Christina Stead (1902–1983)

Umm so this book has so little reviews, and it's astonishing as it's amazing, up there with Stead's best. It's more sparse, relatively minimalist than her other sprawling works like House of All Nations and The Beauties and Furies, but it still has her wit and mastery voice. Eleanor is a beautiful and free woman, every schmuck wants to bed her, whisper sweet nothings and marry her, but she sees through their facades. She eventually settles down with Harry, has two children, but he ends up show more being an emasculated, gaslighting turd burger. Stead weaves a story about how every law and cultural norm works against women, and if a woman has a mind of her own, wants to earn her own guinea, then she is nothing more than a promiscuous Bohemian.

It saddens me so much how little Stead was, and possibly still (presumed from the lack of Goodreads reviews) under-read.

"You want everyone to love you and lick your face like a dog. Life is not a dog and people are not kind; people are savages and brutes. We must set our teeth and put our shoulders to the wheel." pg. 191

"Do you believe that an idol which has seen many sacrifices is impregnated with the smoke of the burning blood and just as much with the mystic adoration, the mental fumes, steeped in thousands of past lives in dead history? Do you believe you can tell by 'feeling' that a rope has taken a man's life? I believe that blood has a voice; the worm has a voice that we can hear if we try, so Blake suggests; and the blood of torment has a voice. Otherwise sacrifice is aimless, the realists win and the rest of us may as well cut our throats." pg. 235 show less

What is memorable are the book's characters, especially the couple, Sam and Henny, and Louise to a certain extent. The plot is rather long, and you need patience to get through it. But if you have patience, there are some unforgettable scenes. For example, Ms Aiden's visit to their house. You see how run-down and decrepit their living environment is, and how poor the family is. In contrast, Sam thinks they live in paradise. He lives in a world of his own and is quite unlikeable. He touts the show more goodness of man but mocks and denigrates people, advocates eugenics, and manipulates his children. In contrast, Henny is the pitiable one. Despite her pronouncement to the contrary, she loves her children and is the one silently helping the family to survive. show less

This review is published to coincide with the anniversary of Christina Stead’s death (17 July 1902 – 31 March 1983).
Oh, Christina, you were a wicked woman in the best possible way!
Way back in 1948, Christina Stead wrote the ultimate satire of marriage and capitalism when she savaged the predatory male in this witty black comedy that shows in excoriating detail what a hashtag can never could. Her portrait of Robert Grant, whose hobbies are making money and seducing women, is both show more revolting and hilarious, and readers will be cheering from the sidelines when he meets his match, Barbara, who is every bit as calculating as he is. I wonder what Jane Austen, doyenne of The Marriage Novel, would have thought of it? She would have been thunderstruck, I think, but her sense of humour would have held sway…
Girls, think of the sleaziest man you know. Was it your first boss, who these days would be fired for his daily sexual innuendos? Was it your Ex’s ‘mate’ who put the hard word on you when you briefly worked for him? Was it the well-known academic who put his hand on your knee under the table while his wife sat oblivious on the other side of you? Was it the clown at a party who cupped his hands under your boobs from behind and hauled you to your feet because he thought he was irresistible (and who copped a six-inch stiletto in the calf for his trouble)? None of these are in the same league as Robert Grant…
‘A little tea, a little chat’ is Grant’s euphemism for seduction. In 1940s New York, he’s always looking for opportunities to make money and to ‘beguile and betray’ the women he encounters. He has plenty of money to splash around because of all the deals he has made, and now after Pearl Harbour and the declaration of war, he’s busy finding ways to profiteer from it. Stead’s descriptions of this perfidy seem so authentic, she must have heard conversations like it in New York where she lived with her banker husband. There may have been some red faces when the book was published in 1948. But maybe not. Types like this – as we see so often in today’s media – are completely shameless…
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2018/03/31/a-little-tea-a-little-chat-by-christina-stea... show less

I thought I was in for a literary treat when I read this savagely lush description on page 7:

[E]very room was a phial of revelation to be poured out some feverish night in the secret laboratories of her decisions, full of living cancers of insult, leprosies of disillusion, abscesses of grudge, gangrene of nevermore, quintan fevers of divorce, and all the proliferating miseries, the running sores and thick scabs, for which (and not for its heavenly joys) the flesh of marriage is so heavily show more veiled and conventionally interned.

Disturbing imagery, yes, but it reminded me of the artfully controlled mad excesses of Look Homeward, Angel, and I thought I'd stay with it to see where it went.

I made it all the way to page 30, with considerable difficulty, and then just gave it up. And this is one of the very few (not so many as ten) books that I will take some satisfaction in placing in the recycle bin and not trying to palm off on anybody, not even in a box labeled "Free" at the curb.

The reason: the gaggingly awful speech mannerisms of principal character Sam. He has horrible nicknames for his children ("Loozy," "Little-Womey") and affects a phony dialect that makes him sound like a demented babbler in a madhouse of overage babies. It is so staggeringly obnoxious that I would be hoping on every page for the story to turn out to be a slasher novel with six kinds of violent mayhem in store for our Sam. Five hundred pages of this? I need peace in my life, not the vision of a character who makes a good old-fashioned evildoer look like more pleasant company for my reading hours. How could an author even bear to create a character whose dialogue is so sickeningly loathsome that a hopeful, receptive reader turns away in disgust?

Never mind, I don't want to know. show less