‘I like exploring unrecognised motives,’ I told him; ‘and I am sure the love of power takes queer twists in women – it is so repressed. The modern, complex mind scarcely knows its own motives; there are wheels within wheels – and look at the poisonous jungle psychologists are opening up!’ [loc. 3894]
Another Kindle Unlimited read: this is a ghost story, published in 1942 and set in the late 1930s. There is mention of 'the war in Spain' but nothing of Germany, save 'the backward currents that were setting in all over Europe'. To a modern reader, this felt uneasy, as though the story had no underpinning, no foundation.
Siblings Roderick and Pamela buy their 'dream house', on a Devon clifftop, and busily make it their own. Roderick is a critic and playwright: Pamela ... it's not quite clear if Pamela does much apart from choosing curtains.
The folk in the nearby village mutter darkly of hauntings, suspicious deaths, a menacing atmosphere. Roderick and Pamela are having none of it, being rational modern people, but their cook / servant Lizzie -- whom they both regard as 'superstitious' -- claims there is something odd. And Stella, the granddaughter of the house's previous owner, is drawn to the house, and to Roderick and Pamela: she begins to believe that it is haunted by the mother she scarcely remembers, who died there.
I spent quite a bit of this novel feeling deeply frustrated by the characters' stupidity: it seemed evident to me that Roderick, in particular -- the first-person narrator -- was completely wrong about the haunting. He and Pamela become obsessed with the possibility of a ghostly presence, and the stories they create make it difficult for them to keep open minds. Perhaps the play that Roderick finds himself driven to write would reveal some answers -- but I don't think the 'meat' of that play is ever divulged, though it focusses on a woman who abuses and is destroyed by power.
Quite atmospheric in places: but the single-mindedness of the characters, and their arrogant certainty that their version of events is the only possible truth, annoyed me throughout. With hindsight, I'm also uncomfortable about one aspect of the plot, which opposes a 'hot-blooded' Spanish woman with 'warm, impetuous Southern blood' and a cool Englishwoman with a reputation for magnanimity: it feels, seen through Roderick's perceptions, biased and xenophobic.
No comments:
Post a Comment