Florence & Giles, John Harding
Orphaned children live in creepy house, abandoned by their uncle and left to the mercy of the housekeeper and couple of servants. 12 year old Florence is devoted to reading and to her little brother, Giles, and is the narrator of the novel. She explains that her reading of Shakespeare has shown her how he made up words when he needed them, and so she does the same. Sometimes this works: the house is ‘uncomfortabled and shabbied by prudence’, Florence describes ‘the fadery of twilight’ and ‘the burnery of summer’.
On the other hand, when you’ve got ‘unbroomed, unfootfalled and unfingerprinted’ within three lines of each other, I found it a bit like chalk squeaking on a blackboard (but, to be fair, Maugham is one of my favourite authors and he never uses 10 words if none will do). It all goes to establish Florence’s voice, and in fact her eloquence makes the events that follow all the more disturbing, by setting up a dissonance between her actual age and the maturity of her expression.
When Giles proves unable to withstand the rigours of boarding school, the children are afflicted by governesses. The first drowns in the lake, and Florence enters into a battle with the second, who she suspects intends to abduct Giles. But Florence has already set herself up as an unreliable narrator who can lose track of what she’s made up and what is real. Consciously or not, she bends facts to fit her interpretation of the situation, and plans her actions in accordance with her perception of the level of threat.
I appreciated all this, but there were a few places where I wished the signalling wasn’t so obvious because I felt it undercut the tension that Harding was trying to build. Thinking back, I’d have been more accepting of this if the novel had been billed as YA. I liked it, but I was untensioned by the unsubtlety.
Lol! Love your last line there. I have this book to read and am a bit wary of the made-up words – not a device that generally appeals to me. But this is a rewrite of The Turn of the Screw, isn’t it? And I generally quite like those (she says grandly, having only ever read one, although it WAS very good). Oh well, as Halloween is nearly upon us, it may have to wait until next year to be read anyway.
Litlove – I think it is a rewrite, and that’s always tricky. Yeah, made up words are fine if there isn’t a word, can be annoying when there is. I’d rather have something go the whole hog, like Riddley Walker, which at least has the excuse of a post-apocalyptic, largely illiterate society!