‘Compulsive, cruel and brilliant’: The Retros you should be reading – The Fate of Mary
THE FATE OF MARY ROSE by Caroline Blackwood (Virago £9.99, 240pp)
Historian Rowan Anderson lives in London while his wife, Cressida, lives in a Kent village with their unplanned, delicate daughter Mary Rose.
The appalling Rowan reluctantly visits monthly but despises his cringing wife and her over-protective preoccupation with their child.
When a girl from a local estate is raped and murdered, Cressida becomes obsessed with Mary Rose’s safety, until Rowan intervenes – with unforeseen consequences.
This dark, thrilling portrayal of a dysfunctional marriage unpeels a history of traumatic abuse and repressed rage but what lingers is the spectre of their pallid, voiceless child, trapped between them and a hopelessly bleak, damaged future.
Compulsive, cruel and brilliant.
IN A FREE STATE by V.S.Naipaul (Picador £10.99, 248pp)
Naipaul won the 1971 Booker prize with this five-part drama, the title tale sandwiched between two short stories and two travel journey extracts, all linked by the theme of alienation, of people attempting to connect with unfamiliar surroundings.
In A Free State sees unstable, secretly gay Englishman Bobby, working for the colonial government in a volatile, newly independent African state, offer a lift back to their compound to Linda, a colleague’s wife.
Their journey is fraught with tension, which increases on an overnight stop that exposes simmering violence.
The book balances cruelty and compassion as it asks whether freedom empowers or simply changes the nature of enslavement?
THE DARING YOUNG MAN ON THE FLYING TRAPEZE by William Saroyan (Faber £9.99, 256pp)
The Daring Young Man On The Flying Trapeze is available now from the Mail Bookshop
First published in 1934, this debut short-story collection became an instant bestseller, inspiring Jack Kerouac by introducing a free-form style focusing on poor, dispossessed young men in northern California during the Depression, many of whom aspire to be writers.
A starving author finds no work at the job centre and unravels in the lead story, while in Seventy Thousand Assyrians, the narrator tries to encapsulate what a visit to a cheap barbershop represents.
In A Curved Line, a student at an art class, initially dismissive, determines to learn more about other pupils. Highly original, it’s not for everyone but, as it explores the truth of writing, some will love it.