The Man in the Wooden Hat (original 2009; edition 2009)

An unmissable companion to Old Filth. Brilliant. ( )

Even better than Old Filth! ( )

This companion novel to "Old Filth" relates the couple's marriage from the spouse's point of view: here, the story is told by Betty, Filth's wife. While the text still vibrates from Gardam's extraordinary prose and remains throughly enjoyable, I was nevertheless a little bit disappointed and found Betty less interesting than her husband. ( )

I have always been a great fan of Jane Gardam's writing going back to the Days of Bilgewater ( which I heartily recommend) and I have just finished reading Man in a Wooden Hat for the second time as it was my book club's choice for the month. I found it a rather good novel complimenting the previous Old Filth and short story, The People on Privilege Hill and it saddens me to read that camelling was disappointed with this it but we can't all like the same writing as then we would have nothing to discuss! Reading it for the second time made me go back to reading the other books as well as I found it was like going back to visit old friends and I truly enjoyed the visit. Each stands on it's own merit of course but read together they give a greater understanding of the real character of Ms Gardam's creations. ( )

After the charming delight of Old Filth, this was rather a disappointment. Elizabeth Feathers does not enchant, does not endear herself to the reader and remains a rather 2-dimensional figure.

At times, I found the writing rather forced, as if the author were trying very hard to convince the reader that this rather spoilt young woman deserves to be embraced wholeheartedly, that she's just misunderstood rather than just a woman behaving badly. ( )

This book should be read along with Old Filth, one of the author's other titles. They really are companion books...tales of a marriage from the viewpoints of both parties. The Man in the Wooden Hat is Betty's view of her marriage to Old Filth. Both books characterize a time past, when both Betty and Edward were born to British parents living in Asian colonies of the Empire. Edward, aka Old Filth, was a Raj orphan returned to England in a foster home to be raised from the age of 4. Betty was also in England, but the critical influence in her life was being held in a Japanese internment camp in China during the war.

The books do compliment and strengthen one another. I strongly recommend that if you read one, you read both. ( )

A wonderful novel made even brighter by being a brilliant complement and sequel to Old Filth.
Jane Gardam's prose is perfectly chosen and her style reads so simply and succinctly. Yet she manages to pack in such a story through glimpses into a life, almost a series of connected novellas.
The story is of Elizabeth (Betty) Feathers (nee Mackintosh) - her engagement and marriage to Edward (Eddie) Feathers (whose story has been told in Old Filth and the The People on Privilege Hill). A life spent as support to her husband, as he works hard and prospers at the Bar, although we have glimpses of her life and friends before this. We also share meet the brief passion of her life, Terry Veneering, and her love for his son, Harry Veneering.
Through this, we learn of the stifled life of the last of the professional British ruling class in Hong Kong, but much more, we learn of the emotional turning points in Betty Feathers' life.
A wonderful read, with some satisfying twists at the end that do not change what has gone before, but throw further light on it. ( )

I'm still puzzling about the title - any clues? ( )

"The Man in the Wooden Hat" is less a retelling of Gardam's terrific "Old Filth" than a complement to it. While it's narrated by Edward Feathers's wife, Betty, he's still very much the focal point of this story, a compelling, enigmatic, oddly charismatic figure. Those who enjoyed "Old Filth" can expect more of the wonderful same. There's Gardam's startlingly lucid prose, her elegant insights in to her characters' emotional lives, and a slowly developing disquisition of what it means to grow up as a permanent expatriate in a dying Empire. Gardam fans shouldn't expect any major revelations here, though I hardly think they'll mind. The author seems to use Betty's side of this twice-told tale to demonstrate how the effects hastily made decisions can play out over the space of an entire lifetime and how passions felt in one's youth can linger into one's retirement years. Recommended, though readers new to Betty and Edward should certainly start with "Old Filth." ( )

This is an interesting concept: rewriting an earlier book from the point of view of a different character. In this case, Gardam’s earlier, excellent, Old Filth, traced the life and times of Sir Edward Feathers who made a fortune and a reputation in law in Hong Kong; the novel also traces his marriage to Betty, a marriage fraught with the fact that Eddie was not a communicative, emotional man and Gardam takes us into Eddie’s past to understand better his present. The Man in the Wooden Hat tells the same story from the point of view of Betty, and together, the novels comprise an interesting look at the marriage of two people, of the baggage that each brings to their lives and their marriage, of the hopes not always expressed, of the adjustments to hopes and lives that are made through years of living together, of developing or supporting careers, of passion known but lost and grieved for ever afterwards. Interesting, and worth reading, but I enjoyed Old Filth much more, perhaps because Gardam developed Eddie as a more fully-rounded character and I found myself caring more for and about him.

I love the way Jane Gardam knows what to include and what to leave out and how the surprises in the narrative come over as natural rather than props to make the story more interesting.

Somehow Betty's actions and inactions seem perfectly comprehensible whereas for some writers the putting on of a green silk dress to the events in the remote tree house some hours later, just as an example, surprise but then appear quite natural and we accept non-judgmentally.

The last chapter's revelations were a surprise but Old Filth was never ever such a boring old f..t as his colleagues often thought.

A good read indeed. ( )

Loved reading her story. Need to read Old Filth first ( )

Gardam is a wonderful writer, as anyone who read Old Filth, to which this is a companion novel, not a sequel, will know. While I enjoyed the telling of the story from Betty's (Feathers' wife) standpoint, I was ultimately discouraged by the melancholy and sadness pervading the book. To me, her desires were all unfulfilled, and if acceptance and social success are life, then that's what she achieved. I'm ready for disagreement on this, but at my advanced age, I don't need or look for more fictional portrayals of the disappointments or failures in life, an almost unavoidable theme in today's fiction.
Go back and read Old Filth, and i also liked The People on Privilege Hill. ( )