Today’s book is Bernice Rubens’ debut novel, Set On Edge (1960) and my friend Paul helpfully took a photo of my copy with me for comparison (I am on the right). Grier introduced me to Rubens’ work when she gave Rachel a copy of The Five Year Sentence and we did it for an episode of Tea or Books? – since then, I’ve been discovering how very many copies of her books are easily available in secondhand bookshops and I am amassing them at a rate of knots. At a slightly slower pace, I am reading them.
Set On Edge must have marked Rubens out as the individual, odd, and brilliant writer that I am discovering her to be. Here’s how it opens:
The trouble with family relationships is consicence, which is nearly always guilty. The Sperber family were guilt-riddled, and as no man will bear his guilt alone but looks for its source, finding there someone to blame or hold responsible, so the Sperbers sought out their rotten root. Each of them knew from the beginning where their search would lead them, and each was afraid of showing the other the way.
There are quite a few members of the Sperber family, and I don’t think you need to worry too much about quite a lot of them – because Rubens piles us high with children and grandchildren before we’ve really got the story underway. She also dashes between future and past in quite a disconcerting way before the story settles. But the main catalyst for a lot of the dynamics in the family is the death of Mr Sperber – and if this gives Mrs Sperber genuine sorrow, she is also ready to take maximum advantage of the position it gives her. She is constantly reprimanding her adult children for supposedly being anxious for her death, and remembering her husband with the most exaggerated affection.
The marriage of her children is her main aim – as well as the source of mnay of the arguments in the household. The choosing and getting of spouses is done with a trademark eccentricity. There is a quality to Rubens’ prose that reminds me a lot of Muriel Spark in the best of ways – a sort of jabby, off-kilter writing that is very ready to recognise the shortcomings of her characters, but not in a way that is likely to set you against them:
One Saturday morning he crossed Miriam on the stairs as he was going out to work. He stopped a step above her so that they were on a level, and taking a gilded comb from the tray, he offered it to her. She took it silently. When he reached the foot of the stairway, he turned towards her. “Miriam,” he said. It was the first time he had called her by her name. “Will you marry me?”
“Yes, Mr Levy.”
Where Miriam was concerned, Mrs Sperber knew better than to argue or question. Within a month they were married and there were two paying-guests in Mrs Sperber’s house.
One morning, shortly afterwards, the postman delivered calling-up papers for Mr Levy. Mrs Sperber never understood how it got to be known that anyone eligible for conscription could be found anywhere, and she marvelled at the organisation that could track down so seemingly an insignificant person as Mr Levy. His presence in the army, she considered, could make absolutely no difference to the outcome of the war. Something had to be done.
But the main character of the novel is Gladys, and she doesn’t seem able to get married. She is a large, plain, unintelligent, unprepossessing woman, trapped in a relationship with her mother that is somehow equally damaging and necessary. The title of the novel comes from a verse in Ezekiel – ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge’ – about how the actions of parents have a lasting impact on their children. In Set On Edge, is it not the historic actions but the ongoing ones that determine the course of Gladys’ life.
Not that she is a passive victim. She certainly gives as good as she gets in this dysfunctional family, and is a force to be reckoned with. But she agrees with the rest of them that she will only truly be a success if manages to snare a husband, and it doesn’t particularly matter which (though there is a very amusing scene were one likely suitor is scared away at a family dinner party).
Later in the novel, another prospect appears on the scene – a recent widower who has made a lot of money through dodgy business dealings, and has – to say the least – no airs and graces. Gladys is in her 50s or 60s at this point, and it requires some thought:
Her mother would not be back for some time, so she could allot herself a while for thinking. Gladys would never think during the course of doing other things. Thinking was a separate activity, and could only be indulged in on its own and in solitude. She desperately wanted this transaction to be a success. Not that she liked Mr Bass so much. She has always pitied Ena for being saddled with him. His vulgarity did not offend her as it did Miriam. There were other things about him – his plain physical ugliness – that repelled her. And even as she thought of him as a husband, he appeared no handsomer. But she wanted to marry him for the family’s sake. She had fattened on their guilt long enough and now was the time to grant them a reprieve.
As the tone of the opening suggests, almost nothing is going to go well in this family’s attempts to sort themselves out – but I hope it’s also come across that Set On Edge is very funny. If you like Muriel Spark, Beryl Bainbridge, Jane Bowles and writers like that, you’ll love Rubens. Special shout-out for the scene where Gladys and Mrs Sperber go shopping for a dress, which I found hilarious.
I’ve only read three Rubens novels so far, but she is fast becoming a dependably brilliant author – and, as Set On Edge demonstrates. entirely comfortable in her own odd little world from the off.