Shirley Kossick
THERE has been a bumper crop of women’s writing this year, both in fiction and biography. Pride of place must go to Pat Barker, whose novel The Ghost Road (Viking) swept in to win the Booker Prize ahead of Salman Rushdie’s favoured The Moor’s Last Sigh
The final volume in Barker’s trilogy about World War I, The Ghost Road can certainly stand alone, but it gains immensely by being read in tandem with the two earlier volumes, Regeneration and The Eye in the Door. All three books deal with the horrors of trench warfare in general and the treatment of shell- shocked soldiers in particular.
Throughout the trilogy fictional characters rub shoulders with real ones. Most important of the latter is William Rivers, the neurologist who tries to bring some semblance of serenity back into the lives of his severely shell-shocked patients. Among them is Siegfried Sassoon, whose treatment is central to Regeneration, while the fictional Billy Prior dominates the other two books.
Barker effects a seamless union of fact and fiction, bringing the atmosphere of the trenches — and their aftermath — amazingly close. The novels make for compulsive, though not easy, reading.
In less harrowing vein, Isabel Colegate’s new novel, Winter Journey (Hamish Hamilton), explores the concept of Englishness through the memories and attitudes of a brother and sister, both in late middle age. This is a gentle, thoughtful book, beautifully structured around reflections on family, class, the English countryside and sociopolitical changes in 20th-century
A more complex examination of family relationships — this time between mothers and daughters — informs Michle Roberts’ Flesh & Blood (Virago). As opposed to the realism of her earlier book, Daughters of the House, this latest venture combines fabulous and mythic elements with sensual description and frank eroticism.
The book moves through a series of interwoven stories, opening with a matricide and continuing through modern London and revolutionary France. One is constantly enthralled by Roberts’ voluptuous language and rich imagination.
Seen in juxtaposition, these three writers — – Barker, Colegate and Roberts — demonstrate the infinite variety of which the novel form is capable. In their widely differing but equally forceful ways, they give the lie to the contention, fashionable among certain critics, that the English novel is
The biography I most enjoyed this year is Mrs Jordan’s Profession: The Story of a Great Actress and a Future King (Viking). With the historical acumen and psychological insight one has come to expect of Claire Tomalin, she casts a penetrating light on the liaison of Dora Jordan and the Duke of Clarence, later William IV.
Despite the 10 children she bore him during their 20 years together, Jordan managed to sustain a vigorous stage career, often acting right up to the final days of her pregnancies. Tomalin succeeds in conveying the indomitable spirit of this woman, who, even when deserted by her lover, never gave way to self-pity or despair.
Several interesting literary biographies appeared in 1995, including Fanny Trollope: A Remarkable Life by Tessa Ransom (Alan Sutton) and A Fiction to Herself: Mrs Oliphant, a Literary Life by Elizabeth Jay (Oxford). Both books are well written and pay tribute to two prolific writers now largely forgotten.
In their day, Mrs Trollope (1780-1863) and Mrs Oliphant (1828-1897) were immensely popular and produced over 40 and 100 books respectively. Each had a large family to support and writing was one of the few careers available to respectable women.
To end on a more romantic note, I can highly recommend Dared and Done: The Marriage of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning by Julia Markus (Bloomsbury). The title speaks for itself and, although the main elements of the story are well known, Markus breathes new life into it.
An intriguing aspect of the affair was Barrett’s transformation from bed-ridden invalid into a healthy woman only months after the start of her correspondence with Browning. The couple travelled a great deal and she survived four miscarriages before the birth of their son, Pen. Such is the power of love!