One of my reading goals of 2010 is to read more books published by New York Review Book Classics. In fact, I ordered several titles right after reading and throughly enjoying Stephen Benatar’s marvelous novel Wish Her Safe at Home. Looking at the book’s cover, you might get the impression that the tale is set in the early decades of the twentieth century. But that’s not so; this delightful novel is set in 1981 right around the time of the royal wedding–an event that caused some people, temporarily at least, to believe in such things as fairytale romances.

Benatar’s novel did not win the Booker prize in 1982 much to the disappointment of one of the judges, John Carey–who according to the introduction, hopes that he is making up a bit for the fact the novel didn’t win. Thomas Keneally’s novel Schindler’s Ark carried off the prize that year. And looking at the Booker prize website , Benatar’s novel didn’t even make the short list. But since experience proves that I seem to prefer the prize losers over the prize winners, I perversely pay more attention to the names of the novels that didn’t win.  Stephen Benatar is an entirely new author for me. Apparently, Benatar conducts his own ballsy guerrilla marketing by waylaying customers in bookshops and asking them if they are interested in buying one of his books. In this day and age, we seem to see massive advertising campaigns for a few “special” and all-too frequently nauseating titles, and Benatar’s self-promotion brings up the issue of author involvement in book advertising. I think it’s great to see authors establish their own websites, blogs and even tackle the sort of personal approach taken by Benatar.

Now back to the novel….

In Wish Her Safe at Home forty-seven-year-old Rachel Waring inherits a house in Bristol from an eccentric, reclusive  great-aunt she hasn’t seen in almost forty years. When Rachel gets the unexpected news, she’s been working at a mundane job in ‘mail order’ for over 11 years in London and she shares a flat with her long-time roommate Sylvia. While Sylvia is a bit sour and resentful about Rachel’s inheritance, Rachel is understandably thrilled. At the first opportunity, she dashes off to Bristol for an inspection. The house, a minor landmark, is a three-floored “terraced, tall, eighteenth century, elegant” home once lived in by a long-forgotten politician named Horatio Gavin. The house which had been occupied for decades by Rachel’s great-aunt and her female companion Bridget shows the tell-tale residue of being inhabited by those who suffer from mental illness:

“Here, I was pointedly informed, had the refuse of many years amassed into something to rival the town tip; in the centre it had even touched the ceiling.And although the council had fumigated, although the rodent inspector had laid his poisons, still the air was fetid, the walls damp, discoloured–the paper hanging in places like the peeling skin of mushrooms.”

It seems that Rachel’s aunt lived in eccentric seclusion in the house, and according to Mrs Pimm, the Almoner at the hospital in which Aunt Alicia eventually died, Aunt Alicia was completely potty. Mrs. Pimm relates the story to Rachel with entirely too much relish, informing Rachel that the old lady:

“was gaga….Sometimes according to the neighbours, they could be as sweet as pie; but sometimes you would hear them scream and it was just like they were doing each other in! Like Bedlam, said the neighbours–well only thank heaven for such good solid walls! There were endless complaints to the council.”

Once Rachel sees the house, she falls in love with it, and so she dumps her job and her roommate, takes her life savings of 20,000 pounds and moves into the house, overseeing renovations. Leaving a life full of regrets and lost opportunities, Rachel sees her move as a chance to reinvent herself, and this process parallels the renovations of her new home. The house is gradually renewed from its rather sorry state, and as Rachel disconnects from her past, she becomes obsessed with writing a biography of the house’s owner, Horatio Gavin.

Rachel, the heroine of the novel (and I am very deliberately using the term heroine here) is a cross between Blanche Dubois and an aged Scarlett O’Hara, and this is amplified by the notion that Rachel fancies that she looks a lot like Vivien Leigh. In fact A Streetcar Named Desire is one of Rachel’s favourite films, and she somewhat troublingly admires and identifies with Blanche:

“I was very much moved by her brave declaration: ‘I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.’”

Yes, it’s enough to set off alarm bells. Given Rachel’s identification with Blanche coupled with the fact that most of Rachel’s romantic ideas seem to be influenced by film, it should come as no surprise that Rachel has a teensy problem when it comes to men. With images of Rhett Butler, Gary Cooper and Frank Sinatra bouncing around in her head, Rachel’s thoughts dwell on the various males in the periphery of her life. It starts with the “romantic chemist” in the corner shop, and then there’s the strapping, young  gardener–a man who works shirtless in Rachel’s garden:

“Damp golden curls across the chest. And running down from the navel. And probably beyond.”

 And if all else fails there’s the vicar:

“The minister was young and not bad looking in a beefy sort of way. This no doubt added a spot of pep to the service. No wonder there were so many women present; I might even come again myself. He had nicely shaped hands, well-manicured, the fingers dark with hair. His wrists as well. He’d almost surely have a hairy chest.”

Wish Her Safe at Home is a delightful read, and Benatar skillfully follows his unreliable narrator heroine to the end-of-the-line. There’s so much more I could write about this novel–it’s funny, poignant, and touching. Some books are a rare treat to read and Wish Her Safe at Home falls into that category. Interpreting the world through Rachel’s vision was an experience I don’t think I’ll forget (although my reactions were rather different from those in John Carey’s introduction). Benatar maintains a pitch perfect interpretation of Rachel, never once slipping from that unique character’s perspective. Written by another author this novel could have been dour and depressing stuff. Instead there’s a light sort of almost magical humour to Rachel’s interactions and pseudo-relationships as she obliviously sails beyond the mundane, sobering realities of disappointment, loneliness and criticism to eventually become a triumphant version of her favourite film star.

It’s difficult to know how much I can say about Wish Her Safe at Home without spoiling it, but as the reviews on the back and inside of the book make aspects of it pretty clear, I can at least go that far. It’s narrated by Rachel Waring, a forty-something woman who has inherited a house in Bristol. For those sensitive to the strains of the unreliable narrator, our ears prick up when we hear on page 2 that “actually your father did once mention a strain of insanity in his family.” And then there are the previous inhabitants of the house, Rachel’s great aunt and her companion Bridget:

When Bridget had committed suicide at the age of eighty-four, Aunt Alicia, ten years her senior, had gone on living in the same house with Bridget’s body: a state of affairs which had come to light only after two weeks…

Oh. Ah. And did I mention how much she identifies with Vivien Leigh as Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire? So it comes as both a shock, and no surprise at all, when Rachel decides on visiting the rundown house that she intends to live there herself (“I felt as if I’d never had a real home”). And as she inhabits it, so it begins to inhabit her. In particular she becomes fascinated by a former occupant of the house, a minor 18th century abolitionist called Horatio Gavin. As her interest swerves toward obsession, and she begins writing his life, simultaneously her relations with other people – dare one say, real people – are increasingly irregular: “These days I didn’t appear to like anybody very much. Everywhere, it seemed, I sensed ulterior motives.”

Her dealings with her gardener (“nicely tanned and muscular”), chemist (“it came as no surprise that he should be the strong and silent type. That was the kind of man I often found attractive”) and vicar (“He’d almost surely have a hairy chest”) are not always, well, regular, but now I really have reached the point where I can’t go any further for fear of spoiling it. The progression of the story in any event is not that surprising, but what Benatar has done which is remarkable is in the creation of Rachel’s voice and character. Eccentric, flaky, dotty, she is never unsympathetic or tiresome, and the skittishness of her movement from present to past is not just in keeping with the workings of her mind, but positively touching in its slow revelation of how the past infects the present. She is so alive and real that for a moment I was about to refer to the author as she.

Rachel’s need for a home and her sense of dislocation is beautifully done, and the book – to slip into reviewerly cliche – really is by turns funny, affecting and unnerving. If the outcome and storyline do not overwhelm by surprise, nonetheless the journey is increasingly pleasurable while it lasts. Benatar has given self-publishing a boon by bringing Wish Her Safe at Home back into print, and it might even show that one character’s faith in an unfair world is misplaced: “He must have thought that nothing could get any worse. But he should have listened to William Shakespeare, shouldn’t he? Things can always get worse.”