AN INTRODUCTION TO MISS GARNET’S ANGEL
An introduction to one’s own book is an odd thing to write because, inevitably, it must be written after finishing the book–in this case some time after. So, in a sense, although this appears at the start of this book it is not an ‘introduction’ at all, more of an afterword. But if you are anything like me you won’t be reading this till you have finished the book, anyway–if at all!
‘Miss Garnet’s Angel’ has been out in the world for some time now and has its own life, which often feels to have precious little to do with me, its author. I’m not even sure if an author is the best authority on her own work–many people write to me with questions, but also people write and tell me (in effect) that I am wrong about certain things they have heard me say, or read I have said about the book.
I must admit this last tendency, the correcting me on my own work, amuses me. But it also delights me because it proves something I have always believed: that a book is a meeting place between author and reader and that the reader brings almost as much creative power to bear on the book as the person who has written it. Certainly, we authors need readers, not merely to buy and read our books, essential as that is–after all, if you don’t buy our books we can’t get to write and publish more, so you, the readers, have in fact a great power in your hands and can influence what is or isn’t published which, in turn, affects public taste. But authors also need readers to understand what they write, and in the act of being, variously, comprehended a book can grow–even grow wings, which this one certainly has.
I’ve been charmed by the widespread communications I’ve received from round the world: from a Parsi librarian in Bombay, from a monastery in the Australian outback, from a hut in Hawaii, a remote island in Greece, an office in Argentina, a croft in Scotland, a boat on the Adriatic Sea. People sometimes apologise for ‘bothering’ me when they write but goodness knows why–for nothing is more interesting and valuable to a writer than hearing how a book has gone down. Hearing from, and talking with, my readers has expanded my own thinking and understanding.
And along the way, another prejudice of mine has been confirmed, which is that readers’ intelligence is often woefully underrated. Aspects of the book which literary critics–positive as they have been–and even my vigilant editor missed have been picked up by sharp-witted readers. For example, the novel is composed of two stories which parallel and reflect each other but, I hoped, not so obviously as to be intrusive and distract from the simple enjoyment of an unfolding story of one woman’s life. In the old tale of Tobias and the Angel, the Archangel Raphael appears in disguise–this occurs in the contemporary story, but more obliquely, unannounced or commented upon, and readers, I’m happy to say, often spot this hidden theme. The ancients believed that ‘higher’, or ‘lower’, beings revealed themselves to humankind in human form–they didn’t necessarily expect visions or visitations; but the acts of exceptional kindness, or mercy, or forgiveness, as well as their opposites, which humans beings are capable of are perhaps the contemporary equivalent of the old belief in intervening supernatural powers, both malign and benign.
Readers also pose thoughtful questions. Two common questions are asked, which I am not going to answer here, not because it might spoil the book but because there genuinely are no answers. I believe that a book, like a human being, should never quite have everything about it explained but retain some of its mystery. The questions are: What happened to the other part of the diptych? and what happens to Miss Garnet at the novel’s close? The ending, in particular, causes debate–but I think ambiguity is probably one of the elements in the book which makes it distinctive. It’s not that you can choose your ending exactly, but that how you respond to the whole book, and the unravelling of the events of its heroine’s life, will colour how you perceive the end.
People sometimes suggest that the book has had an impact on their own lives–leading them to cast off caution, break out, try new things, and be brave. I don’t think this kind of effect is, or should be, the purpose of a book but I can’t pretend that it doesn’t please me that a book about an elderly tight-lipped atheist spinster virgin, who falls unsuitably in love, gets clobbered for it and only then begins to live fully, should have this seemingly strengthening impact. If it does have some such influence, then I don’t want to take credit for it–my guess is that this kind of development is already nascent in the reader, who may even have alighted on this very book because of some unconscious pre-formed identification with its heroine’s predicament–or with the old story of the hard journey which we must travel if we would overcome the fear and find the love hidden in our own hearts.
How readers choose books is also a mystery, one which the word-of-mouth success of ‘Miss Garnet’s Angel’ suggests defies all prudent modern accounting or clever marketing. Now that’s something we all of us–reader and author–alike might fairly be proud of. For much as I reject the idea of any “philosophy” behind a book, if this book were to reflect any one definable philosophy it might be this: that life is not ours to predict or control, that it resists all such attempts but that, ultimately, individuals know what is good for them–which is not necessarily what others (or even they themselves) might believe is what they want or need–and are, immeasurably–gloriously, even–the stronger and the richer thereby.
Salley Vickers
2003
Death is outside life but it alters it: it leaves a hole in the fabric of things which those who are left behind try to repair. Perhaps it is because of this we are minded to feast at funerals and it is said that certain children are conceived on the eve of a departure, lest the separation of the partners be permanent. When in ancient stories heroes die, the first thing their comrades do, having made due observances to the gods, is sit and eat. Then they travel on, challenging, with their frail vitality, the large enigma of non-being.
When Miss Garnet’s friend Harriet died, Miss Garnet decided to spend six months abroad. For Miss Garnet, who was certainly past child-bearing years and had lost the only person she ever ate with, the decision to travel was a bold one. Her expeditions abroad had been few and for the most part tinged with apprehension. As a young woman straight from college she had volunteered, while teaching the Hundred Years’ War, to take a school party to Crécy. On that occasion she had become flustered when, behind her back but audibly, the boys had mocked her accent and had intimated (none too subtly) that she had brought them to France in order to forge a liaison with the large, sweating, white-faced coach driver.
‘Mademoiselle from Armentières,’ they had sung hilariously in the back of the coach. ‘Mademoiselle from Armentières. Hasn’t had sex for forty years!’ And as she had attempted to convey to the coach driver the time she considered it prudent to start back for Calais, wildly and suggestively they had chorused, ‘Inky pinky parley vous!’
The experience had left its mark on Miss Garnet’s teaching as well as on her memory. Essentially a shy person, her impulses towards cordiality with her pupils, never strong in the first place, were dealt a blow. She withdrew, acquired a reputation for strictness, even severity, and in time became the kind of teacher who, if not loved, was at least respected. Even latterly, when in terms of pupils’ taunts Mademoiselle