We all know our ABC's, I would hope, by now, and the first five letters, of course, are A-B-C-D-E. But, for us literary types, they are more. They stand for Austen, Bronte, Collins, Dickens, and Eliot. With F, for Forster, thrown in for good measure.
The premise of Tess Hadley's novel, "The Past," promises family conflict, and there is nothing I like than that in a novel. It is practically a fictional foundation, darlings!!!!!!!!!!!
Several siblings--Alice, a failed actress, Fran, the perfect housewife, Harriet, a repressed lesbian, and Roland, a gadabout, meet at their family Summer home, Kington, to discuss selling it, and examining their lives. Fran's children, Arthur and Ivy, are along, and so are Molly and an outsider, Kasim, the son of Alice's ex-boyfriend. Get this group under one roof, and expect sparks to fly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Except, they don't. At least, not till the last section of the novel. Before that, Hadley seems more intent on emulating the authors I have stated, by telling her story in a subtle, quiet, linguistic way, that does not work, since her prose, good as it is, cannot match the aforementioned masters, and today's literature moves at a faster pace. Just like our times.
Not that it cannot be done. Zadie Smith's "On Beauty," a redux of "Howard's End," is simply brilliant, and I commend her for pulling it off. But Hadley's valiant effort is so far off the mark, at only 310 pages, I wished "The Past" could have been shorter.
Or longer. I would have liked her to examine Alice's failure to become a top flight actress, or Harriet's draw to lesbianism, or how much sexual experience Kasim and Molly actually had had, before their clandestine rendezvous.
It is much too staid and reserved. Arrive, pack up, and go home.
I was ready to leave long before the Crane family did.
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