Customer Reviews

The Bender

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

George's Aunt Clara is Lady Butterfield. He is 43. George's brother Guy is beginning to make a success of his plays. George inherited a small income from his Uncle Roderick, Clara's husband. George and his landlady both use hyphenated names. George has a brother Tim to whom he owes money. A bomb killed their parents. George has an Aunt Ada who worked as a companion. Aunt Ada is dying. George is a sort of waster who brushes his clothes in order to have a meeting with Tim. (Uncle Roderick did nothing for the other two brothers.) Tim says he needs the 200 pounds he loaned him since his daughter is pregnant and he must support mother and daughter in an out-of-town establishment to maintain the secrecy of her condition.

The back story is conveyed through the amusing device of having Lady Butterfield dictate her memoirs to a Grundig tape recorder. It develops that George's brother Timothy is going to take a new job at much better pay in order to finance his daughter's problem. When George visits his niece she knows right off the bat that he is seeking her out in order to be relieved of the obligation to repay the loan. She tells him she can't help him in that respect.

The party at Lady Butterfield's is attended by George and his brother Guy, but George has become frightfully drunk. Before going to Aunt Clara's George has spoken with his former wife, Alice. His Aunt Clara advises him, (she isn't really his aunt, but a cousin of some sort), to take his brother's girl friend Anina to Camden Town since he is in quite a state. George has even broken down to the point that he asks Lady Butterfield for 200 pounds to repay Tim. She refuses.

While his Aunt Ada is dying, George tells his brother his niece will inherit Uncle Roderick's funds since George is sterile, a case of the mumps. A sort of reconciliation follows. George is of some use for some things.

I cannot dislike anything written by Paul Scott. This doesn't have the glamor of the novels set in India, but, nonetheless, there are many fine touches. Among other things, this is very funny.

This is probably Scott's least impressive performance, and it is certainly not the first book of his that someone should try when first coming upon him. That said, most of his books are worth reading. This novel is simply marred by incompetent characterizations and some admittedly sloppy writing; perhaps he wrote it in a hurry. But even this novel has a few compelling moments; it's just that you have to read 300 pages of it!

I thought that both "mark of the warrior" and "love pavilion" were greatly superior to this novel, which contains some suprisingly shoddy writing (rare for Scott). At least the novel has a close examination of the minute detail of 1950's Britain, as well as a plausible plot. But this book could have been written by Auchincloss at his worst. Scott is certainly the greater artist, which makes "The Bender" a considerable dissapointment.