The novel has its
moments of interest, and finally we can feel a degree of empathy for Elaine,
who is trapped in a horrible situation. (Review by Margaret von Klemperer)
It is difficult to categorise this novel. Although set on a university campus in America in the 1950s, it is not really a campus novel, though it contains many of the usual ingredients – petty academic jealousies, bitchy academic wives and plenty of drinking and promiscuity.
According to the
blurb on the back cover, it is based on the diaries of the author’s mother but
it is certainly not a filial memoir, written as a homage to a beloved parent.
Elaine – the actual first name of Self’s mother – is married
to John Hancock, who is, like all the other characters in the novel, only ever
seen through the eyes and opinions of his wife. He is a professor, an expert in
the work of John Milton, and anxiously pushing for promotion. According to
Elaine, he is boring, unattractive, miserly and puritanical and so, having been
rejected by one lover, she sets her sights on a new colleague of his. Anything
to escape the life she is leading.
Elaine is trapped in 1950s domestic drudgery – looking after her small son, cooking for the family, doing housework and regretting a future she never had as a writer and femme fatale. She and John share a social life comprising “necking parties” and serious amounts of alcohol, leading to hangovers and regrets. She is angry, self-destructive and it must be said, remarkably unlikeable. She is also, probably because of the lifestyle she leads and her all-consuming anger, extremely unobservant. I could see where the narrative was going well before she did.
However, we are also shown Elaine’s background and her unloved childhood. She dissects her parents ruthlessly, but they certainly sound pretty horrible – her mother having instilled in her the inferiority complex which compounds her problems. But Elaine is also witty, and her thoughts and diary entries are often very funny.
There are moments when the novel seems to be moving into another direction, as in the party where Elaine meets and talks to the visiting celebrity Vladimir Nabokov and his wife. I was hoping Self would develop that further, but it was just a fleeting interaction before we went back to Elaine’s interior monologue and diary entries.
The novel has its moments of interest, and finally we can feel a degree of empathy for Elaine, who is trapped in a horrible situation. But overall, Elaine, while a glimpse of a different time and a claustrophobic life, is pretty hard going for both the character and the reader. - Margaret von Klemperer
Elaine by Will Self is published by Grove Press: ISBN 978-1-80471-047-0
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