Patience by John Coates

A couple of weeks ago, Jessie at Dwell in Possibility organised a mini Persephone readathon. Basically, an excuse to get a Persephone book off the shelf and dig in – and I had a quick mosey through the ones I have unread on my shelves, and opted for Patience by John Coates, originally published in 1953.

Coates is one of those rare[ish] creatures – a male Persephone author – but his main character is a woman. ‘Patience’ is there as a theme throughout the novel, but it is also the name of the main character. She is a devoted mother to her children, and thinks she might be on the way to another. Here’s the rather wonderful opening line:

It was odd, thought Patience, that surprises never came singly, and that the day she asked herself whether she was going to have another baby, poor Lionel should have asked himself to tea.

Lionel is Patience’s brother and something of a hassle. His wife has recently left him to join a retreat, permanently, and he is busying himself with interfering in Patience’s life and her marriage. He’s always quite interfering, but he has particular reason this time: because he’s discovered that Patience’s husband, Edward, is having an affair.

That might be rather a devastating discovery for many wives, but Patience isn’t unduly perturbed. Her relationship with Edward is one of thoughtless acceptance. She has been taught to be submissive and so she lets him sleep with her, and she is proud of the offspring of that marriage, but it seems never to have crossed her mind that one might love one’s husband, or want to spend time with them.

An awful lot of things have never crossed Patience’s mind. Coates has created something rather extraordinary in her – because she is clueless and naive, taking things on surface level, kind to everyone and absolutely predisposed to like them. But she is never, never the butt of the joke in the narrative. Patience would be a slightly absurd comic character in the background of most novels. Here she is a heroine, and I loved her. She is fundamentally good, even if the way she understands the world and its morals is a mixture of pragmatic, idiosyncratic, and Catholic.

I’ve buried the lede, but Catholicism is one of the big themes of this very funny novel. Importantly, Coates isn’t mocking Catholicism – I have zero time for novels that mock people’s faith – but he is funny about people who twist scripture and the tenets of the church for their own ends, or who are half-hearted in it. This early sentence amused me, and gives a good sense of Coates’ tone – it’s about why Patience is married to a non-Catholic:

For darling Mummy had been unable to find any eligible Catholics for her daughters, what with the war being on and perhaps not trying very hard.

Because of her firmly-held faith, Patience can’t get a divorce. Even when things get more complicated, as she falls instantly in love with a man called Philip… and that’s just the beginning of the complications that follow.

I have only two qualms about this novel. One is the love-at-first-sight thing. Maybe it does happen sometimes, but it just feels a bit silly in a novel. The other is that Patience thinks a lot more about the church than about God, which is a little at odds with the genuine nature of her faith.

Besides those details, I loved Patience. Coates is really good at putting together this bizarre twist on a moral dilemma, in a novel that could easily have been a miserable tale about unhappy marriage in a different author’s hands. Instead, Coates sustains the humour and lightness of the novel, and keeps the reader – well, this reader at least – fully empathetic with Patience, and really liking her. But then again I never find unworldliness offputting in someone, real or fictional, unless it means that other people have to deal with the mess they leave behind them. And that’s never the case with Patience.

Such an unusual topic for a novel, handled perfectly, and a delight from start to finish.

Others who got Stuck into it:

“The tone of the novel is a deceptively simple one; Patience’s voice is perfectly delightful, childlike whimsy. Despite its few flaws I really thoroughly enjoyed this surprising little novel” – HeavenAli

“While it is, in many ways, quintessentially ‘Persephone’, it is also quite strikingly different, and fills a gap in the Persephone canon that I hadn’t realised was there before.” – Book Snob

“It’s a rare occurrence but sometimes a Perephone title just doesn’t suit me and this was one of those times which was mildly disappointing as it’s the one I’d had the highest expectations for.” – Desperate Reader