An Error Of Judgement [Paperback]

It was Ann Widdecombe who recommended to me Pamela Hansford Johnson's novels - not that I often talk books with the former Tory prisons minister turned novelist, in fact this was the only time, at the Hay festival the year before last, but I do like to name-drop on the rare occasions when I can. She was replying to a question (from me) about her favorite writers, and mentioned this woman of whom I had to admit I had never heard. She wasn't surprised, but commented what a shame it was that Hansford Johnson is now so little known. The name obviously stuck in my mind because when I saw this book a few weeks ago I decided to give it a go, and I'm glad I did. This is seriously good stuff, a really excellent novel, assured and satisfying. I said "assured", because that was the word that kept rising to the top of my mind when reading the book. It's skilfully constructed. The first-person narrative viewpoint is cleverly chosen, the narrator being close to events but (I realised later on reflection) not as central to them as at it seems in the reading, which just shows how well the author has succeeded in her artifice. As a proximate spectator he can credibly be used to comment on events and other characters in a way a third-person narrator can't, in such a typically modern and realistic a novel as this. The way we get to know the narrator's wife Jenny, Dr. William Setter and his wife Emily, and others, is subtly conditioned by the narrator's partial insights and obviously this influences the way we respond to them. The point of narration moves about a fair bit too, though, in a way that feels very contemporary: more than one other character breaks in to relate stories of their own that are very lightly framed; and that's not the only narrative trick in the book. The way the narrator's work colleague Lawson is introduced is deliberately playful, for example. But this is a serious story, by no means packed with action but rather with moral and social content, really gripping the reader and building up a lot of momentum: I took only two evenings to read it, anyway. At the same time room is allowed for characters to develop who are as convincing and surprising as E.M. Forster would have wanted them. Setter is at the centre of the novel, an almost magical figure, a wise man who seems to control, and practically to dominate both men and women without being at all domineering; a smooth private doctor well set up in life who gives up status and money, allowing himself to become shabbily dressed and personally chaotic in order to satisfy his moral and selfish drives. An eccentric, an oddball even, but certainly a character who feels bigger than one novel, a really impressive creation. There's also Jenny, the narrator's wife, a woman who seems on the cusp between youth and middle age, the effect of whose grief is to set off one of the main narrative strands as she seems to fall in and out of love more than once, perhaps even more than twice. And there's the vicar, Malpas, and intelligent and questioning but ultimately good man with all the limits that that implies; there's the narrator himself, whose ordered pessimism about relationships creates the overall mood of the novel, more phlegmatic than melancholic, but in any event decidedly clear-eyed about human nature. Perhaps it's understandable that this kind of writing would appeal to political conservatives: it seems to say that social institutions and relations are as good as they can be, given that people are so deeply flawed. Finally there's Emily, Setter's unfaithful, partly comprehending and somehow still loyal American wife. She's highly sexually attractive to both men and women, both physically -hers is the the main phyisical presence in the book, her big legs seeming constantly to be gathered in front of her - and in other ways, the fun, friendship and sex she offers contrasting sharply with the intense spiritual concern and agression coming from elsewhere. More broadly the novel is quite interested in the nature of attraction, it seems to me. All the other characters are attracted to Setter but we also explore the nature of the narrator's sometimes ambivalent attraction to his wife, attraction between men, its denial and its mischaracterisation as sexual, and the way attraction can develop between those who feel somehow isolated. What also matters in this book, though, is the nature of evil, and cruelty, and the relationship of these to goodness: these, it seems, can sometimes meet in an unavoidable personal imperative. In some way the book reminds me of the early Iris Murdoch. There's the central, fascinating figure, the variable geometry of relationships, the deep interest in why and how people try to do good, in the way some individuals are held in thrall by others, and in the way they seek psychological freedom or sometimes have it thrust on them against their will. But any influence may have been by Hansford Johnson on Murdoch of course, as much as the other way round, given that Hansford Johnson's writing career was established earlier. As I say, a satisfying read, this, and certainly one that has persuaded me that I ought to read more of Hansford Johnson, obviously an underrated writer.