Loving by Henry Green (Anchor, 1953)

 

I read this book many years ago, in college, I believe, and remember I didn't quite know what to make of it.  Well, reading it again 40 years later hasn't changed my response -- I still find it somewhat maddening and inscrutable.

Loving is set in a castle in Ireland during WWII, and mostly concerns the servants, all English (except for Paddy, the almost sub-human "lamp" man) who are employed by Mrs. Tarrant, of Anglo-Irish gentry.  She lives in the castle with her daughter-in-law, Mrs. Jack.  Mrs. Tarrant's son Jack is in the army but spends quite a bit of time on leave in London or at  home in Ireland.

The main character is Raunce, who ascends to being the butler at the beginning of the book, when Eldon, the ancient former butler, dies.  Raunce is a scoundrel -- dishonest and ambitious, but quite charming despite his deficient character.  He is in love with Edith, one of the two maids (the other is Kate) who toil under the watchful eye of the sanctimonious housekeeper, the lonely spinster Miss Agatha Burch.  There's also an alcoholic and paranoid cook, Mrs. Welch, and two kitchen maids, Alice and Jane, a very young footman named Albert, and Miss Swift, the nanny, who spends most of the book on her deathbed.

Green, as always, depends almost entirely on dialogue to tell his story, and he brilliantly captures the disparate voices of all these people, both above and below stairs.  He has a pitiless eye for detail and presents his characters like specimens on a microscope slide.  This makes for a smart and amusing read, but the narrative remove and lack of sympathy for all the characters leaves the reader with a bitter taste.  And the end of the book seems truly perverse: Raunce's health fails; he seems to be dying.  Green brings us to a place of tenderness and pathos, and then punishes us with a final sentence that bullies us for caring.