The Legacy

Following the advertisement at reference 2, I have now got around to reading 'The Legacy' again, seemingly last read nearly ten years ago and noticed briefly at reference 3. 

A book which is vaguely autobiographical, with the main characters being a version of the author's father (German) and a version of the author's mother (English), moving around between France, Spain and Germany.

The book is framed by a nasty incident in an unpleasant Prussian army version of one of our preparatory schools - at least some of which I dare say were not that much better at the time. An incident which is only closed out at the end of the book, say thirty or forty years later, just before the start of the first world war. 

We get five parts: the rich Jewish family in Berlin; the two not-so-rich Catholic families down south in Baden, a part of Germany where at least some of the upper classes spoke French rather than German; the first marriage; the second marriage (the one which produced the author); and, the end of the affair. With the two marriage parts taking up rather more than half the total of around 350 pages.

Some of the action is driven by the tensions between the Protestant & Prussian north and the easy going, Catholic south. Not all of which was very happy about the unification, still recent when the book opens. While the rich Jewish family rubs along quite happily with the two Catholic families with which it is mixed up by marriage. One of the Catholic families is devout and goes in for duty. The other is comfortably decaying on its landed estate - and produces some peculiar sons, one of whom goes to the preparatory school and another of whom goes through the two marriages mentioned above.

As noted at reference 3, the book is funny and informative and it is easy to lose track of all the people. But I am less positive about it now. We are informed about a kind of people living in a kind of world which more or less vanished a hundred years ago. 

I found the prose style a little irritating and the characterisation weak. While I was amused by the goings on of the two main characters we did get, there were huge gaps in the narrative and I didn't really understand either of them. It was as if the people in the book were just puppets, vehicles for the author to provide an impressionistic view of a chunk of life in the upper reaches of society of the time in question. As far as that goes, perhaps not that far different from her hero, Aldous Huxley. And as far setting is concerned, perhaps a rustic German version of the first parts of the urban Forsyte Saga.

So an interesting read, but I doubt if I will read it again.

Reference 1: The Legacy - Sybille Bedford - 1956.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/02/haggis.html.

Reference 3: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2011/04/health-safety.html.

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/03/threes.html. The end of the Forsyte Saga, just about this time last year.

PS 1: snap of sea urchins mentioned because they are offered by the gastronomic father to the raffish mother during their courtship. And Simenon mentions them in his stories which are set in or visit the south of France. Don't fancy them myself.

PS 2: Google seemed to have updated the template I use for this blog again. No warning, as ever.

PS 3: Google challenged my logon this afternoon by requiring me to translate two of those tricky words designed to trick robots. First time they have done such a thing - at least as far as I can remember.