child…I can see the child…’ and then to his dismay, a bead of froth appeared at the corner of her mouth, her head jerked back, and she half-collapsed in her sister’s arms.” Here, John’s death at the hands of the dwarf is foreshadowed although the first-time reader doesn’t realize it. It may seem as if the old woman is referring to John’s daughter. John leaves the sisters, appalled at the blind sister’s collapse. He quickly becomes lost but then spots the “child” he’d seen earlier. “It was the same little girl with the pixie-hood who had leapt between the tethered boats the preceding night.” He pursues her, thinking she is in danger and that he will rescue her. Of course, this desire to save ties in well with his feelings of grief over the death of his own daughter. He pursues the “child” into a building, but at the last moment, the “child” throws back her hood, revealing that she is a maniacal dwarf who pulls a knife just as the police close in. She throws it at John, catching him in the neck, and dying, he realizes the meaning of his vision of Laura. By the way, this is a 1970 story and sadly, doesn’t present dwarves in a very positive light. My apologies. ‘Kay. So despite all my cautions, there is genuine spookiness here. John has a premonition of his death but doesn’t realize it. Despite all the ambiguity over the reliability of the blind sister, she ultimately is shown to be correct in her fears for John. John, who throughout the story, is presented as a sturdy champion of reason, ignores a warning because his rationality won’t allow him to believe in visions and “spookiness.” Is Don’t Look Now  “spooky?” Tragically ironic is more like it. The character of the killer-dwarf is arguably frightening because it is relentlessly one-dimensional. We do not know why the dwarf kills John, and it is doubly unsettling because the character is first presented as a child in peril—a sympathetic character if there ever was one. One-dimensional characters are inherently frightening because the reader is not privy to their internal life. Till next time when we will embark on a new venture. A new fictional world, my friends. Till then. #DontLookNow #DaphneDuMaurier #AlanBray

Last time, we talked about several different ways to look at the supernatural features of Daphne Du Maurier’s short story, Don’t Look Now . In part to recover from the death of their young daughter, a British couple are vacationing in Venice where they encounter a mysterious pair of sisters who tell them their daughter is present and concerned that something bad will happen to them. Their son, at a boarding school in England, falls ill, and the boy’s mother, Laura, returns to care for him. The father/husband, John, believes he sees Laura returning to Venice at the same time he knows she is on a plane headed north. John tries to make sense of this and blames the sisters for influencing Laura to return. Eventually, he runs afoul of a maniacal killer. At the end, he dies, realizing—in his mind—that seeing Laura coming back to Venice was a vision of her in the future, returning for his funeral. ‘Kay. One way to appreciate the story is to embrace the supernatural elements as true. Whether or not one believes in ghosts and visions, one can read the story with an acceptance of the idea that—in this story, at least—they are true. Perhaps this would be an appropriate strategy to adopt on a first reading. Another way is to read with an eye as to how the author constructs the story and its “spooky” elements. Is it truly a tale of Gothic horror or is it actually something more ambiguous? You knew which one I was going to pick—#2, please! Do you have to believe in the supernatural in order to appreciate this story? No, best B, you don’t. In fact, it’s not necessary to believe in ghosts in order to be scared (so said a wise person commenting on Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw , another famous ghost story). Boo! A fair question concerns the author’s intent: is Ms. Du Maurier writing a story that treats the supernatural as real? Does she want to scare us? Maybe, but I think a careful reading reveals something more complex. Let’s dig in. The first spooky thing that occurs in the story is when Laura tells her husband what one of the sisters has told her: “You see, she isn’t dead, she’s still with us. That’s why they kept staring at us, those two sisters. They could see Christine.” She continues, recounting more of what the woman told her: “Don’t be unhappy any more. My sister has seen your little girl. She was sitting between you and your husband, laughing…Oh, John, don’t look like that. I swear I’m not making it up, this is what she told me, it’s all true.” ‘Kay. Interesting, but what is the context for these passages? John and Laura are having lunch and note the sisters. Immediately, they jokingly tell each other that the sisters are transvestites who have criminal designs. (remember this was written in 1970). The couple mocks the sisters and contextualizes them for the reader as unreliable and possibly bad. They are “trying to hypnotize” John. “They’re not old girls at all…They’re male twins in drag…They’re criminals doing the sights of Europe, changing sex at each stop…Jewel thieves or murderers?” But Laura presents a different interpretation: “’The things is,’ she said after a moment. ‘We’ve got them all wrong. They’re neither murderers nor thieves. They’re a couple of pathetic old schoolmistresses on holiday, who’ve saved up all their lives to visit Venice…They’re called Tilly and Tiny.” John is delighted that his wife, who has been so grief-stricken by their daughter’s death, seems light and having fun. In this vein, Laura resolves to follow one of the sisters into the bathroom to see if they switch into male clothing, and that is where the sister tells her that her blind psychic sister has seen dead Christine.   So. This shocking message to Laura occurs within a context where the sisters are ridiculed and generally presented as unreliable. This makes what the sister says highly ambiguous—should the reader accept this ghost-sighting as “real” or the ravings of an unreliable person? Laura, who mediates the reader’s experience, believes the story. Of course, Laura herself has been presented as unreliable. She is described as depressed, as not herself in the wake of Christine’s death. She says Christine is alive, when it’s clear she is dead. John, who has the authority of narrator, does not believe the story. He thinks the sisters are trying to trick Laura.    The story is very ambiguous. It can easily be read as a story of an attempted con-job, as easily as it can be read as a ghost-story. If we the readers read a blurb or synopsis, it might describe a ghost story. But this is misleading. Of course, the beautiful and frightening irony is that something scary and awful really does happen. More on this next time. Till then. #Don'tLookNow #DaphneDuMaurier #AlanBray

Daphne Du Maurier’s Don’t Look Now  is a long short story (some 60 pages), originally published in 1970, thirty-two years after the publication of our previous selection, Rebecca, which speaks to Ms. Du Maurier’s long career. It was first published in Great Britain under a different title, Not After Midnight . The edition I’m reading is a short story collection of Ms. Du Maurier’s work entitled Don’t Look Now , published by The New York Review of Books. A famous film version was adapted from the story by Nicholas Roeg. (Highly recommended). To begin, I’d like to note again that Ms. Du Maurier has often been dismissed by the literary establishment who regarded her work as “ atmospheric, feminine romance that was escapist rather than artistic.” She has been condemned for writing romances and simple horror stories. As I’ve said, I think some of this animosity is due to the way her writing was marketed and some of it due to sexism. Another possibility is that Ms. Du Maurier had early success as a writer and was wealthy; in a sense, her life was easy compared to other writers who had to contend with poverty and neglect of their work. Perhaps there was some jealousy toward Ms. Du Maurier. While her peers experimented with innovative writing techniques, like stream-of-consciousness and an emphasis on war and poverty, her writing remained more conventional. As was true with Rebecca , Don’t Look Now  seems to have been written without reference to real historic or cultural events. We might suspect that a story written in 1970 would mention the women’s movement, the war in Vietnam, or the powerful social changes that began in the 1960’s, but it does not. In fact, there is a lack of referents that would place the story in any particular time period. It could occur in the 60s; it could occur in the thirties. (As it mentions cars and planes, it couldn’t be much earlier). Don’t Look Now  unfolds over a twenty-four-hour period. It is written in close third-person narration strictly through the perspective of John, who is on vacation in Venice with his wife, Laura. The couple has just suffered a major loss; their young daughter, who died of illness. They have a son who is in boarding school in England and who will play an important part in the story. The first scene shows the couple having lunch in a restaurant. Here is the first line: “Don’t look now,” John said to his wife, “but there are a couple of old girls two tables away who are trying to hypnotize me.” This beginning captures a central theme of the story—others gaining undue influence over oneself and one’s loved ones through unconventional measures. Here, though, in the first line, the theme is introduced as a joke. John and Laura see two elderly ladies sitting nearby who seem to be watching them and they—John and Laura—hide any discomfort by joking. We the readers have access to John’s internal thinking. He is concerned about his wife and glad she is joking; he hopes the vacation is good for her. It is not till well into this scene that we learn the reason: “The holiday could yet turn into the cure she needed, blotting out, if only temporarily, the numb despair that had seized her since the child died.” John’s own grief at the death of his young daughter seems to be denied and expressed through his focus on his wife. In a flashback, John remembers how the doctor told him, rather patronizingly, that Laura would get over the loss, that they had another child, a son named Johnnie, and that they might have other children. John, reflecting on this memory thinks, “So easy to talk…how replace the life of a loved lost child with a dream!” thereby showing some of his own despair, a despair which he usually projects onto his wife. The story’s inciting incident occurs when one of the old women (who are twin sisters) tells Laura that her sister is psychic and blind and can see Laura’s deceased daughter sitting with she and John. The girl, or ghost, is worried that something bad is going to happen to them. Laura tells John this, and he is horrified, thinking that the old women have preyed on his wife’s grief. But Laura seems happier. That night, after a pleasant afternoon of site-seeing and lovemaking (!), John and Laura receive a call from their son’s boarding school saying that he is ill and may require surgery. Due to complexities that defy description, the couple agrees that Laura will return to England the next morning. In the morning, John drops his wife off at the airport and returns to Venice to check out of their hotel, intending to drive their car home. But as he returns to the airport where the car is, he sees his wife in a boat along with the two sisters, headed back toward the city. “Then he saw her, Laura, in her scarlet coat, the twin sisters by her side…He stared, astounded, too astonished to shout…” John can think of no reason why Laura would return from the airport and be accompanied by the sisters. Later in the story, we learn that at the time he “saw” her in Venice, Laura was on a plane headed to England. This incident is one of several in the book that could be called, well, spooky. The realists among us might say, “my dear, it was simply a sort of hallucination experienced by someone under stress.” I believe it’s more accurate to say that a prime rule of the story is that supernatural things can occur without explanation. The story describes a protagonist who is experiencing events which cannot be easily explained in scientific terms—however, the story merely shows this; it does not make meaning of it. It does not say, Oh, supernatural events are real. Spooky premonitions, visions, and ghosts are real. The story just presents these phenomena, leaving it to the reader to explain them. So, the first example of this, and the first cue to the reader that this will be a story about “spooky” things, is when the sisters tell Laura that her dead daughter is sitting with her and that the ghost is concerned that something bad will happen to her parents. Now, I don’t happen to believe that the dead persist and that certain individuals have the sensitivity to “see” them. However, I can suspend this judgement and be intrigued (or seduced, to use Ross Chamber’s terminology) by the story. Is Don’t Look Back  a ghost story? I don’t know, best B. The ghost of their daughter is never presented as anything but something the blind sister “sees,” and this sister’s reliability is repeatedly called into question. John believes she is trying to manipulate a grieving Laura. There is never a sense of the ghost haunting John and Laura in a frightening way. Frightening things do occur—and we’ll get to that—but they are not presented as spookiness. Let’s stop there and resume next time. Till then. #Don'tLookNow #DaphneDuMaurier #AlanBray

Last time, I threatened to write again about Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca , focusing on the Epilogue. An epilogue is defined as “ a section or speech at the end of a book or play that serves as a comment on or a conclusion to what has happened.” Let’s return to this definition later. This very curious chapter deserves some attention. In the edition I have been working with, apparently a 2001 reprint, the last chapter ends with the narrator and Maxim returning in haste to Manderley from London where Maxim has firmed up his alibi for his first wife’s murder—that it was indeed a suicide. “He drove faster, much faster…The road to Manderley lay ahead. There was no moon. The sky above our heads was inky black. But the sky on the horizon was not dark at all. It was shot with crimson, like a splash of blood. And the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea.” Then we have an actual letter from the editor that presents some biographical information on Daphne Du Maurier and an explanation of what follows: a letter from Ms. Du Maurier about her experience writing the novel, an essay by her about the real house that inspired Manderley, and “the original epilogue.” “The Rebecca Epilogue” begins: “If you travel south you will come upon us in the end, staying in one of those innumerable little hotels that cling like limpets to the Mediterranean shore.” There follows a return to the story’s present that was introduced in the beginning: “Last night I dreamt I saw Manderley again.” It is again twenty years after the events of the story’s past and the narrator and Maxim (now surprisingly called Henry) are living a self-imposed exile in Europe. They do not wish to return to England. Henry—or Maxim—is an old man, and the narrator is middle-aged. So, Rebecca  begins say in 1938, goes back for most of its length to 1918, and then returns to 1938 for the epilogue. Of course, this is a fictitious time; we could imagine that it is now 1938 when Ms. Du Maurier wrote the book. In any case, there is no mention made in the novel of real historical events like the two world wars. I’m sure other novels have this structure; I’m just not aware of them. The Odyssey , by contrast, begins in the middle of the story, goes back in time to catch the reader up to the middle, and then proceeds to the end.   Ooh! Odyssey  reference. It is different but there is a similarity between Rebecca and the Odyssey . If you include the epilogue as part of the text, we have a showing of what happens to the narrator and Henry/Maxim after the climax of the burning of Manderley. There is another great line at the end: “And before us, long as the skein of wool I wind, stretches the vista of our afternoon.” If we think of the end as occurring with the narrator and Maxim returning to Manderley and finding it in flames, we are forced to rethink the structure of the novel. Now, the climax is probably better seen as Dr. Baker’s revelation that Rebecca was dying, and everything after it—Maxim’s exoneration, the dream-like drive to Manderley, and the discovery of the fire—as showing what happens as a result. It is, indeed, a comment on a conclusion, referring back to our original definition of an epilogue. Of course, the text as presented shows the aftermath at the beginning, which creates considerable tension as the reader must figure out how the characters got to the situation they did. How and why. Perhaps there is some wisdom in presenting both endings and letting the reader decide which they like best. I want to say that the last two or so chapters contain some of the best prose writing I’ve ever read. Thank you, Ms. Du Maurier. Next time, let’s consider another book by Daphne Du Maurier, a long, short story written some thirty years after Rebecca — Don’t Look Now . Till then. #Rebecca #DaphneDuMaurier #AlanBray

A major feature of Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca  is the way that time is presented. What stands out is the sense of present events always occurring in the shadow of Rebecca’s death. The story’s focus on this is a clue, teaching the reader to interpret the present in terms of the past. To make sense of the story, that’s where one’s attention has to be. When the narrator describes an event, a scene, a conversation, one must always make meaning of it in terms of the past. Nothing is context-free. Everything Maxim says and does is colored by Rebecca’s death and his role in it. Everything the narrator does is colored by her being married to Maxim and not being in on the mystery (till later).  Till she knows the truth (as recounted by Maxim) she interprets his aloofness as coldness toward her and their marriage. Of course, here she interprets the present in terms of the present, thereby violating the rule of the story. And she’s wrong. After the revelation, the narrator writes: “We can never go back again, that much is certain. The past is still too close to us. The things we have tried to forget and put behind us would stir again, and that sense of fear, of furtive unrest, struggling at length to blind unreasoning panic…might in some manner unforeseen become a living companion as it had been before.” This is a bit enigmatic, no? Despite the story being all about coming to terms with the past, (or not), the narrator is saying that she and Maxim must avoid the past, forget it or else it might overwhelm them. We the readers must follow a different path; to read Rebecca is to enter the past. But along with these wise reflections, we must confront another level in the story of how time is handled—the level of writing, full of cues. Ah! The story’s present, which evidently is meant to have occurred some twenty years after the events leading to Maxim’s confession and the destruction of Manderley, are written in a distinct style—distinct from the remote past. The story’s present is reflective and slow, making considerable use of the depiction of the narrator’s internal thoughts. There is no dialogue: the dramatic scenes are told in narrative summary. This section begins with that marvelous first line that encapsulates so much: “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” The style of this whole section is right there, the repetition, the dreaminess, the attention to the past. There follows a description of the dream, told in gorgeous prose with considerable description. The narrator writes: “Then, like all dreamers, I was possessed of a sudden with supernatural powers and passed like a spirit through the barrier before me…The beeches were white, naked limbs leant close to one another, their branches intermingled in a strange embrace, making a vault above my head like the archway of a church.” And again: “The house was a sepulcher, our fear and suffering lay buried in the ruins. There would be no resurrection.” There is use made of the conditional tense: “The room would bear witness to our presence…And Jaspar, dear Jaspar…would be stretched upon the floor, his tail a-thump when he heard his master’s footsteps.” The sense is that if the dream were real, the narrator and Maxim would be able to return. But: “We can never go back again, that much is certain.” The narrator continues by describing: “Once, there was an article on wood pigeons.” This article, in a magazine, threatens, as she reads aloud to Maxim, to bring back too much of living at Manderley, and the narrator falters and stops. This entire section is written in a dream-like imperfect tense. Their life in exile occurs as an on-going process, one without firm markers of time. “The scrubby vineyards and crumbling stones became things of no account…”  And the last line of the curious epilogue (which we will comment on later): “And before us, long as the skein of wool I wind, stretches the vista of our afternoon.” In general, time has different meanings. There is time as a measurement, scientific time that is used as a sort of absolute yardstick. A day has twenty-four hours, an hour, sixty minutes. However, real humans experience the passage of time in different ways; time is subjective. “Durational time, or duration,  refers to the subjective experience of time as a continuous flow of lived experience, rather than a static, measurable quantity .  It emphasizes the qualitative, interconnected nature of conscious moments, where the past, present, and anticipated future are experienced as a unified whole, distinguishing it from  clock time  or  spatialized time , which treats time as a series of discrete, separate points.” Writing from the story’s present, the narrator says: “Of course we have our moments of depression, but there are other moments too, when time, unmeasured by the clock, runs on into eternity…” Later, the narrator comments on an incident experienced between she and Maxim: “It was ours, inviolate, a fraction of time suspended between two seconds.” This is not scientific time, best B. Once Rebecca’s boat is discovered with her corpse inside, the narration assumes a distinct form. Maxim confesses that he murdered Rebecca and scuttled the boat. Time—still quite subjective—speeds up, but its tense is strictly the simple past. “I’I don’t want you to bear this alone,’ I said. ‘I want to bear it with you. I’ve grown up, Maxim, in twenty-four hours. I’ll never be a child again.’ He put his arm around me and pulled me to him very close…I stood there with my face against his shoulder. ‘You’ve forgiven me, haven’t you?’ I said.” (he forgives her). Yes, there is considerable quoted speech, my friends, which—as we said last time—turns every utterance into an event. For over a hundred pages, this style continues, making a sort of one, long running scene as the narrator struggles to support Maxim’s alibi. This creates considerable tension, as the reader does not know the outcome, and there is a shocking development that ironically, saves Maxim. There is more to cover—a curious epilogue that returns us to the first time period and to its different style. Let’s cover it next time. Till then. #Rebecca #DaphneDuMaurier #AlanBray

One of the key features of fiction is the transformation of the protagonist. By this, I am not referring to a certain genre of fiction known as Transformation Fiction, where a character, often an animal, changes its form like a shapeshifter, which suggests fantasy and science fiction. No sir, I’m talking about a realistic transformation of personality, the kind of thing all humans go through. Here is what our friend AI says: Transformation in fiction is a fundamental narrative technique where characters, themes, or the story world undergo a significant, evolving change, often leading to a new equilibrium by the story's end. This can involve external or internal shifts, such as a character developing new beliefs, adopting different behaviors, or physically changing form. The process involves an inciting incident, a series of actions, and a compelling before-and-after contrast that shows the character's evolution.  It is commonplace to believe that people transform due to an outside event, perhaps meeting a charismatic person or experiencing some trauma. This may lead to an internal conflict which is resolved by change. Satisfying, relatable fiction makes use of this causal relationship, and Rebecca  is an outstanding example. The story begins with the unnamed protagonist who describes herself in this way: “…with straight bobbed hair and youthful, unpowdered face, dressed in an ill-fitting coat and skirt, and a jumper of my own creation, trailing Mrs. Van Hopper (her employer) like a shy, uneasy colt.” “Any measure of self-possession I had gained hitherto…was like a rag now, fluttering before the wind; it seemed to me that even the most elementary knowledge of behaviour was unknown to me now; I should not know my right hand from my left, whether to stand or sit, what spoons and forks to use at dinner.” In short, at the beginning of the story, the protagonist suffers from poor self-esteem. Her husband Maxim seems to abet this process of self-loathing. He is some twenty years older and treats the protagonist more like a daughter than a wife, kissing her on top of the head, and addressing her as “my sweet child.” He is often withdrawn and grumpy and the protagonist takes this personally, believing he is dissatisfied with her because she’s such a wretch. Of course, we learn that she is incorrect, although one might wonder why Maxim does marry her. She does become very stalwart and more womanly, perhaps old Maxim saw a potential in her that she ignored. The marriage is what Ai would call an inciting incident. A crisis develops. She believes he longs for his first wife and actively tries to emulate her. However, the protagonist becomes convinced that she will never measure up to the deceased Rebecca, and that Maxim must regret marrying again. At the fancy dress ball, the protagonist acts out this crisis by dressing as a forebear of Maxims, not realizing Rebecca had done the same. Maxim loses it, and the protagonist is plunged into despair. It should be noted that the evil Mrs. Danvers encourages all this drama, wishing to discredit and drive away the protagonist. The situation seems to be lurching toward disaster when Rebecca’s sailboat is discovered with her corpse inside a cabin. Maxim confesses to the protagonist that he shot Rebecca to death and tried to conceal the murder by scuttling the boat. He describes Rebecca as emotionally abusive, a woman who taunted him into a homicidal rage, and that he didn’t love her. Here is where we get the protagonist’s transformation. “I held his hand against my heart. I did not care about his shame. None of the things he had told me mattered to me at all. I clung to one thing only, and repeated it to myself, over and over again. Maxim did not love Rebecca. They had never known one moment’s happiness together.” And: “I was the self that I had always been, I was not changed. But something new had come upon me that had not been before. My heart, for all its anxiety and doubt, was light and free…I did not hate her (Rebecca) anymore. She could not hurt me.” ‘Kay. Some of you may raise your eyebrows at all this. Why does Maxim shoot his wife? That’s pretty extreme behavior. Well, there is some foreshadowing—mention of Maxim’s bad temper, but, hey, no book is perfect. The protagonist’s reaction to learning of the murder may also seem a bit surprising—if your spouse confessed to murdering your predecessor, would you conclude he didn’t love her and exult? This does get at the point of reliable/unreliable narrators, but Rebecca  never raises this question. If Maxim says the sky is blue, it is. My point here is to show how the story handles the process of transformation. As things develop, the protagonist describes sexual behavior with her husband (very discreet)—the likes of which you’ve never seen before! She transforms from being a sort of teenager to being a woman who can be sexual and can also support her partner through a rough time. Let’s stop here and pick up next time. Till then. #Rebecca #DaphneDuMaurier #AlanBray

It has been said by the wise that music resides between the notes. In fact, I actually quote this on the main page of this site. Today, let’s apply this idea to Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca , looking at two scenes and the way what isn’t written is as important as what is. This is a key skill of writing, the ability to tell a coherent story without  re-counting possibly tedious moment-to-moment experience. In Chapter Ten, the unnamed narrator and her husband Maxim go for a walk after the visit of Maxim’s sister, Beatrice, and her husband. Here's the first paragraph: “We watched the car disappear around the sweep of the drive and then Maxim took my arm and said, ‘Thank God, that’s that. Get a coat quickly and come out. Damn the rain, I want a walk. I can’t stand this sitting about.’ He looked white and strained, and I wondered why the entertaining of Beatrice and Giles, his own sister and brother-in-law, should have tired him so.” The first leap or gap in time is in that first sentence. They watch the car disappear and the next thing is that Maxim grabs her by the arm and speaks. What happened between watching the car and Maxim grabbing her? Nothing judged very valuable to the story, apparently. Was this transition immediate in the narrator’s experience? —As I watch the car disappear, Maxim grabs my arm and speaks. The author made a decision here: let’s go right to the action of arm-grabbing and speaking. This is not the place for more showing of what it was like watching the car disappear. Continuing, while Maxim is speaking, issuing commands like a tyrant, the narrator notes he looks white and strained, and, during his speech, she wonders why his sister’s visit would cause this. In other words, she attributes his pallor to the visit—an important connection to the story as it unfolds. Maxim is stressed seeing his sister and brother-in-law because they are reminders of what became of Rebecca. They knew Rebecca, and we can infer that, throughout the luncheon, Maxim worried that the subject of Rebecca and her fate might arise. Of course, the narrator doesn’t know that; we the readers can infer it. (Only, however, upon re-reading). So Maxim’s “tired” demeanor is attributed to the visit, instead of something more benign and less relevant to the story—say because the fish he ate was spoiled. How much time elapsed in this scene? Two minutes, three? Perhaps less, perhaps it all happened quickly. The car disappears, Maxim grabs her arm and speaks, and she notes his appearance and attributes it to a particular thing. Then, we have the narrator speaking: “’Wait while I run upstairs for my coat,’ I said.” How much time passed here? Maxim says he can’t stand sitting around—is there any pause before the narrator speaks? Does she stare at him in annoyance? We don’t know because the text doesn’t say. And then why do we get a new paragraph with quoted speech by the narrator? She’s remembering all this; it happened in the past. Why use quoted speech instead of narrative summary? (I said, I’d run upstairs for my coat). What it does is makes her utterance more of an event. It’s set off from the previous paragraph. In a sense, the action stops as we can imagine her pulling away from him, preparing to head up stairs. Perhaps she finds him annoying but doesn’t say. In any case it’s more dramatic. In effect, it shifts the narration from the protagonist to the hidden narrator of the story who quotes her. Ooh! But Maxim continues to direct his wife, telling her not to go upstairs, that there are raincoats in a nearby room. He sends Robert the servant to get one. “He was already standing in the drive and calling to Jaspar (the dog). Jaspar barks. ‘Shut up, you idiot,’ said Maxim; ‘what on earth is Robert doing?’” ‘Kay, There a number of time-leaps here, best B. Has the protagonist pulled away from her husband’s grasp when he directs her to stay? Or not? Where did Robert come from? How much time passes after Robert goes to get the coat and when Maxim frets about how much time he’s taking? Maxim has evidently moved from the house’s front entrance out into the driveway. His movements and his speech convey a sense of urgency and upset. The man wants to walk and doesn’t mind irritating his wife, Robert, and the dog in order to get going. It's notable that if this were a scene in a play, we would see the action in all these leaps and pauses. But we are in a book and must contend with the compression and contraction of time. We must imagine. Let’s consider a different scene. In Chapter Seven, Maxim takes the narrator to Manderley for the first time, and she meets the housekeeper, Mr. Danvers. After a somewhat spooky arrival, we have: “I can close my eyes now, and look back on it, and see myself as I must have been, standing on the threshold of the house, a slim, awkward figure in my stockinette dress, clutching in my sticky hands a pair of gauntlet gloves…Someone advanced from the sea of faces, someone tall and gaunt, dressed in deep black, whose prominent cheekbones and great hollow eyes gave her a skull’s face, parchment white, set on a skeleton’s frame. She came towards me, and I held out my hand, envying her for her dignity and her composure, but when she took my hand hers was limp and heavy, deathly cold, and it lay in mine like a lifeless thing. ‘This is Mrs. Danvers,’ said Maxim, and she began to speak, still leaving that dead hand in mine, her hollow eyes never leaving my eyes, so that my own wavered and would not meet hers, and as they did so her hand moved in mine, the life returned to it, and I was aware of a sensation of discomfort and of shame.” This passage differs from the first in that it is less action and more reaction, if you will. Whatever else is going on in the scene, the narrator is focused on Mrs. Danvers, who is her nemesis, and the scene is focused on the narrator—not Maxim or Robert. It is focused on her reaction to Mrs. Danvers.. There are all kinds of compressions and ignoring of what else is happening—Mrs. Danvers has all the narrator’s attention, and the scene is all about the narrator. She describes Mrs. Danvers in a poetic way, saying that she is like a death’s head. This certainly foreshadows later developments, but it also goes to characterization: the narrator is fearful and timid.   Oh dear, looking at the length of this post, I’m afraid I’ve overstayed my welcome. Let’s stop here and resume next time. But before I go, I do want to say, damn it all, that I wish the unnamed protagonist was named. I know I could refer to her as Mrs. De Winter, but couldn’t her first name be given? Edith or Brittany or Kendra? Daisy? Till then. #Rebecca #DaphneDuMaurier #AlanBray

Last time, I announced I’d be talking about Daphne Du Maurier’s 1938 novel Rebecca , and many people stopped me on the street to say “ Rebecca ? Seriously? No one reads Rebecca  anymore. Get a real job.” And I was left grinning too broadly and trying to explain. Somebody reads Rebecca ; it’s been in print continuously since its publication—an unusual distinction for a book from the 30s. Two film adaptations have been made: the famous 1940 version with Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine, and a 2020 remake with Lily James. The book is popularly regarded as a masterpiece of Gothic Romance, but I say, “Not so fast, Raisin Bran!” (Silver Linings Playbook reference). I think to call it that is an attempt to pigeon-hole a much more sophisticated work, perhaps because of when it was written and because of the gender of the author. Here's the famous first line: “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” (Please imagine this with an upper-class British accent). Here we have a complex statement about time; later I’ll get into how the book deals with time—a major issue. A narrator, speaking as “I,” states that she dreamed last night that she had gone somewhere again. Consider the difference if she said, “I dreamt that I went to Manderley.” In the text, the narrator is looking back from a present, which is a major theme of the book, and describing going somewhere again. A repetition, which is again a major theme. Here's the narrator on repetition: “I wanted to go back again, to recapture the moment that had gone, and then it came to me that if we did it would not be the same, even the sun would be changed in the sky, casting another shadow, , and the peasant girl would trudge past us along the road in a different way, not waving this time, perhaps not even seeing us. There was something chilling in the thought, something a little melancholy, and looking at the clock, I saw that five more minutes had gone by. Soon, we would have reached our time limit and must return to the hotel.” Darn it, the whole book is encapsulated in that passage—the melancholy, the trying to hold on to the past, and the realization that one cannot. And the book’s first line too—the past is a dream, to experience the past again is only a dream. Brilliant, and please not the shimmering prose. Rebecca is narrated by a first-person protagonist who remains unnamed throughout the book. She is not Rebecca, best B. She is the “I” in the famous first line. We are not provided much background information on her. The story’s present is a place from which this narrator looks back at the events of the story. She exists in the shadow of the past. Her existence in the present consists in trying to cheer her husband Maxim up when he gets mopish while the couple travels around Europe staying in swanky hotels. This sounds rather fun, but the narrator presents herself as unhappy and obsessed. There’s a sense that the narrator’s present is somehow less important and vivid than is, or was, the past. And in a similar way, the narrator feels less important than Rebecca. Of course, we are dealing with a fiction here. The narrator must focus on the past because that’s what the story is about. In fact, we can detect an interesting phenomenon. Ooh! The novel attempts to seduce the reader with romance and suspense, and, on a different level, the unnamed narrator is seduced, both by Maxim (although things remain very chaste in the book) and by Manderley itself. Perhaps, she is also seduced by Rebecca’s memory. Ah! The story is, briefly, that the narrator meets Maxim de Winter while working as a lady’s companion. Max is a wealthy widower who has had, it’s rumored, a tragic past. He pursues and marries the narrator, who learns that Max’s first wife, Rebecca, died under mysterious circumstances. Max owns a marvelous estate in Cornwall, England called Manderley and takes his bride there to live. As said, a theme is that the narrator, who is twenty years younger than Maxim, feels inadequate to be the lady of a grand estate. Although, also as said, we don’t know much about her, we are confronted with her self-doubt. In the story’s present, she says: “I am very different from the self who drove to Manderley for the first time, hopeful and eager, handicapped by a rather desperate gaucherie and filled with an intense desire to please.” The narrator is an outsider who is alienated from Maxim’s world, a world she desperately wants to join. An outsider desiring to be let in. The book seduces the reader into identifying with her, loving her, imagining oneself taking her part in the story’s dramatic scenes. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a mise en abyme with the story of Mrs. Van Hopper, who the narrator is the companion of when she meets Max. Mrs. Van Hopper is unpleasant and arrogant and constantly demeans the narrator, treating her like the naïve fool she believes herself to be. The narrator carries this dynamic to Manderley where she feels inferior to Rebecca and to the sinister housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers. After moving into Manderley, the narrator learns much more about her predecessor, Rebecca, and the story’s intensity deepens after Rebecca’s body is discovered. Eventually, the narrator transforms into someone older and wiser who must support her husband through a difficult time. ‘Kay.  Let’s stop here and resume next time. Till then. #Rebecca #DaphneDuMaurier #AlanBray

We’re back. At the end of Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo , the brothers, Peter and Ivan, reconcile, and Margaret plays a prominent role although she no longer has her own perspective as a character. It’s all Peter and Ivan. After the episode where Peter beats Ivan up, he is surprised by his two lady friends, Sylvia and Naomi, who confront him and propose they continue their triadic intimate relationship. Peter had been thinking he had to choose between the two, not considering what they wanted. Then, he is shown at his flat in Dublin when his mother texts him with the news that Ivan is playing an important chess match nearby and includes a link to the live reporting on the match. Peter taps this and studies Ivan’s image. He realizes the significance of the match and resolves to go to the nearby venue; he plans to remain outside so as not to interrupt Ivan’s concentration. Arriving, he sits in the lobby to wait, occasionally checking the live report on his phone. He thinks warmly of Ivan and with regret over their fight. He will remain in the lobby till the match ends and then briefly congratulate his brother. A woman wearing a raincoat emerges from inside the hall, and Peter decides it must be Ivan’s significant other, Margaret. Of course, it is, and Peter introduces himself and asks Margaret if she’d sit with him. What we have here in the climax of the story is that the two brothers, grieving over their father’s death, have had various difficulties and challenges. Peter has been self-medicating and has been confused over which woman in his life to commit to. Ivan has clung (literally) to a woman a decade older than he, who has her own troubles (an abusive ex-husband) but who actually seems like a pretty good person to cling to. But Ivan has also avoided his grief and wallowed in an under-employed existence, settling for mediocrity. And he and Peter have had several major arguments, culminating in a physical fight. However, they have constantly thought of each other in warm terms, and now, at the end, are ready to forgive and accept that they are family who have survived a major loss. Margaret is the catalyst. As they sit together, Peter is intensely aware of her, wondering how much she knows about he and Ivan. “Finally she says in a very low voice: I can imagine what you must think of me. As if scalded, in shock, he answers too loudly: Oh Jesus, don’t start. I was just going to say the same thing to you.” Then Peter says: Our dad should be here…I mean, I’m sorry our dad would have been here. To congratulate Ivan. You know, he was very proud of him. We all are, very proud…I’m sorry, she says quietly. I know it must be very difficult.” And Peter replies: “Thank you. It is hard. I miss him.” Peter is able to verbalize his grief with Margaret, a stranger he feels close to, an intermediary with Ivan. It represents a large step toward reconciliation with his brother. Notably he has not yet been able to talk about his feelings with the two women he loves, Naomi and Sylvia. The match is over; Ivan has triumphed. Margaret gets up to go back inside to him. She addresses Peter: “Will you wait? I’m going to go in and tell Ivan you’re here. I feel he will want to see you.” Peter remains. “And was it real he wonders. She, the raincoat, flower-like her face, the live stream, captured pawn…Half in love with her himself by the time she was walking away…Sitting there beside him quietly: she seemed to embody the inexpressible depth of misunderstanding: of her, his brother, interpersonal relations, life itself.” And Ivan emerges from the auditorium. “Peter looks back at him, his brother, the watchful child, so young still, all of life ahead of him, and his eyes are filling with tears, hot, the corridor dimming and growing blurry…Ivan comes towards him, saying: Hey…And in desperation, as if not to be seen, to hide his face, he puts his arms around Ivan, embraces him…I’m sorry, alright? …I’m sorry as well, he (Ivan) says. Are you okay?” At this point, Peter and Ivan have a long conversation about their father’s death, the women in their lives, chess, and their relationship, tying together the loose ends the story has developed. The last paragraph is long. In it, Peter’s stream of consciousness is on full display, as he leaves the event and the book. He imagines the whole family plus the three women he and Ivan are involved with, having Christmas dinner together. ”Nothing is fixed. She, the other, Ivan, the girlfriend, Christine (his mother), their father, from beyond the grave. It doesn’t always work but I do my best. See what happens. Go on in any case living.” There’s a sense here of Peter feeling responsible for them all, caring for them. And so Intermezzo  ends, connecting nicely with the beginning in which Peter is shown musing affectionately about Ivan but also very blocked about expressing himself. Thank you, Sally Rooney. Next week, a new book, Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca . Till then. #Intermezzo #SallyRooney #AlanBray