An Utterly Absorbing Trilogy

First of all, ignore the title. It's not what it sounds like. Filth stands for Failed in London; try Hong Kong and it becomes the affectionate nickname of Sir Edward Feathers, once a "Raj orphan," now a noted British judge. 

The publisher's summary says: "Long ago, Old Filth was a Raj orphan - one of the many young children sent 'home' from the East to be fostered and educated in England.

"Jane Gardam's novel tells his story, from his birth in what was then Malaya to the extremities of his old age. In so doing, she not only encapsulates a whole period from the glory days of British Empire, through the Second World War, to the present and beyond, but also illuminates the complexities of the character known variously as Eddie, the Judge, Fevvers, Filth, Master of the Inner Temple, Teddy and Sir Edward Feathers."

And a fascinating story it is, full of hints and allegations about the past and a loathed rival, as well as ruminations on aging and on the complexities of relationships.

I found it absolutely compulsive reading and, when I reached the end, felt bereft...and like a chain smoker lighting a new cigarette from the butt of the old, ordered the second book in the trilogy. 

 

The second book fills in some of the missing pieces of Old Filth's story. Told from the point of view of his wife Betty, it covers much of the same ground as the first book but with an entirely new and absorbing slant. The cause of Old Filth's almost lifelong rivalry with Terence Veneering is revealed, if not fully explored. That is left for the final book of the trilogy, which I raced onto at once.

Quoting: 

“The satisfying conclusion to Gardam’s Old Filth trilogy offers exquisite prose, wry humor, and keen insights into aging and death. While Old Filth introduced readers to Sir Edward Feathers, his dreadful childhood, and his decades-long marriage, The Man in the Wooden Hat was his wife Betty’s story. Last Friends is Terence Veneering’s turn. His beginnings were not those of the usual establishment grandee. Filth’s hated rival in court and in love is the son of a Russian acrobat marooned in the English midlands and a local girl. He escapes the war and later emerges in the Far East as a man of panache and fame. The Bar treats his success with suspicion: where did this handsome, brilliant Slav come from? 

This exquisite story of Veneering, Filth, and their circle tells a bittersweet tale of friendship and grace and of the disappointments and consolations of age. They are all, finally, each other’s last friend as this magnificent series ends with the deep and abiding satisfaction that only great literature provides. prose sparkles with wit, compassion and humor. She keeps us entertained, and she keeps us guessing. Be thankful for her books. Be thankful for this trilogy, which is ultimately an elegy, created with deep affection.”―The Washington Post

 

The Hollow Land by Jane Gardam

"The sun's well up now and I never saw such a morning. Coming up to Cautley Spout the waterfall's hanging like a white thread far down the end of the dale--and closer in there's a red fox running in the bracken and looking quick and angry at all the henhouses still shut up in the yard of old Hannah's white fqrm where she went when her husband, Tatton, got overexcited living in a signal box when trains came back, (But he's well looked after now.) 

"Hannah's kitchen window is steamed over, so she's up. There's a spire of blue smoke going up from her chimney--a blue thread going up like the white waterfall coming down.  '

 The quiet beauty of this book kind of snuck up on me.  Set in very rural Cumbria, a place where the mines have played out and farming is the occupation of the inhabitants who haven't moved away, the book is a collection of stories/vignettes about the rural community and a family from London who rent an old farmhouse as a vacation getaway. 

As the city folk and country folk learn each others' ways, the children of the London family become more and more adapted to the local ways, as, indeed, do their parents. 

It's a pleasantly quiet series of events, spanning many years--and the epitome of a comfort read for troubled times. Then too, I saw so many parallels with our own experience in moving from the suburbs of Tampa to very rural Madison County. 

But it's the beauty of the descriptions that will send me back to read it again, as well as sending me in search of more of Gardam's work. Old Filth, I think, will be the next.

Highly recommended.