Morgan's Passing, Take Nothing with You and By Nightfall

 

I loved the first 20 pages as we are introduced to "Doctor" Morgan. We are in 1967 and the book is told through the passing years, an interval of a year or two until we reach 1979. Morgan Gower is the husband of Bonny and the father of seven daughters. He manages the hardware store owned by Bonny's well off family, that's if he can be bothered. He is definitely one of the strangest characters I have ever come across in books. He uses a leaky fountain pen, and rather than buying new cartridges, he fills the old one using a hypodermic needle!

He becomes friends with Emily and Leon and spends more time with them than his own family. Although the book is written mainly about Morgan there are some parts told from Emily's point of view. A piece where she remembers Leon is superb. As is a funeral in her old home town. When she thinks about Morgan's deficiencies, boy are there a lot, taking up a whole page. "His manners were atrocious etc etc". How does anyone put up with him? He is just so interesting.

It's all about Eustace. From middle age the book tracks back to the years between leaving his privileged private school and those just after. "He wasn't stupid, but he was fatally inattentive". But after failing to get on with learning the clarinet, he finds a huge passion for the cello. He is lucky to find such an influential teacher as Carla Gold, an ex top soloist. She arranges for him to spend time in the holidays at a Scottish retreat for promising musicians with another teacher Jean Curwen. The big house reminded me of when I was in my late teens and that "uncarpeted back staircase". I could have shared a large bedroom with my brother, but opted instead for the tiny back bedroom. This I reached by a similar tight stair ("the maid's staircase") from a cupboard like door in the dining room. Space for just a bed.

However, the story is inspired by the author's own promising musical career, so the technical detail of learning to play professionally with others is extensive but never boring. At home in Weston-super-Mare, his parents have their own difficulties which come to a head later in the story. This leads to one awful experience for Eustace when his evil mother takes revenge for something for which Eustace is unaware. Just a couple of pages that were as upsetting as anything I had read for a long time. But hovering in the background are the feelings Eustace has for boys and not girls. These are fully explained in the shorter sections when Eustace is fifty and starting an affair via the internet with another man. But it is the cello for which I will remember this book. And how hard it is to master this instrument.

My second novel by Michael Cunningham and I should have first looked at my review for his book "The Hours" that we read for Book Club. I was not impressed then and this one was the same. Peter is forty -four and married to Rebecca forty. It starts well enough going to a party. To get there "they are crossing Central Park along Seventy-Ninth Street, one of the finest of all nocturnal taxi rides". And here we have it, an ode to Manhattan. They live (comfortably) in a swanky loft on Mercer Street. Among the the locations mentioned later are Spring Street Station, a visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and many more.

There is an awful lot of Peter contemplating about his marriage. she who is "capable of remembering every slight, and trotting out a month's worth of Peter's crimes when the argument hots up". And an awful lot more about contemporary art that is Peter's specialty. (The chapter called Art History to be avoided). Then here is Rebecca's younger brother Mizzy (Ethan) come to stay. He who is a reformed druggie. Or not? There is some backtracking to adolescence. Of course.

They have a daughter Bea, only reachable by an occasional phone call. And then Peter is off again for a nighttime stroll through the city: Broadway, Lower East Side, Tribecca, on to Bovary, the outskirts of Chinatown, crossing Canal, Financial District and Battery Park. Next day he takes the L out of Brunswick to the Myrtle Avenue stop. Who cares? Back at the gallery, we at last hear from his assistant Uta. Now she does have something to say. Why not a book about her instead? Far too late. I nearly gave up this book on more than one occasion, but somehow persevered. Idiot!