Thank you for some additional 1956 Club reviews since I updated the page recently – I will make sure the list is fully updated at the end of the week. And will read all the reviews too! This week has rather got away with me, but I always manage to read them in the end – and what a variety of books people have been reading.
I don’t think I’ve seen anyone else reading Thin Ice, though. It’s my third Compton Mackenzie novel, and the other two (Poor Relations and Buttercups and Daisies) both of which ended up being among the favourite books I read in those respective years. Since then, I’ve been buying a lot of his novels, and I was aware that he wrote in various different styles. The first two I read were very funny, bordering on farce. Thin Ice is… not.
It’s narrated by a man called George and is about the life of his close, long-term friend Henry Fortescue, from 1896 to 1941 – when, as we learn on the first page, Fortescue dies. They were friends as youths and continued to be as Henry became an MP, with an eye on potentially becoming prime minister. The only thing that might stand in his way is if he ‘indulges in his indulgence’ – which is being gay. This is a secret for only a few dozen pages, and even during that time it is a secret only from George – the reader has worked it out almost instantly. Henry states early on that he will never marry any woman, and that he intends to either be celibate or throw caution to the wind completely – and this is where the title of the novel comes from:
”You’re pacing this orchard with me, Geegee, trying to look sympathetic, and only occasionally peering nervously round over your shoulder to see that nobody is within earshot, but how can you be sympathetic? You can’t possibly understand my emotions. I can assure you that I shouldn’t be inflicting them on you now if I were not determined to suppress them henchforth. That’s why I’m telling you. Edward Carstairs would jeer at that. All he would ask is that I should be discreet. And that’s what I was intending to be until I realised that for me discretion was impossible. It had to be complete self-denial, or complete surrender. And walking about for ever on thin ice does not appeal to me.”
It’s certainly an interesting theme for the 1956 Club, being published more than a decade before homosexuality would become legal in the UK. Sadly, it’s not a very interesting novel in any other way.
Because it covers such a long period, and gives weight to each year, the chapters hare through a lot of time at breakneck speed. Details of the day are thrown in, often political, many of which didn’t mean much to me but do give a good sense of historical accuracy. Doubtless the 1956 reader enjoyed the references that took them back to their own younger days. But this speeding through years gives Thin Ice a feeling of being constantly in flux, and never letting us bed in to any details of the characters. The narrator is largely there to relay events, but we expect a bit more of a personality from the main character’s best friend. And Henry himself is drawn with a bit more complexity, but we don’t get enough time to dwell on any of it.
Mackenzie isn’t writing in humorous mode here, and I certainly missed that. It all felt a bit colourless and repetitive. Bland. Perhaps it wouldn’t have done if he’d picked a few years and focused more on characters and relationship between them. The scope of the novel left it without any depth.
A shame to end 1956 Club with a bit of a dud, and perhaps it wouldn’t feel quite so much a dud if I didn’t love Mackenzie’s comic fiction as much as I do.
Not sure if this is where I leave my review.
1956 Book Club
I reread Down There by David Goodis.
Goodis is one of my favorite noir writers. The plot lines and stock characters are all pretty similar from book to book.
Goodis’ focus on place, character type and especially his ear and precision for dialog is unparalleled.
The protagonist of Down There, “Eddie”, is a piano player in a down there dive bar in Philadelphia.
Goodis’ existential hero is not some tough guy hardened by a tough life. He is an artist whose only way to survive his tragedies is not by delving into his art, but by falling into music as a way to blank out his existence.
Eddie is trying his best to stay detached and oblivious to everyone and everything in his surroundings.
It is other people who need human connection, who want him or need him that creates trouble, and they are the ones who pay for their trouble.
Being a good guy or a bad guy has no bearing on who survives in a Goodis novel.
In the end it is luck that allows Eddie to survive.
Goodis’ question is, Is it good luck, or bad luck?
Thanks for adding this to the club!
I read this with interest, as I hated this book (see my own response, at link below). Perhaps I’ll try one of the comic novels you mention. And thanks for your fascinating blog.
https://extremelegibility.typepad.com/my-blog/2016/06/thin-ice-by-compton-mackenzie-g-p-putnams-sons-1957-ive-had-this-book-on-my-shelf-for-many-years-acquiring-it-for-its.html
Glad it’s not just me! He definitely seems a varied writer, but heartily recommend his funny stuff.
You’ve just reminded me that I have this one on my shelves, unread. Maybe I won’t rush to read it though. His World War 2 humorous novels are really funny.
Oh yes, I’m meaning to get to Keep The Home Guard Turning soon.
Interesting. It’s good to have something NOT to put on the TBR list. Though I haven’t read any of his work, actually, and clearly should put that right.
Yes, choose carefully but good to try him!
I wonder if the… disconnect you feel here is because homosexuality wasn’t a very tasteful subject at the time, and maybe he just… held back. That makes sense to me.
Potentially!
Excellent find, though a shame it was disappointing – though brave subject matter for the time, as you say. I’ve not read Mackenzie yet, though I do have Whisky Galore lurking on a kind of Scottish themed reading pile…
I’ve been avoiding the super Scottish ones, for reasons I don’t entirely understand…
I always think of Mackenzie for his comic writing so I think I’d have a hard time adjusting to him in a more serious vein. With such a lengthy career I can understand the desire to try different themes and styles, but I imagine fans of his comic novels were in for a surprise if they picked this up based on their love of Whisky Galore!
Yes, and he doesn’t seem to have gone in phases, it was all bustled up together – v confusing for his readership!
What a shame. As you say, though, a great variety of books read this time!
Such a great variety!
Good review. So we have somewhat of an Edward Heath–a politician with no wife to balance his ticket? Intertesting–especially, as you say, for the time. Even much later Jeremy Thorpe had to marry for success, even bagging a former almost royal Countess as his 2nd wife. I am planning to read Monarch of the Glen as soon as my nusiance grad certificate program is over in August. It’s been on my list too long.
Yes, I wonder if Mackenzie had someone in mind!