Alice Thomas Ellis (1932–2005)

Behaving badly made Lydia feel better. She hoped she wasn't turning into one of those maniacs who murder people in order to establish their superiority over their fellows who say Please and Thank you and conform to the basic customs of society. She thought it unlikely. Murder seemed to her too intimate, too similar to giving birth. She thought she would never care enough about anyone to give birth to them or to kill them.

This is the third or fourth of Alice Thomas Ellis's offbeat and quirky show more novels that I have read and it's the second time I have read "Unexplained Laughter". It's a short but very enjoyable book, with an unforgettable heroine in the witty and amusing Lydia.

Freelance journalist Lydia, who has just broken up with her cheating boyfriend, goes to stay at her cottage in the Welsh countryside for a few weeks, and her friend (well, sort of friend) Betty goes along to keep her company. Since she has never liked Betty very much, and resents being stuck with her, Lydia makes an effort for the first time to get to know some of her neighbours.

All the way through the book, I was wondering when it was set, and how old Lydia and Betty are. The other characters describe them as girls, which would imply that they are in their twenties, but they speak and act as if they are older than that. When the BBC did a version of it in the late eighties they cast 50-year-old Diana Rigg as Lydia, but I can't believe that Lydia is meant to be anything like that old. The book was published in the mid-eighties, but the names Lydia and Betty just aren’t right for that date. Elizabeths would have nearly all shortened their name to Liz or Lizzy, possibly Beth, but definitely not Betty, which was really old-fashioned by then. So maybe it is set earlier - Lydia's comments about class would fit with an earlier date, too. show less

She was determined there would be no reconciliation, and even though she had found that the sound of his voice reminded her vividly and immediately that she had loved him and could do so again she lay smiling with pleasure at the sheer satisfaction of unforgiveness. It was, she decided, much sweeter than love: a sensation for the connoisseur of emotion. That it was also wicked did not greatly perturb her. It was a sin different in kind from mischief-making, and could, in Lydia's estimation, show more be excused on the grounds that it was the sexual misbehavior of another to which she was responding.

Lydia felt strongly that the author of the universe probably thought much as she did about sexual matters. She really did have a long way to go, and she had not yet learned to recognize the precise lineaments, the demeanor and the shape of the shadow of Stan.

Alice Thomas Ellis seems incapable of producing other than psychologically astute, gem-like prose. Inn at the Edge of the World is better (as is Birds of the Air), but this would serve as a good introduction to Ellisian themes. Some thoughts:

1. Poison-brewing, manipulative, but explicitly religious female protagonists -- Lydia here, Rose in The Sin Eater. These characters, I increasingly believe, represent Ellis' view of her own worst instincts. Their sins are her sins.
2. Largely irrelevant men. I am fond of the following Ellis fragment:

Men love women
Women love children
Children love hamsters

If I had my way, all boys would be forced to read Ellis. It's often a vision of the world where men are not important, or have importance only in the minds of foolish, trivial people. The main action is either in the home, or in subtle human interactions that men are too block-headed to perceive. Perhaps the cruelty with which Ellis imbues this observation derives from her giving her dark side its head. But the observation is solid as oak.

3. Plots that never quite go anywhere. The most conclusive Ellis I have ever read was the Sin Eater. In all others, we just sort of drift off. Perhaps because she regards any final sewing up of a plot as pointless as any earthly resolution. True Human resolution consists only in the last things: death, judgment, heaven, and hell. show less

I give this book 5 stars not because it is Literature with a capital L but because it succeeds in being a work of comic genius. From the very first page we are made acquainted with a cast of eccentric characters who have been antagonizing each other in small ways for years. If you like Muriel Spark you will like this, which is equally roughly told, but with more whimsy. The ending is disappointing, yes, but not ruiniously so. This is a book that can be read in one sitting, and once you get show more started you will have very little reason to stop reading. Delightfuly wicked! show less

For the first twenty pages I didn't much like this book. I found the writing a shade too pretentious even for me, and the metaphor of the birds (I mean, come on - the dead son was called Robin...) a bit too trite. But I gave it some time, and before I knew it I was on the way to reading the whole short book in a single sitting. Ellis's writing began to grow on me - her similes became more telling and more precise, and her characters more fleshed-out. I was actually a little sad that it all show more ended when it did - I would have been grateful for another twenty or thirty pages, but that would have meant ending the book with some kind of reconciliation - and that would have been antithetical to Ellis's point. show less