Grim Romance

...Grim Romance Favours By Bernice Rubens Summit 187 pp $8 95 Reviewed by Harvey Curtis Webster Author, "On a Darkling Plain," "After the Trauma" One comes away from this gnm novel reminded of Ivy Compton-Bur-nett The resemblance is not stylistic Where Compton-Burnett tended to use dialogue to achieve her effect, Bermce Rubens employs a rather thick mixture of narrative and stream of consciousness No, the similarity goes deeper For the author's characters, as for Compton-Burnett's, life is a sorry business—mere existence—whose strictures are dictated by an uncaring someone or something Although God is not mentioned in Favours, there seems to be at work in the novel a primal force more indifferent than Thomas Hardy's Immanent Will The two protagonists are Miss Hawkins, sometimes referred to as Jean, and Brian Watts, a man dominated by his mother, whom he hates Too weak to kill her, he wants to make money as a gigolo and send her to The Petumas, a posh retirement home where she will no longer be able to harass him Miss Hawkins is destined to be Brian's victim The habit of obedience she acquired as a child at an orphanage—where love of Christ excluded love of the orphans—has stood her in good stead Having begun her working life wrapping candy in a factory, she has advanced to chief cashier by the time of her approaching retirement at 60 But she is so disconsolate at the prospect of no one to obey that she seriously contemplates suicide This gap in her life is soon filled, however At her farewell dinner, she is given a green five-year diary that she teels compelled to fill "Five years It was the longest and the most unjust order she had been given " Initially, she writes only about eating and sleeping After a week passes, her subconscious starts leaking onto the page Her diary becomes the agent of her repressed desires, and begins to give her orders She is commanded, for instance, to acquire a friend, and she complies by painting a moustache on her reflection in a mirror With this necessarily acquiescent listener, she discusses love, poetry and other matters The diary, still not satisfied, in slow succession orders her to meet a man in the library, make him kiss her, go to the movies with her, and have a meal with her That dinner is perhaps Miss Hawkins' worst mistake For Brian Watts, the man she goes out with, gets a rather nasty idea while reading the menu He will charge Miss Hawkins graduated fees for his sexual favors two pence for holding one hand, three pence for both hands, a shilling for a hand on one knee—all the way up to ?0 for intercourse The weaknesses of Favours revolve around Brian He is, first, a little hard to believe in, an overmethodical gigolo (though this may be precisely the kind of gigolo a mother-smothered man would evolve into) His commercial success is equally difficult to go along with, besides relieving Miss Hawkins of over ?,000, he enlarges his clientele until he has enough money to put his mother away in The Petumas More important, a third of the way through the novel, Rubens begins switching the point of view back and forth between Miss Hawkins and Brian This seems to me to ruin the tone Rubens is striving for The bleakly Dreisenan attitude that has prevailed until now too often becomes one of amusement at the expense of the characters Rubens' condescension is most pronounced in the climax After paying Brian her last ?0 tor intercourse...

...Is she, hke Compton-Burnett, expressing an almost cool acceptance of the way people are' The last I would guess, without much assurance Yet whatever Rubens' intentions, there is no doubt that she has created an interesting, well-written novel—one of those minor, haunting tales that publishers, reviewers and bookstores neglect in favor of rousing blockbusters...

...Miss Hawkins realizes that she gets more pleasure from checking the item off in her diary than she does from the act itself She hopes that alter Brian marries her she won't be required to have sex again But as she soon discovers, she has nothing to fear—for Brian marries a slightly younger client who has more money Chagrined, Miss Hawkins writes "kill" in her diary and proceeds to murder Brian's wife, who rather too conveniently lives in The Petumas The murder weapon is part of the 40 yards of scarf Miss Hawkins has been knitting (a hobby considered virtuous at the orphanage where she was raised) Favours is difficult to assess Is Rubens obbquely attacking a social system that requires retirement' Is she trying to convey a disdain for a God who creates old age...