Aghast

I've just finished reading one of the most extraordinary novels I have ever come across, one that actually left me, well, aghast is the only word. It was described in a review as 'a very clever and very alarming novel' and both adjectives are right, especially the latter. Lord Jim at Home by Dinah Brooke was originally published in 1973, when it was greeted mostly with shock and incomprehension, and was duly forgotten, until it was recently reissued by McNally in the US and then by Daunt Books over here. It tells the story of one Giles Trenchard, born into the upper middle class, to a father who cordially loathes him and an indifferent mother who is content for him to be treated with brutal harshness by his nurse(s). He grows up entirely devoid of talent – except for cricket, which he plays to (minor) county level – and unable or unwilling to apply himself to anything, least of all a career. Wartime service in the Navy – as a rating, not an officer – gives his life some structure and purpose, but after the war he drifts helplessly,  drinks like a fish, and takes to crime to subsidise his rackety way of life. When at last he falls in love, in a strangely infantile, abject way, things begin to move towards a horrifying climax – and there has already been plenty of horror in Giles's wartime experiences, not to mention some deeply grotesque sex scenes. All of which sounds thoroughly uninviting. However, Brooke's skill in unfolding the story is such that you – I, anyway – are gripped from beginning to end, and keep turning the pages. There is even real pleasure, of a particular, almost painful kind, to be had in the experience. Brooke tells the story from no fixed angle; the perspective keeps shifting, inconspicuously but with dizzying effect, such that one moment we are with Giles or one of the major characters, and the next we are seeing things through the eyes of some purely marginal person or persons. Giles indeed is mostly seen from outside, and this seems right, as he has no self-awareness and seems most of the time entirely out of touch with himself. He appears to have no insight into himself, and to be observing his actions from the outside, at once calm and bemused, as his life reels out of control, hurtling towards a horrific climax. This is one of those books that somehow heightens the senses and makes you feel as if you are in a new world, whose existence you barely suspected. It is, I believe, an absolute one off: I can certainly think of nothing else like it.  
  As for Dinah Brooke, I was relieved to discover that the narrative of Lord Jim at Home was not wholly spun from her own imagination, but in its externals closely follows a case that was widely reported in the early 1950s. I shan't say any more for fear of giving away the plot (assuming anyone is still up for reading the book). Brooke, an alumna of Cheltenham Ladies' College, published a handful of novels in the early Seventies, having lived for some time in France and America, where she had an affair with Terry Southern, who helped launch her literary career. Back in England, she threw herself into the late Sixties/early Seventies counterculture, taking drugs and setting up a kind of feminist commune in Camden Town. When that (and her marriage) fell apart, she took off for Pune and became a devotee of the guru Osho (Baghwan Shree Rajneesh), living in an ashram for six years. Apparently her life there left her feeling no need or desire to write. Once, she told Osho that he had stolen her creativity. 'His response,' she recalled in an interview, 'was to hit me, really hard. The effect was to release my attachment to writing. That is what an Enlightened Master is for.' Hmm. Each to his own, I suppose, but it seems a shame that a writer capable of producing something so utterly extraordinary as Lord Jim at Home should have abandoned her gift so readily. Dinah Brooke, now 88, is still alive, very active and full of beans – not writing, but delighted that Lord Jim has been rediscovered. There's an interview with her here, but it should carry a spoiler alert for those hardy souls who intend to read the book.