Farewell Leicester Square

Persephone is famous for publishing out-of-print, lesser-known classics, but there’s a sub-theme to their list as well: they reprint a number of Jewish authors (Marghanita Laski, Amy Levy, for example). Farewell Leicester Square is the only one of Betty Miller’s novels that touches on the Jewish experience in England. This story focuses on a man named Alec Berman, who manages to rise to fame in the film industry (the opening scene of the novel is centered on the premiere of one of his films, Farewell Leicester Square) and marry a non-Jew.

From the way I saw the book described, I though that this was going to be a straightforward and pretty typical story. But Betty Miller turns it around a bit, by making the anti-Semite Alec himself. He’s so aware of his background as a Jew and not wanting people to mention it that he almost becomes a bit self-hating of his Jewishness He even tries to stamp out his childhood in Brighton in order to become more English and is denigrating of his brother’s wife and children. It’s because of this awareness, which pervades the whole tone of the book, which eventually brings about Alec’s downfall. The relationship between Alec and his wife Catherine is tough to read; it’s not clear if there really was a lot of love between them, or if each of them loves what the other represents. I think they both jump into the relationship without considering the implications.

The plot and pacing of the novel are, as the introduction to the novel, set out a bit like a film, with flashbacks and the like to indicate the passage of time (it’s not done so well, however; there are huge gaps that made me want to know what happened in between Alec’s apprenticeship and the film premiere). It’s an incredibly brave novel for Betty Miller to have written, especially at that time period. ( )

The message of this book was interesting, and yet the book itself was not because the story was secondary to the message. I hate that. Through the life of a Jewish filmmaker, the author discusses the problem of racism from both sides--the majority, who are either stereotypically racist or trying to act as though they aren't racist; and the minority, who have become so fanatically attuned to presumed discrimination that they can no longer lead normal lives. The protagonist tears himself to shreds with rage at everyone around him, and finally drives away even those truly untainted by racism. It's not a subject that interests me, since I'd rather everyone just stop talking about it and be themselves without fussing so much, but I suppose the author did a decent job of addressing a touchy issue.

Although Betty Miller wrote this novel in 1935, it didn't find a publisher until 1941, having been rejected by her publisher, Victor Gollancz, for whom it seems the novel was - according to Neal Ascherson in The New York Times - 'an attack on the solid English assimilation of [Gollancz's] own family'.

The novel tells the story of Alec Berman, born into a Jewish family in Brighton, whose desire to enter the film-making profession angers his very traditional father. Berman further distances himself from his family by marrying Catherine Nicolls. Towards the end of the book there is an uneasy reconciliation between Alec and his father, who can't help asking, 'What did you want to marry a shicksa for? Aren't there plenty of nice Jewish girls?'

Despite his success as a film-maker, Alec is always aware of himself as an outsider - a feeling that inevitably drives a wedge between himself and Catherine. There is very little actual 'plot', but what the novel does offer is a finely-observed depiction of a 'mixed' marriage and the pressures brought to bear on such a marriage. Miller makes the reader uncomfortably aware that there is more to anti-semitism than the excesses of the Nazis (and their British equivalents), and is brilliant at evoking that sense of being 'different' and what that means on a day-to-day basis. Whenever he meets someone for the first time, for instance, Berman is aware that the person's opinion of him might change on learning that Alec is Jewish.

The novel is written in an episodic fashion that omits huge chunks of Berman's life. The reader never learns, for instance, exactly how he becomes successful in his chosen career. This is not really a criticism: the focus of the story is very much on the small daily incidents that impact on our lives in fundamental, and sometimes destructive, ways. [December 2007]