Wednesday, January 26, 2011

No Signposts in the Sea - Vita Sackville-West

It’s Virago Reading Week, hosted by BookSnob & A Few of my Favourite Books. It was a good opportunity to have a look at the Virago Modern Classics on the tbr shelves & I chose Vita Sackville-West’s last novel, No Signposts in the Sea. Sackville-West is probably best known as a writer for her beautifully elegiac novel, All Passion Spent (also a VMC), & as a woman, as the lover of Virginia Woolf & the inspiration for her novel, Orlando.

No Signposts in the Sea is the story of Edmund Carr, a political journalist, who is told that he only has a few months to live. Edmund has been quite a solitary man. He has worked his way up from humble beginnings to a position of some power & influence. He has never married & has had fleeting, almost impersonal affairs with women who were never allowed to get too close. At the time that he discovers he is ill, he realises that he is in love with Laura Drysdale, a widow in her late 30s. Edmund & Laura move in the same social circles but have never been close. When Edmund discovers that Laura is about to take a Pacific cruise, he decided to spend his last months on the same cruise, as close to Laura as possible.

Edmund & Laura’s relationship grows closer as they spend time together on the ship & on various excursions at the ports they visit. They discuss their different ideas of marriage. Edmund learns a lot about Laura’s marriage & her ideas about the perfect relationship, but gives little away himself. He becomes intensely jealous of another passenger, Colonel Dalrymple, who is interested in Laura. Edmund & Laura go to a native market & are nearly caught up in a riot. The highlight of the trip is their overnight stay in a villa loaned to them by a stranger they meet in a port city,

I suppose I anticipated a luxurious villa with a cocktail bar in the drawing-room and carved wooden figures of Negroes holding electric lights. It was, on the contrary, simple to the point of austerity, with white-washed walls, red-tiled floors, large arm-chairs of rattan, and plain serviceable furniture of a peasant type. From the entrance hall and up the staircase drifted the scent of burning joss-sticks and that was the Orient, but in the same hall a door stood open on to a purely Spanish patio with pots of camellias standing about, and a little fountain splashing into a basin.

Edmund’s thoughts & feelings swing from intense happiness & contentment in his love for Laura & equally intense misery & jealousy. Laura is more enigmatic and, of course, we don’t hear her thoughts as we do Edmund’s. The book is an interior monologue & the reader becomes quite as involved in Edmund’s feelings as he is himself.

The Introduction to this edition by Victoria Glendinning was very interesting. As usual, I read the Introduction after I’d read the book. Sackville-West was very ill herself when she wrote the book although her illness had not been diagnosed. She loved cruises & spent several months every year with her husband, Harold Nicolson, cruising the Mediterranean, the Pacific or the West Indies. The cruise in the novel is based on one Sackville-West took in 1959 to India, Ceylon, Singapore, Manila, Saigon & Yokohama. Glendinning sees the book as an expression of Vita’s opinions & thoughts about love, marriage & relationships. Vita & Harold had an open marriage, both had heterosexual & homosexual affairs. Through Edmund & Laura, Vita described her idea of an ideal relationship. Mutual respect, independence, separate bedrooms & the same sense of values. Fidelity is important but it’s more important to avoid hurting the other person. Anyone who knows about Vita’s life & her own marriage can see that these are very close to her own views.

When I started the book, I found it hard to work out when it was set. It felt like the 1920s, I suppose the cruise ship setting made it feel very Twenties, until I came across references to WWII. It was written in the early 60s. In a way, it’s quite timeless. It could just as easily take place in the 19th century or the Edwardian period because it’s a book about emotions & the interior life more than events & the outside world. No Signposts in the Sea is a book where very little happens but it’s an absorbing study of emotions sharpened by the knowledge that life is finite. Edmund has to decide in the end whether he should take the risk of telling Laura of his love.

13 comments:

  1. Fantastic review, Lyn. I hadn't heard much about this one of Vita's novels before and you have intrigued me. I'd be interested to read how Vita takes on the male narrative voice, especially. I look forward to reading it!

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  2. I think this is probaby my favourite of all of the VSWs - you're right, not much happens, but the character studies and insights into emotions are just fantastic.

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  3. Not one I know, but it seems interesting that both this and 'All Passions Spent' focus on people who recognise (for different reasons) that they are coming to the end of their lives and are determined to get as much out of what is left as possible. I suspect Sackville-West was somewhat similar.

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  4. This is a great review. I have never read VSW's fiction, only the gardening books and I own one about being a land girl during the war. I always think of All Passion Spent when I think of her fiction, but this also sounds intriguing.

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  5. I have yet to read anything by Vita but this is twice in two days that I've read wonderful reviews about two of her books!

    Thanks for the heads-up on this one...oh, and I love the name, Edmund!

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  6. This was my first VSW, and I didn't like it at all - just found it dull - but I think, after loving All Passion Spent, and especially The Heir, that I might get more out of it now.

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  7. I haven't read any Vita Sackville-Wests before, but this sounds interesting. Like you, I read 'introductions' AFTER finishing the book, ever since finding out who the 'baddy' was in the introduction to 'The Woman in White' before he was revealed in the book!
    I enjoyed your review very much. It whetted my appetite for this book and I must look out for it. I have 'All Passion Spent' and 'Family History' on my Virago shelf, neither of which I've read yet. Time to move them to the TBR bookcase, I think!

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  8. I love VSW's writing and you make this sound quite wonderful. Time to track sown a copy for my collection I think.

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  9. Thank you to everyone for commenting. Vita is such an interesting writer & this book seems very personal in its themes about marriage & also because she wrote it near the end of her own life. I hope those of you who haven't read it yet enjoy it when the time comes.

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  10. Thank you for this great review. I hadn't heard of this one before and it sounds like quite a read. Another one to add to the TBR :-) What a great week!

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  11. I read half of The Edwardians by VSW last year, but didn't finish it, that was more of an elegy for her childhood home at Knole I think. So I'm not entirely sure about her yet, but with the few Viragos I have, I'm sure I'll get back to her eventually and maybe try this one or All Passion Spent.

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  12. I love Vita Sackville-West, absolutely adore her, and I just bumped this one up my TBR list. Great review! I especially appreciate the background/biographical info from the introduction. Yeah, I never read an introduction before I read a book. I've had too many plots spoiled that way. I learned my lesson. Anyways, thanks for the review of this hard-to-find-info-on book!

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    1. Thanks Bree. I have Family History & her biography of Joan of Arc on my tbr shelves. I always read the Intro afterwards, even if I know nothing about the author. I'd rather do a little reading about them somewhere else than risk finding out plot details before I've read the book.

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