Stevie Smith (1) (1902–1971)

This book is definitely not for those who love straight-forward plots and prose. The book reads like a poem. It takes time to read, too, re-reading passages to figure out what she means, much like one of the more dense Joyce novels. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and thought the character of Pompey had amazing insights and was an especially forward thinker for the time (20th century in the years immediately leading up to WWII). She questions and struggles with the unity of marriage, the church, love, lust, suicide, people with more down-to-earth goals in life and those with more of a free spirit who don't want to be tied down by commonalities and mundane day-to-day things, etc.

Pompey also is suffering a sort of break down from a failed relationship, and it is lovely to see her reveal this throughout the book. It's more stream of consciousness but with a very defined purpose. Stevie Smith, in all her writing, is full of intent, full of deeper meanings. I so much adore the character of Pompey. Novel on Yellow Paper is for those who like JD Salinger's short stories, e.e. cummings poetry, and the insight of Graham Greene (very specifically, if you loved the diary part of The End of the Affair like I did, you'll enjoy this book).… (meer)

The poem is so short I can reproduce it here:

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

Profound...so many are not waving but drowning and so often no one notices.… (meer)

I don't know why I waited 11 years after reading the first of Stevie Smith's three novels, Novel on Yellow Paper, which I enjoyed almost as much as her poetry, to read her second. Anyway, Over the Frontier turns out to be fascinating and profoundly odd even by Smith's standards. The first half is a continuation of Novel on Yellow Paper, following Stevie's alter-ego Pompey Casmilus, secretary to a senior civil servant or possibly financier or both, as she succumbs to melancholy in the wake of her break-up with darling Freddie. Eventually her pal Josephine persuades her that what she needs is six months at a Kurhaus on the German Baltic, and it's shortly after they get there that things take a turn for the oneiric. Pompey is drawn into the orbit of a dashing military man — all this takes place (and the novel was published) just before WWII — and caught up in a spy/adventure yarn in the runup to war, with double agents aplenty among the hotel guests, secret cyphers and midnight rides "over the frontier" into Poland. But it all takes place behind the veil of Smith's nebulous prose, the boundaries between perception, imagination and reality almost totally effaced. The way I read it was that Pompey in the fantasy world of the Kurhaus, surrounded by the ugliness of Nazism and the drums of looming war, is seduced by her own power fantasy, perhaps as a way of finally putting darling Freddie behind her. It's almost impossible to describe, this mix of the personal and political, and I'm not sure if it works or not. But I won't be waiting another 11 years to read The Holiday, her own favourite of her novels, and I'm as convinced as ever of her uniqueness as a writer.… (meer)