The House in Paris by Elizabeth Bowen

Told in three sections, Present, Past, and Present. We first meet Henrietta and her stuffed monkey Charles, who are spending an afternoon with Miss Fisher, a stranger (but a family friend) in Paris on the way to stay with her gradnmother elsewhere in France. This is partly a novel of logistics, and all the logistics involved in this trip are discussed at length.

Miss Fisher is nervous. Henrietta meets a boy named Leopold who is also spending the day with Miss Fisher and her sick mother upstairs. They intrigue but also annoy each other. Leopold is going to meet his mother, whom he has never met before--Miss Fisher is concerned that the secrets around his birth never get out. Leopold wants to leave with his mother, but a telegram arrives saying that she will not be coming after all.

In the past, we find out about Leopold's history: years ago his mother, Karen, met Miss Fisher (Naomi), and a man, Max, who is friends with Madame Fisher. Karen and Naomi became friends and years later, when Naomi and Max have become engaged, they all meet in London. Karen and Max, somewhat mysteriously, fall in love. They meet twice and the second time Leopold is conceived and Max writes Naomi a letter telling her. When he gets back to Paris, though, Max is pressured and manipulated by Mme Fisher and kills himself. It become obvious that Mme Fisher is a monster.

Back in the present, Mme Fisher starts getting her claws into Leopold, convincing him that he can't go back to his adopted family. Meanwhile, Karen's husband, Ray, arrives--it turns out that he knows about Leopold and about Karen's affair and married her anyway, loving her more because of this. He takes both Leopold and Henrietta away.

This novel is pretty melodramatic. And many of the key emotional points are unelucidated, as if to say that all we can document or explain are the consequences but not the causes of human behavior. Miss Fisher is the most interesting figure to me--weak and victimized, her 'goodness' and love allow not only her own life to be ruled by her monster mother but also cause problems in future generations. But she is also kind of the novel's moral center, the only character whose motivations are, if not rational, appealing.

Party Going by Henry Green

I only decided to read this book because Brian said it was really good. He described it as a bunch of people wanting to get on a train but unable to because of fog, which made me respond that that sounded like a book by Jose Saramago. Having now read Party Going, I can see how comically wrong I was. The atmosphere is not foreboding and the characters are not flat in Saramagao's way (although they are flat in the sense that their interior lives are shallow, literal, and focused on the present).

Party Going is about a small group of very rich people trying to go on a trip to the South of France, but stuck at the train station because of fog. The central character is Max, fantastically rich and handsome but weak-willed, alternately courting and avoiding all the women. All of the women are somewhat in love with him, but are also devoted to social climbing and putting each other down. In the mix also is Miss Fellowes, the aunt of one of young travelers, who begins the book by picking up the corpse of a dead pigeon she plans to bury, drinking whiskey in a bar, and then fainting, needing to be cared for for the rest of the book.

This book reminds me of Proust but without the beauty or profoundity or charm. Like Proust it charts the minute shifts and nuances of social feeling. But unlike in Proust those appetites and schemes are all there is to the people.

There are crowds of poorer people at the train station that the characters look down on from hotel rooms. There is also a running conversation about someone named Embassy Richard and whether or not he was invited to a party.