A portrait of a marriage, with all the bittersweet secrets and surprising fulfillment of the 50-year union of two remarkable people, "The Man in the Wooden Hat" is fiction of a very high order from the author of "Old Filth."
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A portrait of a marriage, with all the bittersweet secrets and surprising fulfillment of the 50-year union of two remarkable people, "The Man in the Wooden Hat" is fiction of a very high order from the author of "Old Filth."
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Add this copy of The Man in the Wooden Hat to cart. $0.99, very good condition, Sold by BookHolders rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Gambrills, MD, UNITED STATES, published 2009 by Europa Editions.
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Add this copy of The Man in the Wooden Hat to cart. $0.99, good condition, Sold by More Than Words rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Waltham, MA, UNITED STATES, published 2009 by Europa Editions.
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This 2009 novel by Jane Gardam tells the story of Elizabeth Macintosh and her long marriage to Sir Edward Feathers, who is commonly known as "Old Filth". The name is off-putting in approaching the book. The novel is set in the years after WW II with the war as an important backdrop. The book is set in Hong Kong and England, with important scenes in villages and rural areas known as the Donheads and in London. Betty has had a difficult early life through lack of close family, being interned during the War and, working as a code-breaker. At the age of 28 she receives and accepts a marriage proposal from Edward Feathers, also of poor background, and lonely childhood but a rising, hard-working young lawyer in Hong Kong. Feathers has difficulty expressing feelings and the upcoming marriage promises to be passionless without a strong component of sexual desire. The novel traces the course of the marriage and threads the story of Betty and Edward in with the fate of Britain after the War, as it loses Hong Kong, its other overseas possessions, and must retrench in its place in the world.
The book has many other characters, friends and romantic interests of the two primary characters. But the focus is on Betty and her husband and how they work to get along over a long marriage in the face of temptations, independent lives, and a shortage of physical desire for one another. This could only be an English novel. Gardam's writing is exquisite and understated with its descriptions of people and places and its dialogue. It is old-fashioned in the writing with little of the vulgarity or overt sexual references that characterize much modern writing. The book is a mixture of sadness and humor as Gardam shows the reader her characters and allows reflection on the nature of their lives, marriages, and careers.
This book is a follow-up to Gardam's novel "Old Filth" which focuses on Edward Feathers. The nickname is distracting but it comes from the acronym, "Failed in London, Try Hong Kong" which describes Feathers' early legal career and success. I haven't read "Old Filth" and thus tried to read "The Man in the Wooden Hat" for itself without reference to the earlier work. In many ways I loved the book, with its clear-headedness, character development, and insight into its characters and into England. The book reflects on how the world has changed. While I, sometimes with difficulty, could follow the story, I thought that portions of the book were dependent of the prior novel, "Old Filth". I missed something in perspective and character in reading this book alone without seeing essentially the same history from Edward Feathers' perspective.
In sum, "The Man in the Wooden Hat" is a lovely book and effective as an independent work in many ways, but I suspect it is better read after and as a complement to the earlier book, "Old Filth".
Robin Friedman
Marcelle
May 27, 2010
GARDAM SCORES AGAIN!
I would follow Jane Gardam anywhere- Hong Kong, the snobby English country-side...the Raj,through novels, and short stories. Her writing is clear and sharp. She knows her turf and her people, and just people. How we live. How we lose. How we suffer. How we sometimes prevail.
'"Try it, you'll like it," as some dinky commercial used to say.
Read Old Filth first.
Hilary123
Dec 17, 2009
Not at all filthy!
The seeming rigidity of the Judge in "Old Filth" melted gently as layers were peeled back, but Betty, his wife, now the heroine of Jane Gardam's new book, is not quite so intriguing. Once again we have snapshots of family crises, but the gaps are so large that I find myself still trying to put the pieces together. And too soon, as we know already, the tulips are being planted and all is over and we are left to speculate with Old Filth about Betty and what it all meant. The writing is as good as ever, though. Maybe we'll hear about Betty's one-time lover yet?
