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fable: occasionally, and at their very best, they also have the necessary fairytale bite and discomfort...The experience of reading this collection is rather like being wrapped in a tartan blanket and handed a nice mug of cocoa. Treats on offer include the adventures of
Colonel Pericles "Perry" Barkwell, tales of the pipe-smoking Polly Wantage, and the sorry story of the poor old general who is slowly losing his mind. There is a mysterious "hedging and ditching" man and a dog called Archibald Scott-Moncrieff. And of course Obadiah Oak, the village's literal and proverbial last peasant, who "exudes the aromas of wet leather and horse manure, costive dogs, turnips, rainwater and cabbage water, sausages, verdigris, woollen socks, Leicester cheese, fish guts, fraying curtains, mice under the stairs, mud on the carpet and woodlice behind the pipes"."
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Bernières’s sense of the “better laughter, warmer rain” of the past serves up a comforting fictional world that his many loyal readers will find delicious" and concludes "it is interesting that the most haunting stories, literally, are about ghosts: a woman who lives happily with the ghost of her dead husband; a man’s death protectively foretold by the spirit of his grandmother. It is here that de Bernières’s sentimental attachment to his lost boyhood village comes closest to narrowing the gap between then and now."
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writes "Notwithstanding is a village where "strange things happen from time to time". There is a case of suspected food poisoning. Someone kills a rabbit. Someone catches a fish. A grumpy old lady sends
Christmas cards. All the stories have that well-told, underwritten quality of the fairytale or the
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In the
Afterword to the collection, Louis de Bernières addresses the nation. He looks back wistfully to a time when "Villages were proper communities", with pubs and shops and a rectory "with a proper rector in it". The stories in Notwithstanding, he explains, with just a hint of a huff, are a
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notes "de Bernières here has his eye and ear firmly on
English eccentricity and individualism. His intention may well have been to make the familiar strange, but his stories achieve the opposite. While not quite the vanished world that the author feels it to be – the emotional intensity of de
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These are my stories of a vanished
England, The countryside is dying - part of the reason is that too many of the people living there have the attitudes of 'townies', the author of Captain Corelli's Mandolin tells Roya
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celebration of the "quirky people" he remembers from his childhood in Surrey: "the belligerent spinsters, the naked generals, the fudge-makers, the people who talked to spiders".
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370:, 18 Dec 2004) - a man considers the house in which he grew up in before a fire started by candles on a Christmas Tree killed himself and his family.
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duets, when Jenny's husband catches Piers de
Mandeville (a descendant of the Lord of the Manor) loitering in the flowerbed and listening intently.
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217:, 15 August 1998) - Still walkie-talking, the narrator's mother asks him to find a wife. He begins his search with the help of Archie.
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Poet
Laureate Carol Ann Duffy reviews two enjoyable new short story collections, from Louis de Bernières and Patrick Gale,
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423:, Jan 2003) - Obadiah Oak's daughter persuades him to sell up and move to Devon, but he cannot let go of his old home.
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in preparation for the visit of carol singers, but ends up giving them to
Obadiah, "the last peasant in the village".
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fledgling to look after which he names Lizzie. His Uncle Dick resolves to teach it to say 'Silly Bugger'.
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Auspicious Meeting of the Third Member of the Famous Notwithstanding Wind Quartet with the First Two
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clarinet to buy, but she is suspicious as it is stamped 'Property of the
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For the "notwithstanding clause" in the Canadian constitution, see
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It contains 20 stories, first publication in brackets :-
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driver who has broken down, only to find she is collecting
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Mrs Mac, accompanied by her husband, visits his graveside.
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which brings back unwelcome memories of killing from war.
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Section 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms
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183:Archie from bringing dead birds into the house.
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286:All My Everlasting Love
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584:Harvill Secker books
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315:Communion
181:retriever
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304:Devienne
251:pheasant
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66:Language
60:Rob Ryan
549:Nikkhah
351:Picador
262:Mrs Mac
157:Stories
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