Polly Clark

I received a free advance copy of Larchfield in return for an honest and unbiased review

When it comes to beautiful writing Polly Clark is immensely talented. Her prose is wonderfully and fittingly poetic if occasionally to mannered to be natural, and Larchfield and Helensburgh evocatively described. Auden is as melancholy and thoughtful as one would imagine, with bouts of self-doubt and flashes of brilliance and verve. He is young and struggling to find his way in his work and the world, forced into a remote teaching position in a crumbling, underfunded public school even as his first volume of poetry is published. Auden is lonely and adrift, even driven to send out a lonely message but he also befriends first the invalid wife of his headmaster and then Gregory, a young man glimpsed at the railway station who has since haunted Auden's thoughts. The contrast between his quiet, isolated life in Larchfield is contrasted with the colour and freedom of his periodic trips to the more "debauched" Berlin to visit Christopher Isherwood. Auden's relationships in Scotland and Germany are written with great colour and contrast, revealing several sides to a complex man. This part of the novel, I loved.

I was far less invested and, to be honest, interested in the parallel story of Dora, a contemporary poet recently moved to Helenburgh. She is married to an older man and pregnant with their first child and is struggling to come to terms with the sudden shift in her life from Cambridge to Helensburgh, work to family. As she tries to adjust to her baby and the neighbours their shared house she is inspired by the news that WH Auden spent a short period in the area, and even wrote his famous Orators there. There was plenty of potential in this thread, two poets separated by years and both oppressed by isolation and the fear of thwarted ambition. But when Dora miraculously finds the bottle cast away by Auden decades ago the connection between the two characters that this discovery forged wasn't what I was expecting. Alongside Dora's developing "neighbours from Hell" situation at home this whole story-line became far too outlandish and dramatic for me. The denouement between Dora's family and their neighbour was really quite silly.

It seemed to me that Clark's failure to to define the nature of the meetings between Auden and Dora is the point on which the novel breaks down. Is this a delusion on Dora's part? Is she really suffering a bout of post-partum illness? For me this approach would have created a far stronger narrative as well as an exploration of a largely taboo subject that affects many women. At the close of the novel it seems like this has been the case as Dora is hospitalised but if so how does Dora come into possession of details about Auden's Larchfield life she has no way of discovering except if their meetings are "real" in some sense the issue remains annoyingly indistinct and under-explored.

Polly Clark has a marvellous way with words but the structure and plot of Larchfield ultimately let it down.… (mehr)

Helensburgh in Scotland in 1930 and the poet Wystan (WH) Auden has arrived to take up the post of teacher at Larchfield School. In the present day Dora Fielding has arrived in Helensburgh as her husband's job takes him to Scotland. Wystan struggles at the school, his effete nature horrified by the treatment of the boys and the hostility of many townsfolk and colleagues. Dora finds herself alienated by her neighbours and after the birth of her child sinks into a troubling mental state. Wystan escapes by visiting Berlin but an inappropriate relationship with a local youth means that he is forced to leave the school. Dora is accused of harming her baby and she escapes into a delusion involving Auden.

This is a beautifully written book and it grips from the start. Wystan is a homosexual who is trapped by convention, even escaping to louche Berlin is spoiled by the Nazis, yet he finds beauty in the mundane and is protective of a group of sensitive allies. Dora is obviously suffering from post-natal depression and therefore the truth in her narrative is vague. The town of Helensburgh is imagined well, the constraints of small town society an its impacts on outsiders handled well and without over dramatisation. This is a wonderful book to savour.… (mehr)

Motherhood. Poetry. Madness - or time travel?

Welcome to Larchfield - home to the young English poet W.H Auden and, years later, English poetess, Dora Fielding, in (English poet) Polly Clark's emotionally fraught debut novel.

-- What's it about? --

Newly married and pregnant, Dora moves to Helensburgh hoping that her new life will engage her as much as her previous arts-based life in London did. Instead she finds herself stranded outside the gossipy politics of village life, isolated by raising her baby while her husband devotes himself to his work, and taunted by her increasingly difficult neighbours, Mo and Terence, whose status as pillars of the local community only serves to deepen Dora's alienation.

In 1930 Wystan Auden boards a train to Scotland. Fleeing a broken engagement, he begins to teach at Larchfield School for Boys. Despised for his Englishness and his suspected homosexuality, Auden struggles to live a life which is true to himself and seeks friendship to support him during this period of his life.

Dora's discovery that a young W. H. Auden once lived and worked in Helensburgh offers this increasingly unhappy young mother a fresh beacon of hope. Can embracing Auden save her?

-- What's it like? --

Lyrical. Emotional. Puzzling.

Dora's predicament, trapped by motherhood into never ending, mindless tasks, isolated from her childless fiends and accused of paranoia by her increasingly frustrated husband, inspires our sympathy and our empathy. Many of Clark's observations on motherhood are wonderfully astute. We witness: the abrupt and absolute dominance of the baby's needs; the reduction of previously powerful women to an anonymous and easily discountable "mum"; the way time can stretch greyly in front of you, promising nothing but a succession of nappy changes, milk offerings and naps. One day Dora notices that it is, 'not even eight thirty', and already all she can see is grey:

'The simple truth was that Dora had given up one life and started another. The two were unrelated. She used to have an apple, and now she had an orange...

'It was was just that Kit had an apple and (i) an orange. He had not given anything up. His life was about more (i). Why was hers about less?'

Similarly, Wystan's life is restricted by the expectations and attitudes of others, though he has more freedom than Dora and, readers cannot fail to be aware, is on the cusp of renown and an entirely different life.

I enjoyed reading about both characters, but wasn't at all sure what to make of the twist in the middle. Is this a time slip novel? Or is Dora simply mad?

Of course, as a remorseful Kit reflects later on, 'If...Dora's life was unbearable - and the evidence for this was right there, in her not being able to bear it - then was it really madness to escape into another world?'

It's never made clear whether certain scenes are real for all the characters, or just for Dora, but in a way it doesn't matter: both main characters need courage to make their lives bend more to their will, rather than being dominated by the needs and attitudes of others. If Dora can garner that courage from Auden, does it matter if her Auden is real?

I enjoyed reading this because I really liked Clark's written style and found both stories interesting, but I did find the ending puzzling as Dora makes a key decision that isn't borne out by the next chapter. Clearly I missed something!

-- Final thoughts --

I found both characters were interesting to read about, though as a mother with young children I identified quite strongly with Dora at points, whereas Wystan's bachelor lifestyle was obviously less familiar to me. Their stories drew me in through my sympathy for each character and the tension is often exquisite as we wait for them to make the next, seemingly inevitable, mistake.

(Some critics have commented on the familiarity of the characters' trajectories. I can only say that I didn't find this a problem, partly because neither story is one that I personally have read about innumerable times, and partly because Clark's writing frequently elevates the material to something quite beautiful.)

This was a story I really enjoyed for the strong characterisation, tense atmosphere and lyrical writing, despite feeling that the ending left a lot unresolved.

I look forward to reading more by Polly Clark.

Many thanks to the author and publishers for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.… (mehr)