A whip-smart young woman spars with a self-satisfied married man Thirty-year-old Arabella has three complicated male relationships in her life. She lives with her widowed father, an impossibly accomplished man whom Arabella feels she has devoted her life to, perhaps at her own expense. Then there is her brother Michael, who is on some sort of spiritual / poetic quest in Pakistan. His letters are full of complex introspection, intellectual jousting and spare-no-details descriptions of a debilitating illness he has contracted. And finally, Charles Hamblin, the happily married man that Arabella, against her better instincts, decides to date. The two circle each other, making judgements and assessments, until an uneasy settlement is arrived at. Rosemary Tonks (1928-2014) was an English poet and novelist, active mostly in the late 1960s and early 1970s. She then became a fundamentalist Christian and disappeared into obscurity, treating her own literary output with disdain. She sought out copies of her novels from public libraries in order to destroy them, and in 1981 burnt an unpublished manuscript. The Way Out of Berkeley Square reads like an autobiographical novel, written in a playful, almost artificial voice. Tonks sees fiction writing as a bit of a game, and she likes to toy with the reader, but in a fun, if puzzling, way. Her interactions with the three main male characters - father, brother and potential lover - show her in a somewhat submissive, supporting role - but intellectually it's clear she’s a dominating force. (There’s an argument to be made that the text is latently feminist, with its idiosyncratic portraits of father, brother and lover.) Her surreal and offbeat descriptions, which richly inform every word of the novel, create a delightfully absorbing, unique world. Here is a taste from an overflowing banquet: “There are opium dens in North Africa where a big carpet, impregnated with some narcotic, is very slowly shaken over the heads of those who seek oblivion.” Rosemary Tonks is a true original, and every word she writes makes you sit up in your chair and pay attention. The only writer that comes close to her in style and originality is the poet Stevie Smith, who wrote a series of autobiographical novels written in similar brassy style. There is also a touch perhaps of Sylvia Plath, another poet. It’s wonderful news that Vintage has now published four of Rosemary Tonks’ six novels. Don’t miss this little gem. The Way Out of Berkeley Square, by Rosemary Tonks. Published by Vintage. $22.99 Review by Chris Saliba Comments are closed.
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