Monday, January 14, 2019

the last book I read

They Came Like Swallows by William Maxwell.

We're somewhere in Illinois in early 1918. We're also, in the first section of the book, in the head of eight-year-old Bunny Morison. Bunny is a sensitive boy who would much rather daydream on the sofa than be forced to go out and endure "fresh air" and similar hearty bracing horrors outside. Just as Bunny is mildly alarmed by the prospect of, say, a game of football, he is also mildly alarmed by his elder brother Robert, a more shouty and outgoing type despite only having one leg, legacy of an argument with a horse-drawn cart (you see? outdoor stuff is dangerous), and also by his father, a stereotypical early-20th-century American Dad, not much given to displays of tenderness or affection beyond an occasional bluff chuck on the shoulder.

The only people Bunny is not alarmed by are his mother Elizabeth, the centre of Bunny's universe, and her sister Irene, a slightly more volatile character but available for plenty of auntly duties after the disastrous break-up of her marriage. Irene has been around a lot lately, as it happens, and she and Elizabeth have been having some secretive whispered conversations out of Bunny's earshot, with lots of charged glances in his direction. Elizabeth has also engaged him in some odd conversations about how much fun it would be to have a little brother or sister. What's going on? Before Bunny can get to the bottom of these exotic and mysterious adult goings-on he is struck down with an acute fever which turns out to be Spanish influenza, and is confined to bed.

With Bunny quarantined by the doctor, the second section of the book moves the focus to Robert, a big surly intimidating lummox through Bunny's eyes but actually a perfectly normal thirteen-year-old boy, albeit one occasionally vexed by his little brother's propensity for playing with his soldiers and losing or breaking them. Robert's view of the world has him a little more on the cusp between childhood and adulthood, and therefore better able to understand things like Irene's no-good husband Boyd and Irene's indecision about whether to go back to him or not (Robert says not).

Following Bunny's illness (and subsequent recovery) the boys' mother and father announce that they are going to take themselves off to the big city for the birth, leaving the boys in the charge of their aunt Clara. Presumably the rationale for the trip is either that they are expecting complications with the birth, or that they don't want a new-born baby exposed to any lingering flu germs, but it's never completely clear. In any case, off they go and no sooner have the boys submitted themselves to aunt Clara's regime, which mainly involves the ruthless suppression of anything which might involve fun, Robert comes down with the lurgy and has to be quarantined. Not only that, but the parents' flight from the family germs proves to be a futile one, as both of them come down with the flu. The baby is born, and father James recovers, but Elizabeth dies.

Our viewpoint shifts again to James, Bunny and Robert's father, an aloof and slightly terrifying figure up to now, much given to reading out newspaper articles at the breakfast table and getting tetchy if interrupted by anyone, but revealed here to be just a regular guy, trying to do the best by his family but adrift in his own private grief at the death of his wife and facing the prospect of having to bring up two sons and a newborn baby on his own.

In comparison with the two previous books on this list this one provides a good contrast and an opportunity to ask: what is "literary" fiction? You can point to some obvious differences with, say, Orphans Of The Sky: this is less plot-driven, although there is a fairly major plot point involving the death of a central character, and it's more concerned with the inner life of the various central characters: more of the narrative happens in people's heads than anywhere else. Obviously the lines are blurred and near the lines the distinctions are largely arbitrary, as we've seen before with previous entries on this list. In this particular case the majority of the narrative takes place through the eyes and ears of the two children, with Bunny in particular finding certain aspects of adult conversation and behaviour impossible to fathom. In this way it's very like parts of The Go-Between, which also used children and adults' mutual incomprehension as a key plot point.

They Came Like Swallows was published in 1937 (though not in the UK until 2002) and was the second of only six novels Maxwell wrote in his long career. Like many early works it's largely autobiographical - Maxwell's mother did indeed die in the 1918 flu epidemic.

It's shorter than its 174 pages would suggest (my Vintage edition has quite large print), very easy to read and sharply perceptive about how families work and how mysterious other people are, even when they are members of your own family. You've got to keep your book-bargain-hunting wits about you at all times: my copy was acquired for 50p from the honesty box at the village hall in Acton Trussell while we were there for a children's birthday party a couple of years ago.

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