Short Takes
The Angry Island: Hunting the English
By A. A. Gill
Simon & Schuster, 227 pp., $24
Although A. A. Gill fails to prove his argument -- that anger is the cause for all of the oddities of English behavior -- it hardly matters. His sharp explanations for British peculiarities in "The Angry Island" go from funny, smart, and affectionate to ironic, satiric, and acerbic. He claims that flaming irritation motivates the English to achievement, invention, adventure, and that controlled rage develops in them a fondness for games, rules, manners.
On how the English drink, Gill reports, "Being a good drinker is not about indulgence or pleasure, it's about resisting drink -- whilst drinking." And they find greater pleasure in the shared hangover than in the clan joy of the binge. The English love sport, but even more they love rules: "The English are the accountants and attorneys of fun." Their desire is not to win but "to become plucky little losers in front of a quietly appreciative home crowd." English humor is a form of bullying; a joke is aimed and launched, not shared. The English love of animals "is only peripherally about animals. Its pleasure and its real purpose is to be unkind to people." And the queue, one of the things that have come to symbolize England, is an elegant defense against lawlessness and murder. Perhaps he goes too far with gardens: "The vegetative eugenics practiced in mild-mannered cul-de-sacs, the extreme prejudice of poisoning some blameless green thing while feeding another, are symptoms of a [dull-minded] yearning for a Fascist order." But his observations, however far they go, are delicious and often malicious fun.
Trudy Hopedale
By Jeffrey Frank
Simon & Schuster, 240 pp., $24
Hanging on to the low end of Washington, D.C.'s B list in New Yorker editor Jeffrey Frank's political romp are Trudy Hopedale and Donald Frizzé. Trudy, a Washington hostess and star of a TV talk show, prefers not to detail her earlier careers, misstepping-stones on her path to marrying Roger, a former diplomat and aspiring novelist ("Desks of Power"). Donald, trained as a historian, appears as a frequent guest on Trudy's show, where he delights in displaying his admittedly boring expertise -- the lives of vice presidents. At present, the eve of the 2000 election, he is working on his much-delayed and little-anticipated biography of Garret Augustus Hobart, William McKinley's vice president.
As the contested election takes place, Trudy listlessly consorts with a senatorial lover, is helplessly maneuvered out of her job, and cluelessly loses her husband. Donald finds his work methods questioned, his closeted love life exposed, and his ambitions stalled. In her ditsy, disingenuous voice, Trudy confides, "It's a huge relief to finally have this insane election settled so everyone can just change the subject. It was getting so boring -- the broken ballots, those sickly smiles from all the wrinkly lawyers in their dark suits." This is Washington, where the public memory is short, although the personal grudges are long. Trudy, ready to dust off her messy life and start fresh with the new administration, concludes, "Our city changes all the time . . . even though it's hard to see what George W. Bush wants to accomplish despite all his talk about education and cutting taxes and how he's against growing human beings from spare body parts. Everyone who knows him personally thinks he's really smart and charming, not at all like he acts on television when he tries to express his thoughts, and I'd like to do more to welcome him and his friends to our town."
Salt
By Jeremy Page
Viking, 322 pp., $24.95
The salt marshes of northern England form the backdrop of this gloomy multigenerational tale. Toward the end of World War II, a German soldier falls from the sky and is buried up to his neck in the Norfolk mud. He is discovered and claimed by a lonely local woman. Nine months after unearthing him, she gives birth to his daughter. That daughter, courted by two brothers, marries one and gives birth to a son.
This boy, although mute, observes keenly the grim lives around him -- his marsh-mad mother, an eventual suicide; his brutal, failed father; his frisky, flame-haired love. They all long to escape and make attempts to flee, but this is a landscape that doesn't let go, that pulls them back into its dark dream. The boy, finally a man willing to speak, comes to understand his family history of secrets and lies, but understanding doesn't bring freedom. In the very end, he sees himself, "a distant bloom of colour and smoke in a landscape so dark it's always drawn the light away and extinguished it like a blot." His grandfather, the German soldier who floated down in his silk parachute and then sailed away, provided a burst of light in the damp shadowy sand. Nothing after his disappearance is as bright or fine.
Barbara Fisher is a freelance critic who lives in New York. 