Caprice

On the basis of this book, I feel confident saying that Firbank's family tree obviously leads to early Evelyn Waugh, Ivy Compton-Burnett, and Muriel Spark: extreme minimalism, a high dose of dialogue, and far greater attention to sentences than to the tropes of realism (character, setting, etc...). I imagine this would be a great litmus test for those who claim that they value literature as literature rather than literature as cod philosophy, because it has many characteristics of modernism (the aforementioned minimalism demands a lot from the reader; if you're not paying attention from line to line, you'll get completely lost)--but it avoids the usual ideas of the modernists (nothing here about the ineradicable absurdity of existence, show more no ultra-individualism, no epatering of the bourgeoisie).

I'm not sure I enjoyed reading it at the time, but in hindsight I do enjoy it, and I'm looking forward to more. It's funny, it's gleefully artificial, and it's completely uninterested in all the things that serious literature is meant to be about (other than linguistic playfulness), and, quite frankly, that makes me very happy. show less

This novella is set in the London theatre world of the early 20th century. Sarah Sinquier feels constricted in the cathedral town where her father is a canon. She longs for the London stage, and she runs away to fulfill her true calling as an actress. Sarah quickly falls in with a theatre crowd. Most of the novel builds toward the opening night of a production of Romeo and Juliet. Young Sarah learns how quickly triumph can turn to tragedy.

Apparently, Firbank’s novels are characterized by a heavy emphasis on dialogue. I’ve always appreciated this quality in Agatha Christie’s novels. Sadly, Firbank is no Christie. A century later, most readers will not have enough context to easily make sense of the dialogue. However, I’m not sure show more readers of a century ago would have had enough context either, unless they moved in the same social circle as Firbank. Maybe that was the point. show less

"There she sits all day, reading Russian novels. Talk of gloom!" So says Mr. Smee of his wife, Mrs. Smee, in Firbank's Caprice, which is here to dispel any such gloom with its campy and satirical take on London's theatre scene in the early twentieth century. A modernist contemporary of Woolf and Joyce, Firbank wrote Caprice mostly in zany dialogue, quickly jumping from one scene to the next as if dubious of the reader's attention span.

Miss Sally Sinquier, daughter of a respectable provincial clergyman, sneaks off to London with some family heirlooms and a grandiose ambition to be an actress. Careless of an intriguing world about her, she falls in with a theatre crowd who both help and exploit her. She rejects the suggestion to start show more with small roles... I shall play Juliet. I shall have a season.... and throws her ill-gotten money into financing a production of Romeo and Juliet. Improbably it opens with great success, only for Miss Sinquier to fall through a stage trap door to her death the following day. C'est la vie, eh?

My dear, I once was thought to be a very pretty woman... All I can do now is to urge my remains. show less