Skip to main content

Old Filth 61 - 100

Teddy revealed through flashbacks
   Pat Ingoldsby as moody friend
   War time -- Teddy's father insists he return to Asia rather than fight
    Teddy meets up with Babs (cousin) who tries to  seduce him--he flees
   
Teddy's wife dies
  He's surprised she is mourned by others
  No children
  No sensuality\
  Cold marriage

After her death, Teddy goes on various pilgrimages. He meets up with an old lawyer, has dinner with him, then they part . . . barely able to discuss anything of significance.  He goes to see Babs who is a music teacher.  She seems eccentric to him; he flees from her again.  Next he's off to cousin Claire who is more hospitable.  She has a son Oliver who has a significant other.  Teddy gives them all of Betty's jewelry--they think they are getting recipes and are flabbergasted, but end up keeping the jewels.

Journey to try to make sense of his life . . . not too successful so far.
He seems, in many ways, unsympathetic in his coldness, but he does no harm (purposefully, at least), so he's actually a sympathetic unsympathetic man.  And that childhood!  We can forgive him his lack of love because he surely saw or felt little love.

Eccentric characters:  golfing aunts who (sort of) look after him and then immediately marry once he is trundled off to Singapore.

Father's affection:  pays to have others look after Teddy.  Seems to care that Teddy might die in war.

Teddy wants to fight--right thing to do, disgrace to flee to Asia.However, until he turns 18 he cannot disobey his father's will, so return to Asia he must.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Puppy, Story by George Saunders

PUPPY  Dysfunctional family has puppy that they need to get rid of.  Mom places ad; family is coming over. Description of family.   Mom:  husband changed from long-haired attractive to stooped old man. Husband: talks constantly of living on a farm and doing what needs to be done, though he never lived on a farm.   Conversations together:   Sell and move to Arizona, get hooked on phonics for kids, buying a car wash. . . wonderful randomness. Straight-laced suburbanite comes to look at puppy.  Seems like she will buy it, even though she is repelled by house.  (Dog turds on carpet, filthy.) She is proud of how accepting she is until she looks out window and sees white trash's son tied by harness to a tree.  Reader knows he is a menace to himself, darting across I-90, for example.  Suburban mother beats hasty retreat, leaving dog to be (probably) drowned by dad who does what has to be done.   Suburbanite remembers her own pathetic ch...
Post a Comment
Read more

Full Dark House by Christopher Fowler

Bryant & May--Peculiar Crimes Unit Mystery, Book 1 Lots that I liked.  Crime novel that is also historical fiction.  Fowler gives insight into London during the blitz.  Danger from street cars, some looting during blackout, stiff upper lip British still going to theaters, etc.  Fowler also takes reader backstage into the workings of a theater.  I learned a lot about the physical complexity of a major theater--production is a tremendous production.  I liked both the main characters.  Bryant, the eccentric loner who thinks out of the box. May, the more traditional "bright" guy, who is able to appreciate Bryant and help by keeping him in the real world, a little. Plot revolves around murders committed while cast rehearses and then performs Offenbach's scandalous version of Orpheus and Eurydice.  The murders are on the gruesome-detail side given the general British coolness of the rest of the text.  Spoiler coming.  The denouement wa...
Post a Comment
Read more

Napoleon, Ch 18 Blockades

"The first qualification of a soldier is fortitude. . . . Courage is only the second." Conquers cities of present day Germany. Spandau, Berlin, etc. Shortage of men in France . . . Russians next, but his mind is on Britain. He wants to use trade sanctions to force Britain to its knees, but this doesn't work either. French (and others in empire) need to trade with Brits. Smuggling results.  Also, unintended consequences crop up. Example is shoes:  Napoleon requires 200,000 pairs of shoes from Hamburg.  Hamburg can't supply these to Napoleon, so they buy what they can't produce from Brits. So much for the sanctions!  British are supplying uniforms and shoes for Napoleon, and making $$$. . . . Continues after the Russians in December 1806. . . has to withdraw, 40% of his army out of commission.  Horrible battle with Russians, thousands killed. Napoleon in tears . . . dire moment, Napoleon orders full out cavalry attack . . . Eylau a massacre without any result . ...
Post a Comment
Read more