#1970Club: Desperate Characters & I’m the King of the Castle

By Rebecca Foster on October 19, 2024

Simon and Karen’s classics reading weeks are always a great excuse to pick up some older books. I found on my shelves a chilly Brooklyn-set novella that has been praised to the skies by the likes of Jonathan Franzen, and then borrowed a short and unsettling novel about warring English schoolboys from the library.

Desperate Characters by Paula Fox

Other covers feature a cat, which is probably why this was on my radar. Don’t expect a cat lover’s book, though. The cat simply provides the opening incident. Sophie Bentwood is a forty-year-old underemployed translator; she doesn’t really need to work because her lawyer husband Otto keeps them in comfort. Feeding a feral cat, she is bitten savagely on the hand and over the next several days puts off seeking medical attention, wanting to stay in uncertainty rather than condemn herself to rounds of shots – and the cat to possible euthanasia. Both she and Otto live in this state of inertia. They were never able to have children but couldn’t take the step of adopting; Sophie had an affair but couldn’t leave Otto to commit elsewhere.

The cat bite seems to set off a chain of mishaps, culminating with the Bentwoods discovering that their house in the country has been vandalized. In the meantime, not a lot happens. The couple goes to a party and Sophie sneaks out for late-night drinks with her husband’s ex-partner, to whom she confides her affair. In Jonathan Franzen’s introduction, he compares to Bellow, Roth and Updike – but thinks Fox surpasses them all. The book explicitly references the Thoreau quote about people living lives of quiet desperation. I could sympathize with the midlife malaise depicted. As stagnant marriage stories go, this reminded me of what I’ve read by Richard Yates, just with a little less drinking. It would have made a good Literary Wives selection. In general, though, I can’t summon much enthusiasm. Given the cult classic status, I expected more. (Secondhand – Community Furniture Project, Newbury)

I’m the King of the Castle by Susan Hill

I’m almost tempted to mark this as an R.I.P. read, because it’s very dark indeed. Like The Woman in Black, it takes place in an ominous English mansion and its environs. Other scenes take place in a creepy forest and at castle ruins, adding to the Gothic atmosphere. Edmund Hooper and his father move into Warings after his grandparents’ death. Soon his father makes an unwelcome announcement: he’s hired a housekeeper, Helena Kingshaw, who will be moving in with her son, Charles, who is the same age as Edmund. Hooper writes Kingshaw (as the boys are called throughout the book, probably to replicate how they were known at their boarding schools) a note: “I DIDN’T WANT YOU TO COME HERE.”

That initial hostility erupts into psychological, and sometimes physical, abuse. Kingshaw quickly learns not to trust Hooper. “He thought, I mustn’t let Hooper know what I truly think, never, not about anything.” He tries running away to the woods but Hooper follows him; he makes friends with a local farm boy but it’s little comfort when he’ll soon be starting at Hooper’s school and it looks as if their lonely widowed parents might marry. The boys learn each other’s weaknesses and exploit them. At climactic moments, they have the opportunity to be gracious but retreat from every potential truce.

Heavy on dialogue and description, the book moves quickly with its claustrophobic scenes of nightmares come to life. Referring to the boys by surname makes them seem much older than 10 going on 11. Their antagonism is no child’s play – as the title ironically suggests – or harmless bullying. Is it evil? The reader feels for Kingshaw, the more passive one, yet what he does in revenge is nearly as bad. I was reminded somewhat of Harriet Said… by Beryl Bainbridge. It’s a deeply uncomfortable story, not least for how nature (pecking crows, cases of dead moths) is portrayed as equally menacing. (Public library)

Another 15 books from 1970 that I’ve read:

Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach (in the running for worst book I’ve ever read)

Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume

Runaway Ralph by Beverly Cleary

Fifth Business by Robertson Davies

84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff

If Only They Could Talk by James Herriot

Ripley Under Ground by Patricia Highsmith

Crow by Ted Hughes

Moominvalley in November by Tove Jansson

Being There by Jerzy Kosiński

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison