1954: Mrs Hawkins, 28, is a young war widow, who lives in a South Kensington rooming-house and works as a proofreader and “literary adviser” at a small publishing house. The publishing house is barely hanging on; when secretaries and clerks leave they’re not replaced, and everyone who’s left is doing multiple jobs. And it’s not just work that’s dramatic: one of Mrs Hawkins housemates receives a threatening anonymous letter, and Mrs Hawkins and the landlady get swept up in the mystery of who could have sent it and why. Mrs Hawkins moves to a different publishing house; drama and intrigue continue, and much of it seems somehow connected to a literary hanger-on, Hector Bartlett, who Mrs Hawkins calls a “pisseur de copie” to his face.
Decades later, Mrs Hawkins, or rather, Nancy, thinks back on the drama of the ’50s, the strange interconnected orbits of the people in her world at the time. Back then, Mrs Hawkins was a big woman, and she feels that because of her size she came across as motherly and capable, smart yet non-threatening, the sort of woman whom people trusted, and to whom people came for advice. She still gives advice now, in this book she narrates, solid funny advice, like getting a cat if you need to concentrate on writing (because it’ll sit on your desk under the desk-lamp and its relaxation will make you calm as well), or telling everyone when you need a job because some doorman or bartender may well mention you to someone, or going to Paris to relax after a period of emotional strain. I love the matter-of-factness of her narrative voice, especially when she’s dispensing advice, like: “It is a good thing to go to Paris for a few days if you have had a lot of trouble, and that is my advice to everyone except Parisians” (171).
I loved the kooky corners of the publishing world that Mrs Hawkins inhabits; at one place, she’s about to start a new job and the director of the company asks her to start in a week, on a Monday, and notes that the next day will be the full moon, so there will be “a movement of the authors,” which then leads to this amusing exchange:
‘Do you find the moon affects the authors, Mr Tooley?’ I said.
‘Oh, a great deal, believe me,’ he said deeply. ‘There is always a considerable movement from those quarters at the full moon.’ (70)
Also great is this, about a woman at the same publishing-house:
Connie’s other job was proof-editing, which she did very badly. Transferring the author’s corrections to a clean sheet of proofs was something Connie was unable to do without missing an average of three corrections a page, or transcribing newly inserted material all wrong. In those days the authors had long galley-proofs followed by page-proofs. It was only when the book finally appeared that Connie’s mistakes were discovered, but she was incorporeal about them. She put angry authors’ letters about the mutilation of their books under the cushion of her chair to deal with later; she timidly suggested to their irate voices on the phone that they should write a letter putting down their grievances which would be attended to in the next edition. (80-81)
But it’s not the publishing world or the advice or even Mrs Hawkins that this book is about, really, so much as those interconnected orbits, the way that people meet and lives intersect and are changed, for good or for ill. “It is surprising how many people subterraneously believe in destiny. […] People love coincidence, destiny, a lucky chance” (66).
I wish my local library had the lovely-looking Virago edition of this book, with that great cover and an introduction by Ali Smith, but they don’t, but I’m still glad that I checked this book out. The only other book by Spark that I’ve read is The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, but now I want to read more of her work. It’s very well-constructed, very precise, almost too precise at times, but by the end I’m always won over.
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