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Past Press
Review of the new
American edition of Isobel English's Every
Eye
A RESURRECTED GEM FROM A NEGLECTED NOVELIST
EVERY EYE, by Isobel English
Black Sparrow, 152 pages, $23.95
By Merle Rubin
Isobel English (1920-1994) published just four books in her lifetime: three novels,
between 1954 and 1961, and a collection of short stories in 1973. Words like
self-effacing, self-critical and perfectionist only begin to describe this remarkably
gifted, all but forgotten British writer whose fiction has been likened to that
of Elizabeth Bowen, Anita Brookner and Muriel Spark, all of whom admired her
work.
Although Ms. English may have some of Ms. Bowen's deft insight, Ms. Brookner's
sensitivity to nuance and a touch of Ms. Spark's wry humor, she has a finely
wrought yet cauterizing style that is all her own. A good place to sample it
is Every Eye(1956), Ms. English's
fine second novel, appearing now in the U.S. for the first time.
Hatty, the narrator, is a woman in her late 30's. After years of feeling resigned
to spinsterhood, she has recently married Stephen Latterly, a considerably younger
man who nowadays might be described as her soulmate by a writer more prone to
cliche than Ms. English. As the couple sets off on a trip to Spain, Hatty learns
of the death of her uncle's wife, Cynthia, a woman she once adored but later
came to dislike and distrust: 'From being a pretty little woman, the kind of
mother I would have chosen for myself at the age of fourteen, who later became
the recipient of my many hopes and confidences, she had changed into My Aunt,
the person most closely connected to the man who had sentenced me to the St.
Thomas Secretarial College.'
That would be Uncle Otway. At their wedding, Hatty had been Cynthia's bridesmaid.
'All through the short ceremony,' she reports, 'I could hear her breathing through
her thinly cut nostrils like an impatient thoroughbred.'
Born with musical talent -- and a mildly disfiguring squint in her right eye--
Hatty once hoped to have a career as a concert pianist. But with no one except
her ineffectual widowed mother to support and defend her, she felt herself to
be at the mercy of her overbearing uncle who seemed intent on undermining her
self-confidence and dreams of success. And although Hatty's squint was later
corrected by surgery, she still finds it difficult to see things head on. But
seeing things from an angle -- or several angles--helps bring her closer to the
truth.
Every Eye makes vividly fresh
the truism that the same story may appear differently to different people and,
relatedly, that one person's viewpoint can change profoundly over time. Alternating
between her memories and her current experiences, Hatty's elegantly succinct
narrative summons up crucial episodes from her past while revealing how her
perceptions continue to change. By the end, she seems to have shed some of
her resentments and arrived at a deeper understanding of her life's story and
the people in it.
Beyond its literary merits, which are considerable, Every
Eye provides a wonderful opportunity for American readers to become
acquainted with the entrancing voice of a truly original writer.
Ms. Rubin is a writer in Pasadena, Calif. |
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