Britain's Patricia Highsmith ?
"For neither life nor nature cares if justice is ever done or not." Patricia Highsmith
That’s what it says on Amazon about Celia Fremlin.
I had read one of her novels years ago, so I raised an eyebrow, but I have to say the claim is not that far off the mark.
I was looking for crime novels written in the 70s - just to soak myself in the era I’m writing about. It’s like writing an actual historical novel, and I keep having to check things out on Google’s brilliant Ngram viewer to see if particular words and phrases were in use at the time… In theory I ought to be able to remember, of course. But the way language shifts and changes, it’s impossible.
When did people start talking about party animals? It’s later than you’d think…
I do feel old.
Anyway, Celia Fremlin’s novel, The Spider-Orchid was published in 1977, so it was the perfect choice.
I bought it, according to Amazon, on the 2nd September, and that’s today, just, and here I am writing about it. I also finished and submitted an assignment, argued with a few people on Facebook, cooked a meal, and went for a walk, so it’s not that I didn’t do anything else.
So did it remind me of Highsmith’s work?
Actually, it did. Not Ripley - at least this one didn’t. I guess I’ll be reading the rest of them at some point.
It reminded me more of The Cry of the Owl. It’s a very slow build, and with a tight focus on domestic life, and yet right from the start there’s an underlying uneasiness, even menace, and the tension just builds and builds. I guess these days, it would be classified as domestic suspense, or even domestic noir.
Where Fremlin really excels, in my view, is her deep insight into human nature. As much into everyday darkness, as the psychopathic kind.
The teenage girl in the story, Amelia, is really very believable too - a very sensitively drawn character.
I’m not going to spoiler in case anyone wants to read this one - if you do, let me know what you think.
This short excerpt doesn’t give much story away, as this isn’t a central character.
”At one time, it had struck him as odd, not to say paradoxical, that someone as untrustworthy as Dorothy should have so many people queueing up to confide in her their darkest secrets; and it had taken him some months to realise that actually there was no incongruity in this at all. A person who can tell lies easily and without guilt is actually a far more trustworthy confidante than an honest person, who is hounded by the truth. Confronted by a straight yes-or-no question from some third party, the honourable truth-teller will have no option but to answer truthfully - i.e. to give away your confidences. Whereas an accomplished liar, once she is on your side, can be relied on to keep your secret through thick and thin; she will tell, competently and without batting an eyelid, all the lies that are necessary to keep you out of trouble. To be liar is not the same thing as to be untrustworthy; quite the contrary.”
I am tempted to add #notallliars…
And I can’t help but read this passage in the context of the biographical note at the beginning of the book, from Chris Simmons
"One noteworthy thing I gathered from Geraldine was that her mother (highly academic as a young woman, even before she found her vocation in fiction) was invariably to be found immersed in her latest writing project – to the exclusion, at times, of her family. Geraldine also told me that her mother was notorious within the home for embroidering the truth, and was quite often caught out by her family for telling ‘little white lies’. Geraldine, however, read no badness into this trait: she simply put it down to her mother’s creative streak, her ability to fabricate new identities for people – even for herself."
Is there an element of self justification there, perhaps? Or is it more than a good novelist can look at their own flaws with unflinching honesty.
Maybe that’s one of the characteristics she has in common with Highsmith.
As someone who grew up with a compulsive liar, and has known one or two (it really offends me when they can’t even bother to lie intelligently, I confess) - I do have something of a fetish for truthfulness.
But loyalty and being trustworthy is also important, and in many ways trumps even truthfulness. Life cannot be lived by simple rules, however much we might wish that it could.
Perhaps that’s why we have novels?
It turns out I couldn’t resist temptation, and I’ve started reading another Fremlin - this one called Uncle Paul. And I don’t have any research justification either, as it was published back in 1959.
I will get around to writing more about the other thrillers I’ve read recently. although the lupus fairy is still being a bitch, and I’m coming up to the last stretch on this writing course which seems to keep getting harder and harder!
Ann
If you’d like to have a play with the Ngram Viewer, it is quite fascinating
Here’s the graph for “party animal” -
Party animal
And here’s a pointless comparison of the prevalence of two phrases
Trousers and fur coats