1: William - an Englishman (1919)
Persephone no. 1 is a book about a man! And a war! I'll forgive them though because once William: an Englishman got going I really liked it. Cicely Hamilton was evidently a ballsy-ass suffragette and actress who spend World War 1 performing concerts at the front. She had up close and personal experience with one of our shittiest wars and she was pissed about it.
It's a book with a massive tonal shift in it. The first third is an odd sort of satire about the titular William and his new wife Griselda and their involvement in the social justice causes of the day. There's a gentle contempt for their blind dullness which I found very interesting - Hamilton was a suffragette as well, so she clearly doesn't disagree with their goals but rather their... what, impracticality? Follower natures? Lack of curiosity? Uncritical enthusiasm? (Maybe not impracticality - I think it is very sensible, if you're planning on getting dragged out of a gallery by the cops, to pin your skirt to your shirt. I'll keep that one in my tool box.)
So these not very bright people who don't know a lot about anything they didn't read in a Pankhurst pamphlet wander smack into the beginning of the war in Belgium on their honeymoon and there's that change in tone - the war is authentically awful. The confusion and random horror are vividly drawn and profoundly effective - this is a really good "civilians in war" book. Honestly I was ambivalent about it until this point, but the war started I couldn't put the book down. Obviously Hamilton is writing what she knows here about the particular nightmare quality of being in, but not a part of, a war zone.
I'll avoid outright spoilers in these posts but I think it's okay to say that there's a point where William develops a bellicose sort of patriotism, which I found interesting because I wasn't sure if Hamilton was equating it with his previous ardor for socialism and votes for women or not. Clearly it's genuine, but then so was his work before the war. And clearly it's an urge to do something in response to the horrors he experiences in Belgium, and it's an opening of his eyes to the emptiness of his previous life, but is it really different? (On the other hand, somebody's gotta stop the Hun.) I couldn't really get a read on the author's take on it, although my natural suspicion of patriotism that makes boys go to war was bred in a very different time. Then again, we're talking about WWI, not WWII, so.... I dunno. I'm sure it felt like a righteous war at the time, but now it feels like a sick and revolting waste. In general the book has a lot to say about groups and people who find it easy to allow a group to dictate their thoughts and actions.
I love it when a book has a character come out with big "THESIS STATEMENT" trumpets playing over their speeches - in this one it's a guy who just passes through a scene:
I'm going to try here to adjust my normal scale, because almost every book I read I give 4 stars in Goodreads because it's not like I read books I think will suck. If I do that here everything's going to be a 5. So I'll bestow a 4/5 on this one because I really wasn't sure if I liked the first third or so, but the rest of it was excellent.
It's a book with a massive tonal shift in it. The first third is an odd sort of satire about the titular William and his new wife Griselda and their involvement in the social justice causes of the day. There's a gentle contempt for their blind dullness which I found very interesting - Hamilton was a suffragette as well, so she clearly doesn't disagree with their goals but rather their... what, impracticality? Follower natures? Lack of curiosity? Uncritical enthusiasm? (Maybe not impracticality - I think it is very sensible, if you're planning on getting dragged out of a gallery by the cops, to pin your skirt to your shirt. I'll keep that one in my tool box.)
So these not very bright people who don't know a lot about anything they didn't read in a Pankhurst pamphlet wander smack into the beginning of the war in Belgium on their honeymoon and there's that change in tone - the war is authentically awful. The confusion and random horror are vividly drawn and profoundly effective - this is a really good "civilians in war" book. Honestly I was ambivalent about it until this point, but the war started I couldn't put the book down. Obviously Hamilton is writing what she knows here about the particular nightmare quality of being in, but not a part of, a war zone.
I'll avoid outright spoilers in these posts but I think it's okay to say that there's a point where William develops a bellicose sort of patriotism, which I found interesting because I wasn't sure if Hamilton was equating it with his previous ardor for socialism and votes for women or not. Clearly it's genuine, but then so was his work before the war. And clearly it's an urge to do something in response to the horrors he experiences in Belgium, and it's an opening of his eyes to the emptiness of his previous life, but is it really different? (On the other hand, somebody's gotta stop the Hun.) I couldn't really get a read on the author's take on it, although my natural suspicion of patriotism that makes boys go to war was bred in a very different time. Then again, we're talking about WWI, not WWII, so.... I dunno. I'm sure it felt like a righteous war at the time, but now it feels like a sick and revolting waste. In general the book has a lot to say about groups and people who find it easy to allow a group to dictate their thoughts and actions.
I love it when a book has a character come out with big "THESIS STATEMENT" trumpets playing over their speeches - in this one it's a guy who just passes through a scene:
“When you live in a crowd,” he said at last, “you can always make excuses for yourself. Most likely you don’t need to. If you’re a fool or a coward you herd with a lot of fools and cowards, and you all back each other up. So you never come face to face with yourself.”
I'm going to try here to adjust my normal scale, because almost every book I read I give 4 stars in Goodreads because it's not like I read books I think will suck. If I do that here everything's going to be a 5. So I'll bestow a 4/5 on this one because I really wasn't sure if I liked the first third or so, but the rest of it was excellent.
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