And I decided to use the past-tense because I wanted to tell it as an event of the past (as befitting a period piece, in my mind) though of course it is also ok to use the present tense, as is used in most feature articles nowadays (it's the fad and suppose to make the event more vivid and alive). So the review in The Star was rewritten into a present tense. Not by me though :)
Oh, and mine is the uncut version. So erm, if you want a simplified one, read the one in The Star. (:
Here it is if you want it
http://www.thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2006/6/9/lifebookshelf/14315989&sec=lifebookshelf
I daresay I'll love to read more of Jane Harris's work (:
More book reviews coming up as and when I have time to read. Now am reading a very intriguing non-fiction book that I will also review.
If anyone has got more review suggestions, I am all for it. The quirkier the better.
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The Observations
By Jane Harris
Faber and Faber, Ltd (2006), 415 pages.
Review by Clarissa Lee
Set in the lowlands of Scotland sometime in the late nineteenth century, this period novel features an extraordinary story about people who would have been unmemorable under normal circumstances. But that is just it. The circumstances weren’t very normal, or at least, the narrator, a witty and highly intelligent servant girl who only learnt how to read and write in her early teens, had painted a very vivid picture of high farce and dark drama in humanity through the retelling of her short but bittersweet past.
Bessy (or Daisy, her actual given name) Buckley, wrote the story from the vantage view of more mature years (her late teens), begun her tale with her running away from Glasgow after having been evicted from the home of her sugar daddy by the sugar daddy’s estranged brother upon the former’s death. In making her way to Edinburgh, she chanced upon an estate by the name of Castle Haivers, which initially set her imagination afire, as well as the mistress of the land, whom she first saw chasing after a pig. The estate was where most of the action unfolded. Bessy, despite her tender years (she was around fourteen to sixteen) was not so innocent because her mother, Bridget, had forced her into the flesh trade when the latter was perhaps only around nine years of age. Yes, you might be shock to find that out as you read on, for, among the depraved acts her mother forced her to commit, was lesbian (incestuous) sex with the former just to meet the demands of paying customers who were oblivious of their relations. Though Bessy was very ashamed of her past, her strength of character and optimistic approach to whatever befell marked her as a survivor of the highest order. Despite her self-deriding comments that she was unexposed to the company of society, she had actually seen more of society than was good for her, and was robbed of innocence at a fairly young age.
Illiterate until she became the live-in lover (or as she puts it, “hearts companion”) of a wealthy but elderly Jewish businessman, her idyllic world was soon shattered and she had to look for a “position” elsewhere. A highly imaginative girl who was very fond of reading, she had a real head for words, being able to make up her own songs without much effort, only to find one of her efforts stolen by a tenant farmer with literary pretensions. Bessy, or Harris, had a real ear for idioms and turn of phrase, effortlessly interspersing in the colourful local dialects of the servants and working class with the more refined speech of the gentry. Bessy’s mistress, Arabella Reid, was writing a book about the servant class, and had thus undertook rather strange experiments with each of her maids that were simultaneously hilarious and disturbing to the persons ignorant of her purpose. Each of her maids had been instructed to keep a daily journal for her perusal and Bessy was no exception. Perhaps it was here that Bessy developed her first interest in writing. Despite her young age, Bessy had the uncanny knack of telling chaff from wheat in her dealings with the people around her.
Being a highly curious girl, as well as highly interested in her mistress’s doings, Bessy had stumbled upon the notes while her mistress was out for the night with the husband. After finding out the reasons behind Arabella’s strange behaviour, Bessy was crestfallen to find that the former had dug out a past that the latter preferred to conceal. Bessy also became enraged when she found that Arabella had thought her rather clingy and had thus noted down her (Arabella’s) intention of avoiding the former as much as she could. In discovering her mistress’s obsession with Nora, a maid who had died under mysterious circumstances, she found a way to exact her revenge, but with terrible consequences that changed both their lives forever.
I do not wish to spoil the thrill of the denouement in this exciting story by prematurely giving away the plot. Needless to say, the most intriguing character in the novel is the narrator herself. The care that had gone into the shaping of the narrator’s voice (with carefully planted grammatical, spelling and punctuation mistakes, and regular reversions to the colloquial tongue) and character made the story come to live for the reader, while simultaneously ingratiating him or her into the world of the characters without much authorial interference. Because Harris has placed Bessy as the voice of authority, it is therefore up to the reader to choose whether to believe her story or not.
In conclusion, I daresay that this novel is as much a critique on the kind of society that victimised women, one that want control of their sexuality yet cast them aside like used rags once their existence is considered too scandalous for patriarchal authority. It is unfortunate that women also became abusers of other women (even of their own kin), as shown in the example of Bessy and her Bridget. One cannot help thinking, were it not for her unfortunate circumstances that Bessy would had achieved much in life, had she been given the same access to education as a gentleman. Her prodigious memory, her acute perceptions, her ability to pick up instructions quickly, and her gift for composition, would had made her a renowned woman of letters.
It is also a story about madness caused by a helpless existence that had almost the flavour of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper. But more importantly, it is a story about courage, love and loyalty that transcends the limitations of society and time.
(945 words)
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