The voice of Pompey Casmilus is one of the most unique narrative voices I’ve read in a long time. A personal secretary working for Sir Phoebus Ullwater, Pompey throws her thoughts down on yellow paper “because often sometimes I am typing it in my room at my office, and the paper I use for Sir Phoebus’s letters is blue paper with his name across the the corner ‘Sir Phoebus Ullwater, Bt.’ and those letters of Sir Phoebus’s go out to all over the world.” So behind the stream of consciousness babble and flow that is Pompey’s voice, we divine that there is a very smart and sensible young woman at work. And indeed, there is.

Pompey writes, one suspects, much as she thinks. She will pivot on an interjected “oh” and take off in what seems another direction altogether but will pivot again to take us right back to her original thought (and original they are), finishing the subject off neatly. She talks with a fake German accent when in Germany, throws in frequent interjections in German, French and Latin without translations (sink or swim, reader).

But the pure delight of the novel is what Pompey thinks about and how she thinks about whatever it is, whether Jews, Nazis, her friends, her aunt, sex, her love(s), her acquaintances. Whether she is defending the English to her German lover, Karl, or talking about a play she has seen or the drawing rooms of the upper crust or a Pomeranian named Fifi with broken knees, Pompey had me enchanted from start to finish. She is pure delight talking about her aunt “the Lion” and just extraordinary talking about her broken heart after her dear Freddy broke it off with her. She is a “feet off the ground person” and yet one with a broad streak of self awareness, knowing her own needs and limitations. A typical Pompeyism, summing up the conversation of a Frau K.:
“There you are you see, quite simple. If you cannot have your dear husband for a comfort and a delight, for a breadwinner and a cross patch, for a sofa, a chair or a hot-water bottle, one can use him as a Cross to be Borne.”

A loamish read, as Pompey herself would say.

Not as much a novel as extended musings, from a young woman's point of view, on life death and relationships. Interesting if somewhat breathless use of language that managed to keep me engaged, even without a plot, up to the last few pages.
Good but just a tad too long. ( )

A truly enchanting book. Structurally and in content it is unlike anything else written. [Feb 1991]

This is the fourth time I've read this book, and every time I've read it I've had a very different, extreme reaction. The first time I read it, it just annoyed me. The second time, I loved it. The third time, I hated it. I think I was right in a note I made on the second read, that if you approach this novel as you would a 'conventional' novel, you'll want to fling it across the room. You have to let yourself be wooed by narrator Pompey Casmilus' quicksilver mind - "For this book is the talking voice that runs on, and the thoughts come, the way I said, and the people come too, and come and go..."

Stevie Smith's worldview is unique. Her language darts and leaps. This is a sort of 'stream of consciousness', but where Woolf is mostly serious, Smith likes to tease and poke fun. She clearly enjoys playing with language, stretching it, juggling with it.

"How richly compostly loamishly sad were those Victorian days, with a sadness not nerve-irritating like we have today...Yes, always someone dies, someone weeps, in tune with the laurels dripping, and the tap dripping, and the spout dripping into the water-butt, and the dim gas flickering greenly in the damp conservatory."

In order to enjoy the book, you have to be the type of person who likes discursive writing, who doesn't demand a linear plot (there's no plot at all, in this book), and you have to be prepared to accept Smith's heightened, artificial way of writing. As Pompey says, 'there's not a person nor a thing in this book that ever stepped outside of this book. It's just all out of my head'. Although there are clear autobiographical elements and references, the reader is very much made aware that this is art, not real life.

Stevie Smith delights in teasing, in leading the reader by the nose and seeing if we're up to the job. To see if we're willing to take part in her game.

In its way, this book is as innovative with language (and with the novel form) as those by Woolf or Joyce, but Smith does it with a wink and a sly grin. It's also often very funny, often with a sharp, satirical edge - "'Do You Know that there Are 3,432,521 illegitimate children in the UK? Please send a donation to the Secretary,' etc. That appeal came out in one of our papers, and when I showed it to Sir Phoebus he said 'Hurrah! Who says England's going pansy?'" Her boss, Sir Phoebus, is clearly based on Smith's own employer, and her description of office life rings totally true - "We indulge in the utmost limit of boredom, he in his room and I in mine, and stagger out when tea time comes, as it must, however it comes, whether rung for on the house phone, or trundled in by the hired girl, that's like an angel of grace breaking in on the orgy of boredom to which my soul is committed." [2004]