When I Grow Rich

You might fear that a 1960s middle-class English writer setting a novel in Istanbul would be prone to the worst kind of exoticising description of the city, the people, the religion, even the stray cats. In this case, you'd be absolutely right.

It's an interesting question whether Joan Fleming ever visited Istanbul (actually, it's not, but let's pretend). The case against: everything said about the city (etc) is said in a plodding, didactic manner that suggests diligent book-learning being recited. The case for: everything said about everything is said in a plodding didactic manner. We can't get through a description of a character building a rockery without a little digression on the formation of basalt. The dialogue is similarly show more appalling. You'd think it was an insulting characterisation of Turkish people to make them all so windy and stiff, were it not for the fact that the English characters are also so windy and stiff.

So that's the setting, the style, the writing. Is there something in the characters? Well, the principal villain is a one-time member of the Sultan's harem (I kid you not) sunk into old-age avarice, bitterness, and vanity. She gets angry a lot. She cackles. She is called Madame Miasma (again, I kid you not). She is attended in her schemes by a eunuch, also from the harem, who is secretly in love with her (once more, or perhaps twice more I kid you not). I will not describe the other characters.

Oh, the plot? It's barely there, and the few elements it has are laid out in front of us over and again: foreshadowed, occurrent, recalled. It's hard to tell what the central mystery, suspense, or drama is even meant to be.

All in all: a stinker. Hard to see what the 1962 prize-givers saw in it; remarkable to see that an Ambler novel came second to it; dismaying to see that there's more Fleming coming up in 1970. Perhaps she spent the decade learning how to write. But let's not worry about the far future now, because it's 1963 next, and this one is a stone-cold classic. show less