{"id":5114,"date":"2015-12-15T08:35:01","date_gmt":"2015-12-15T13:35:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=5114"},"modified":"2015-12-15T08:35:01","modified_gmt":"2015-12-15T13:35:01","slug":"the-man-in-the-wooden-hat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=5114","title":{"rendered":"****The Man in the Wooden Hat"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"tulips\"

(photo: Denise Krebs, creative commons license)<\/p><\/div>\n

By Jane Gardam — Getting to know intimately one half of a married couple can ill prepare you for meeting the other half, who may fail to live up to their superior advance billing, or, as likely, be so surprisingly normal\u2014even pleasant\u2014that you mistrust your own memory of past marital revelations. Award-winning British writer Jane Gardam\u2019s books Old Filth<\/em> (from the husband\u2019s point of view) and The Man in the Wooden Hat<\/em> (the wife\u2019s) apply these different lenses to the same 50-year marriage.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve read only this one, published in 2009, but went back to reviews of Old Filth<\/em> (2006) and found that many of the animating events in the couple\u2019s life are described in both novels. While the bones of the relationship remain the same, \u201cLittle here is as it seemed in \u2018Old Filth,\u2019 and both books are the richer for it,\u201d said Louisa Thomas<\/a> in her New York Times<\/em> review.<\/p>\n

The sobriquet Old Filth\u2014created by and applied to talented barrister Edward Feathers, later Sir Edward\u2014is an acronym for \u201cFailed In London, Try HongKong.\u201d Try there, he does, and succeeds. Also in Hong Kong, his future wife Elisabeth Macintosh debates whether to marry him, decides to, and carries through at rather a slap-dash pace in ancient borrowed finery. Eddie\u2019s preoccupation is that Betty should never <\/em>leave him, and she promises she won\u2019t. This is a promise Betty learns will be enforced by Edward\u2019s best friend, the card-playing Chinese dwarf Albert Ross (\u201cAlbatross\u201d): \u201cIf you leave him, I will break you,\u201d Ross threatens, and she is sure he means it.<\/p>\n

The wedding ceremony follows by a few hours a one-night affair, in which Betty is deflowered by Eddie\u2019s nemesis, rival barrister Terry Veneering, a secret to which The Albatross, unfortunately, is privy. Trust Charles Dickens to recognize an allusive name when he hears one; like the nouveau riche social climbers in Our Mutual Friend<\/em>, this Veneering has a charming surface. His attraction for Betty lasts for decades, and he weaves in and out of the story of the couple\u2019s marriage.<\/p>\n

While a story of interpersonal relationships, the book takes place after World War II, and is necessarily revelatory about broad social upheavals in Britain. Class and privilege are never the same after the unraveling of Empire, the economic upheavals of the decade before the war, and the war itself. The world into which the three protagonists were born simply disappeared beneath their feet and dissolved out of their arms.<\/p>\n

Gardam’s novel follows the couple from youth to old age, with Betty\u2019s death planting tulips in their rural garden. Mostly, though, it focuses on their early relationship, including the tragedy of a miscarriage that leaves Betty unable to have her heart\u2019s desire, children. The closest relationship she maintains with a young person is with Veneering\u2019s precocious son, Harry, whom she meets when he is nine years old and \u201ccrunching a lobster\u201d under the table at a banquet. She has numerous lively and colorful friends in Hong Kong and later in London, whose appearance in the narrative is always welcome.<\/p>\n

As for the everyday relationship between the spouses, the reader is shown the benefits of accommodation rather than the head-to-head battles that often characterize “relationship books.”<\/p>\n

Well plotted and carefully written, full of good humor and getting on with it. A third book in the Old Filth trilogy, Last Friends<\/em>, was published in 2013. It\u2019s a view of the Feathers\u2019s marriage from Veneering\u2019s point of view. Now that<\/em> should be interesting!
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