I have now finished a book that will be on my “favorites for the year” list and to my surprise it is a book of short stories. I will begin with a quote from Kim’s Reading Matters that convinced me to read it. I found what she said to be exactly what I loved about it:
It’s a deliciously entertaining book and reading one or two 10-page stories in bed every night proved a soothing balm before lights out. I simply let her gentle, old-fashioned prose wash over me. There’s something deeply comforting about reading the work of an accomplished writer, expert at their craft — it makes you feel everything is right with the world, even when you know it’s not.
Most of the stories feature the British upperclass at their quirky, clever best. Jane Gardem is best known for her trilogy featuring the judge who personified the acronym FILTH (Failed in London, Try Hong Kong) and that judge turns up in the first story. It explained that not only did he try Hong Kong, “nobody had ever seen him other than immaculate: scrubbed, polished, barbered, manicured, brushed, combed, perfect. At any moment in his life Feathers could have been presented to the Queen.” He was attending a gathering in his neighborhood on Privilege Road; the reason for name of the road was perhaps because of a famous house of the Privé-Lièges who had arrived with the Conqueror or perhaps because some village privies had been constructed there.
Here’s an example of the irresistible prose:
Lizzie Metcalfe leaned into the wind and took great plodding steps forwards and upwards to her line of washing blowing above the farmhouse on the fell. “My, it’s a tempest,” she said, opening her arms to the sheets that flung themselves against her, licked at her, enveloped her like living things. She batted them down, felt for the pegs along the line, somehow released them and gathered the whole great blossom of washing against her wide chest.
It’s the storytelling skill of the author that makes those very short stories vivid. And often she ends them with a twist that made me catch my breath. While she can quite cleverly puncture the pretentions, the author also shows us moments of kindness and moving actions.
Jane Gardem, The People on Privilege Hill and Other Stories, Europa Editions, 2009, 216 pages (I read the Kindle version). Available at the public Library.