Customer Reviews

The Man in the Wooden Hat

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Esteemed novelist Jane Gardam follows up on the success of Old Filth, her highly successful 2005 novel about the life and marriage of Sir Edward Feathers, with the companion story of Sir Edward's wife, Betty. Each novel benefits from the other, the sum being significantly greater than the combination of the parts, and together they are a stunning study of a marriage--not ideal, but "workable." Feathers grew up unloved in Malaya, where his father was stationed. A Raj orphan by the age of six, he was sent back to England, where he went on to school, began a law career, and lived up to the old adage: "Failed in London, Tried Hong Kong," hence his nickname of "Filth." He never knew what it was like to be loved and cherished for who he was, and he always felt that he was an "outsider."

Betty, someone we really see for the first time in this novel, is also a product of the same time, place, and class. Living in Hong Kong, she sees Edward as "So pure...[though] there's something missing." More importantly, however, she believes, "He's very nice. And he needs me." Her friends all argue against her engagement to him, at least at this point, and even Betty has some doubts. After exploring the possibilities of real passion with someone more exciting, she finally decides that marriage to Edward "will not be romantic, but who wants that," a compromise which she believes will result in an overall improvement in her life.

Though neither Edward nor Betty is "in love" when they get married, they manage to form a good relationship and strong bond, considering the limitations of each. Betty demands a great deal of freedom within the marriage to pursue interests of her own, and Edward is so busy with his career that he hardly misses her--or the opportunities for happiness that have vanished from their lives with their separations. The parallels between the end of the British Empire, with its withdrawal from Hong Kong, and issues in the marriage between Edward and Betty are obvious.

The sophisticated and subtle style of Old Filth, appropriate for a novel about Edward, yields here to a more down-to-earth and overtly emotional style, more typical of Betty, with coincidence and fateful intervention playing a part. Edward's friend Albert Ross, sometimes referred to as "Abatross," symbolizes the stunted love and the guilt Edward feels about his life and inability to love fully, and the reader is constantly reminded of a line from "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,"--"Alone, alone, alone on a wide, wide sea/," which could be Edward's mantra. The use of the supernatural, signs, and portents broaden the scope, while Betty's firm grounding in reality put these other-worldly motifs into perspective. The often hilarious (and ironic) dialogue combines with a wry satiric sense to produce a conclusion which is everything that such a novel deserves. Gardam's brilliance is best seen if this is read following Old Filth, a novel which, itself, becomes more "human" if it is read as the prequel to The Man with the Wooden Hat. Mary Whipple

Old Filth
The Queen of the Tambourine
The People on Privilege Hill

This is true literature - moving, thought-provoking, oddly humorous, utterly riveting - and the strangest love story I've ever read.

A technical tour de force as well, the novel is the backstory of Gardam's earlier book, OLD FILTH. That book describes a marriage from the point of view of the husband (Sir Edward Feathers). Here, we get the story from his wife Betty's perspective.

Both have had shocking experiences early in life, he a Raj orphan abandoned by his father and otherwise mistreated, she a survivor of a Japanese internment camp in Shanghai. Betty agrees to marry Edward because he's a brilliant advocate, getting richer every day, wildly handsome and thoroughly good. An hour later she meets his arch rival, advocate Terry Veneering, and falls passionately in love. Ironies abound as their lives unfold from this point.

The man in the wooden hat is Edward's best friend - eccentric Chinese dwarf and mysterious power in international law who becomes a kind of terrifying manifestation of Betty's conscience.

Gardam perfectly captures the poignant imperfection of humankind. Her characters develop under the sensuous influence of exotic places and the chilling influence of the very best British society. Awash in guilt and unspoken conflicts, Sir Feathers and his wife often manage to be happy. Anyone who has ever had a contrary impulse should find this book rather cheering.

I'd recommend reading OLD FILTH first, then quickly leaping into THE MAN WITH THE WOODEN HAT.

[3.5 stars] Even happy marriages are seldom simple. In this gentle novel, Jane Gardam revisits the lifelong marriage of Sir Edward Feathers QC, the distinguished judge who was the subject of her magnificent OLD FILTH (the acronym stands for "Failed in London, Try Hong Kong"). But this time, she tells the story from the point of view of Feathers' wife, Betty, completing a diptych much in the manner of Evan Connell's MR. BRIDGE and MRS. BRIDGE. Born in Shanghai and interned by the Japanese, Betty somehow gets to finish her schooling in London and Oxford and do war work as a cryptographer before returning to China where she meets her future husband in Hong Kong. The date is now around 1950, but the chronology is difficult to disentangle. Eddie Feathers is a brilliant young advocate, though emotionally repressed; he needs Betty, but has difficulty opening to that need. She admires and respects him, but enters the marriage with little expectation of passion. Nonetheless, their bond endures, bringing a kind of contentment to them both; the story is essentially a series of flashbacks following Betty's death around 2000, while quietly planting tulips in her English country garden.

Jane Gardam writes with grace and understanding; whatever its weaknesses, this relatively undemanding novel is still a pleasure to read, which is why I give it four stars. But rating it on its own merits, I just don't know that it can stand on its own without OLD FILTH before it. Much less happens in it, for one thing; the whole book is essentially propelled by one surprising event near the beginning, answered by a parallel revelation at the very end. Betty's story has little narrative coherence of its own, and needs the armature of Eddie's career to support it. Surprisingly, while Gardam writes effortlessly from the female point of view, she penetrates Betty's character less profoundly than she had achieved with Eddie's much more opaque one. This book, I'm afraid, has the air of a spin-off, with less substance and less care for details; the anachronistic use of the word "jet-lagged," for instance, or the difficulty is establishing the chronology of Betty's earlier life. One significant chapter near the end has already appeared in Gardam's story collection THE PEOPLE ON PRIVILEGE HILL (which is mostly quite excellent and NOT a spin-off). The title, like "Old Filth," seems chosen for its outré effect, but it refers to a minor detail late in the book with little wider significance. And the character with whom the book does end, Eddie's instructing solicitor, an Anglo-Chinese dwarf named Albert Ross, has been portrayed hitherto merely as a shadowy melodramatic presence; there seems little reason for Gardam to end with him, other than the need to manufacture an effective punch line.

You may well enjoy this -- but do read OLD FILTH first. For others interested in a romance beginning in Asia just after the war, might I recommend Shirley Hazzard's magnificent THE GREAT FIRE?

This is a treat for those who have read `Old Filth', Jane Gardam's previous book about Sir Edward Feathers and his wife Betty (see my Amazon review), but also for those who have not read it (and will surely want to read it next), for, though the knowledge of its predecessor will add an additional layer of enjoyment, this book does not assume such knowledge. And anyway, significant though it is, there is only a modicum of overlap between the two novels (and there are even two small discrepancies between the events described).

The focus of `Old Filth' was on Sir Edward; here it is on Betty: we learn much, much more about her than in the first book. Edward we see as the kind of person he already was when they married - a workaholic and unable to give much emotionally; but we would have to go to the earlier novel to see what had made him become like that. The current book begins with their engagement and more or less ends where the earlier book more or less began.

There are more disconcerting elements in the second book than in the first. The dwarf Albert Ross, who is devoted to Edward and knows him better than anyone else does, seems more spooky. His hat is an important part of him, and the title of the book suggests the great influence Jane Gardam attributes to him (though why the hat of the title is wooden we discover in a single image near the end of the book.) She even has him survive Edward, when in the previous book Edward outlived him - one of the two discrepancies noted above. (The other relates to a watch). Betty's behaviour when she has just been engaged (the oddest engagement, to be followed by the oddest wedding) is more upsetting and indeed hard to explain. There is in the first half of the book a note of hysteria. It is hard to believe that this could ever be a successful marriage.

And yet it was - though at a price that will be fully apparent only in the last few pages. Betty does have to go through trials - and very movingly they are described - but her relationship with Edward is not the cause of them.

We move back and forth between a retreat in the depth of the Dorset countryside and the throbbing life of Hong Kong. Again the writing is both funny and touching.

It is, I think, an even better book than `Old Filth' - and I had given five stars to that!

I am certain that reviewers urging people to read Old Filth first have a point, and I will read Old Filth as soon as I can get a copy purchased. But for those of you out there, like me, who find yourself holding in hand The Man in the Wooden Hat (with no immediate access to Old Filth), the book is still a treat. Go ahead and read it; I loved it even though I had not read Old Filth. The characterization of both Betty and Edward is marvelous, but equal attention is paid to the minor characters, a mark of the rich story Gardam develops. As a further bonus, the novel is delightfully short (I started--and finished it--on a plane from San Fran to Dallas).

After writing about a character as memorable as Edward Feathers in Old Filth, it would be tough for a sequel or companion book to be the equal of the first. Betty's character didn't seem real to me, certainly not interesting in the way Edward engaged us with his quirks and secrets. There are hints that her backstory was similarly hair-raising, but the author doesn't tell us about it, and instead dwells on medical problems and unexplained infidelities. Betty struck me more as a late 20th century young woman than a WWII teen who did time in a Japanese internment camp.

Quite a few reviews are positive, but at this writing there are about 16 for this book and over 50 for Old Filth, so that should be a strong indication that the first book was much better. The author does write well, but I found the story going nowhere, kind of boring I'm sorry to say.

I don't think you can review one book with out reviewing the other, just as I don't think you can read one and not the other. "Old Filth" was published in 2006. It is the story of Sir Edward Feathers, a noted jurist based in Hong Kong. His nickname - "Old Filth" - was at odds with his precise and personal probity. "Filth" stands for "Failed In London, Try HongKong". Sir Edward's life is written by Jane Gardam in not exactly a timely sequence; she starts when he is an old and distinguished judge, retired back in England, living life alone after the death of his wife, Betty. He meets an new neighbor who turns out to be an old enemy of his, a fellow jurist, also newly retired from duty in Hong Kong.

The main story in "Old Filth" is about Edward Feather's childhood as a "Raj" orphan. He was born to an English doctor and his wife in the British East Indies. His mother dies in childbirth and his father, stricken by his wife's death and becoming an alcoholic, basically turns over baby Edward to the care of a native nurse. Edward is sent back to England at an early age, boarding with first a family near Wales, and then entering boarding schools. World War 2 begins when he's about 17 and is on his way back to the Indies to live with his father. He is forced to return to England, where he is further educated in the law, and, after the war, goes to live in Hong Kong, becoming first a noted lawyer and then a judge. He's met Betty along the way, and she, another orphan, born in China to British parents who are die under Japanese captivity, make a long, mostly happy but childless marriage.

"The Man in the Wooden Hat", published in 2009, is neither the prequel or sequel to "Old Filth". Rather, it is the companion piece. If "Filth" told the story from Sir Edward's point, "Man" focuses on the story from Betty's. Gardam's writing in both books is exquisite, spare yet right to the point. Both main characters are given equal weight, along with the secondary ones, most of whom are drawn as well as Betty and Edward.

Both books are just superb; if I could give six stars to both, I would.

Establishing oneself a successful business person is easy, but romance is something else. "The Man in the Wooden Hat" is a follow up to the celebrated Old Filth novel, following Edward Feathers as he tries to get himself an English wife in Betty. A story that is wide in scope and has many memorable characters, "The Man in the Wooden Hat" is a fine piece of literary fiction that will resonate with readers.

Loved this book -- like the Mr and Mrs Bridge books, with Old Filth, I found The Man in the Wooden Hat a compelling portrait of a marriage, albeit one between two very private individuals.

It's not often that I close a book with an audible sigh. This is Betty's story, but it is also the culmination of the story of Edward Feathers as told in Old Filth. If you haven't read that wonderful book yet, read it first before this one. Like the Alexandria Quartet, like Roshomon, both novels should be taken as a whole to give the entire satisfying picture. Threaded through this narrative are snapshots into a future readers of Old Filth will recognize, but which are completed and given the entire history. It's impossible to give a synopsis without ruining the story -- recaps have been provided in book descriptions and other reviews. Quality fiction rooted in the history of the last half of the 20th century doesn't get any better than this.