Marghanita Laski (1915–1988)

A small, but perfectly formed, chilling tale of psychological horror, from a very simple premise.

The GR summary, in its entirety, says, "Tells the story of a young married woman who lies down on a chaise-longue and wakes to find herself imprisoned in the body of her alter ego ninety years before."

Is it a nightmare, time travel, madness or altered state, or (as she eventually wonders), some sort of test from Fate, Providence, or God?

It opens with a bald fear of death: firstly from a show more quotation of TS Eliot, "I am dying in my own death and the deaths of those after me", and then the opening sentence of the book itself, "Will you give me your word of honour... that I'm not going to die?" (Eliot may have been echoing Cranmer’s “In the midst of life we are in death”, translated from the Latin, “Media vita in morte sumus” for the burial service in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer.)

It is told from the view of Melanie, a young wife and new mother in the late 1940s or early 1950s, confined to bed with a long illness. She is also confined by a patronising paternalistic doctor, and a loving but equally patronising husband. When she says she feels silly compared with his intelligence, her husband says "I like you silly" - note the lack of comma. Pampered indulgence, aided by wealth, softens these issues somewhat, but actually makes her helplessness more poignant.

One day, she nods off on the chaise-longue and finds herself almost a century earlier, on the same chaise-longue, addressed as Milly: still bed-bound, but in much humbler and less happy circumstances. And Milly's situation is somewhat mysterious.

Pain of Powerlessness and Separation

The body-swap and the consequent confusion and frustration of not being believed are obvious, but the greatest pain comes from estrangement and separation: being removed from reality, the joys, frustrations and responsibilities of normal life, being imprisoned (literally, in a sick body, in a sickroom, but also by patriarchy and societal expectation), and most of all, separation from one's child.

Having not seen her baby for seven months, Melanie asks, "Do you think he'll know me... do you think it's too late?" and "'When am I going to see him properly?'... She thumped the bed beside her where the baby should lie and had never lain."

In Melanie's world, everything is cold and clinical. She can't even visualise her son's nursery from her bedroom "from which all flavour of love and joy and delight had long since fled." Things are done efficiently, but without warmth: "The knitting had been done, swiftly and beautifully but surely not with love, by Sister Smith."

The other Laski I've read is also about the loss of a child, albeit told in very different genres, and one from a male perspective and the other from a female one: Little Boy Lost.

Contrasts

Despite some similarities, Milly's situation is in many ways the opposite of Melanie's, and the contrasts are obvious from first waking and feeling "not the touch of soft pink wool but harsh rough strangeness".

This only adds to Melanie's confusion as she tries to make sense of her situation: the unknown, combined with eerie familiarity. "There came a new dread, or an old fear long known and endured."

Sanity

Increasingly, Melanie questions her sanity, as her thoughts and words seem to become less and less her own, with "no control over the words that came... they were alien words and phrases, yet no more deliberately chosen than any words one ordinarily chooses."

Without full control of her own mind, and being told she is not who she thinks she is, Melanie's sense of identity is even more lost than when she was just a helpless patient.

Mystery

Ultimately, it becomes a mystery for Melanie and the reader.

What would you do, and how would you plan any sort of release or escape, what sort of risks and paradoxes are involved? Having made the link between the chaise-longue she bought second-hand and went to sleep on before waking up on it as Milly, Melanie wonders whether leaving it would trap her in Milly's life. What are the risks of submitting to the needs of the "new" body (which must have died many years ago", "If I let it have needs, it becomes mine"? What about praying? After all, "ghosts always go away when you pray" and religion is "the one magic that could not fail". If only she knew more history, perhaps she could predict the future to prove her story, and yet she cannot say such things out loud, "and if I cannot, then even these thoughts I am thinking, has Milly thought them before?"

Quotes

* "Cunning as a cartload of monkeys if ever she needed to be."

* "The delighted chaos of sleep."

* "The nightmarish voice that binds the limbs in dreadful paralysis while the danger creeps and creeps and at last will leap."

* "The overmantel, which carried so many small objects that she had only a confused impression of worthless trash."

* "Fear was like sea-sickness, it came in great waves, a thunderous beat that drummed in the stomach and made the whole body vibrate."

* When, in the "other" body, she asks about the chaise-longue, "it was told to a listener who knew its background, and to Melanie it must be like a story overheard in a teashop, words with meaning, but no shape".

A Similar Story

For a much shorter, less mysterious take on a similar situation, see the 1890 classic, The Yellow Wall-Paper. My review, HERE, includes a link to a free version on Project Gutenberg.

Image source for invalid on chaise longue:
http://blog.wellcomelibrary.org/2016/12/an-hysterical-diagnosis/ show less

Little Boy Lost is the second book I've read by Marghanita Laski - the first was The Victorian Chaise-Longue. However, I found the two books entirely different. This one was far more emotional and a more gripping, compelling read.

It's Christmas Day, 1943, when Hilary Wainwright first learns that his son has been lost. He had seen baby John only once - a brief glimpse of a little red face with dark hair poking out of a bundle of blankets. Then, while Hilary was away, his wife, Lisa, was show more killed by the Gestapo in Paris and their little boy disappeared almost without trace. When the war is over, Hilary goes back to France and with the help of his friend, Pierre, he begins to follow a trail which he hopes will lead him to his lost son.

Laski does an excellent job of portraying the conflicting emotions Hilary experiences, torn between longing to be reunited with his son and worrying that if he does find him he might not want him. All through the book I was guessing what might happen - it wasn't really obvious what the outcome would be and I could think of several different possibilities, some good and some bad.

The descriptions of post-war France are so vivid: the bomb-damaged buildings, the poverty, the food shortages - unless you were rich enough to take advantage of the black market, of course. And I was shocked by the descriptions of the conditions in the orphanages. As well as there not being enough to eat and drink, and a complete lack of any toys or games, it was chilling to think of children with tuberculosis living alongside the healthy ones.

Although I was trying to avoid hearing too much about this book before I read it, I knew it was supposed to become very nerve-wracking and suspenseful towards the end. Well, I can tell you that this is definitely true! There are so many great books that are let down by a weak ending, but this is certainly not one of them. The tension throughout the final few chapters was nearly unbearable, so much so that I was almost afraid to reach the end. And I imagine most readers, like I did, will have tears in their eyes when they reach the very last sentence.

Nicholas Lezard of The Guardian, who is quoted on the back cover, says it best: "If you like a novel that expertly puts you through the wringer, this is the one." show less

This is an intriguing little piece. Melanie buys a Victorian Chaise-Longue while she is in the early stages of pregnancy. She also has a tubercular shadow on the lung and is forced into rest for the remainder of the pregnancy. The book starts after she has given birth and she is being allowed a change of scene and is moved onto the chaise-longue in the living room. There she falls asleep. When she awakes she is still on the chaise-longue, but has been transported into the body of Milly show more Barnes, Victorian fallen women & consumptive. The definition of self, who is Melanie if she occupies Milly's body, if she dies here will she die at home and can she ever get back. There is something quite compelling about this, watching Melanie and her fearing her loss of identity and trying to get to grips with the past and her potential future. show less

I was browsing in my fabulous local independent booksellers (Mostly Books, Abingdon, UK) and thought I'd buy a 'Persephone' book to add to my collection - I couldn't choose, and Mark suggested this superb novella - imagine a Victorian horror version of 'Life on Mars' (the hit TV series) he said, knowing my tastes pretty well by now.
Well it didn't disappoint. When Melanie, a new mother recuperating from TB falls asleep on her old chaise-longue, she wakes up in the body of young Victorian show more Milly who is dying of consumption and living in somewhat mysterious circumstances dominated by her sister Adelaide.
As Milly's body is ravaged by the end-stage TB, Melanie's total mental anguish as she discovers more about her situation is horrifying, when she reads the clues from conversations with Adelaide, and other visitors to the house. Add the choking atmosphere of the sickroom and the London fog lurking outside and you have a claustrophobic masterpiece that must ultimately burst from its bounds. A brilliant psychological drama. show less