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A review by robinwalter
The Stone of Chastity by Margery Sharp
funny
lighthearted
relaxing
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
In the opening paragraph of her introduction to the Dean Street Press edition of Marjorie Sharp's Harlequin House historian Elizabeth Crawford mentions that the Manchester Guardian described sharp as this "second only to Woodhouse". I really, really enjoyed Harlequin house and found it hugely entertaining, but strong similarities to Woodhouse in tone and style were comparatively few. In this one, the flavour and aroma of Plum was very strong.
Right from the basic premise of the book, a comedy of errors with a self-absorbed academic (tautology?) wreaking havoc in an implausibly bucolic backwater village, this story had a PGW feel. That is of course, not a bad thing as long as the writer is sufficiently talented. In this book it became very clear to me why the Manchester Guardian said what it did. I laughed out loud many, many times throughout this book, often after reading passages reminiscent of Wodehouse. Here are two examples:
Right from the basic premise of the book, a comedy of errors with a self-absorbed academic (tautology?) wreaking havoc in an implausibly bucolic backwater village, this story had a PGW feel. That is of course, not a bad thing as long as the writer is sufficiently talented. In this book it became very clear to me why the Manchester Guardian said what it did. I laughed out loud many, many times throughout this book, often after reading passages reminiscent of Wodehouse. Here are two examples:
He could not bring himself publicly to confess that his most poignant erotic memory was of a broken spring which twanged—oddly enough—on the note of B flat. The observation said much for his ear, but too little for his powers of concentration.
At Vander’s Farm they were teetotal and Nonconformist, within reasonable limits. That is to say, Mr. Pye drank whisky medicinally, and during a prolonged drought sent his wife to pray with the Anglicans. He needed physicking, however, considerably more often than his land needed rain.
It is clear that another similarity between Ms Sharp's writing in this book and PGW's work is that like him, Ms Sharp here set out to do nothing more than entertain and amuse. Unlike, for example, Jane Austen.
My two favourite works of Jane Austen are, in order, Persuasion and Mansfield Park. Both feature lots of wryly amusing lines but in both, and especially in Mansfield Park, the witticisms and humour have an acidic edge to them – "it's funny because it's true, and I'm not actually happy that it is". In contrast, in this book it did not feel to me as if Ms Sharp was presenting any subtle social commentary or venting anger through humour. I got the impression she was writing with the sole aim of making her readers laugh. In that, for me, she succeeded admirably. This paragraph from the bottom of the first page set the tone for me, signalling a lighthearted laughfest was incoming
She had appeared at lunch wearing a very nice necklace of scarabs and enamel, and the Professor, cocking an interested eye, had remarked that it was just such trifles—the sight of an English gentlewoman ornamented with seven phallic symbols—that made life so perennially interesting to the folklorist. Mrs. Pounce did not know what a phallic symbol was, and instinct (or possibly a look in her son’s eye) prevented her asking; but after coffee she quietly sought out a dictionary and took it upstairs. At the moment she was feeling she could never come down again.
A lengthy passage of more than a page in which a politician's lecture on the superiority of decimal coinage descends into a near riot after his audience thinks he is impugning their chastity had me laughing out loud for the duration of the passage, especially near its end:
“He don’t know nothing ’bout chastity,” observed another voice wearily. “He’s from London.”
He had never before abandoned a meeting in mid-speech, not even when the eggs flew, but he had begun to think that his reason was even more important than his principles.
While there was much about the humour in this book that reminded me of Wodehouse, Ms Sharp was definitely her own person as a writer. The skewering of social and (especially) religious hypocrisy was more direct and less euphemised than anything PGW wrote, and I'm sure that much of the book's strength comes from its author being female - important when "the male gaze" is very relevant to the story.
She also gifted me a real keeper of a one-liner for conveying the idea of someone being VERY old
“Such a powerful fine memory has Uncle Thirkettle, there’s naught he’s forgot since s’s were f’s.”
In summary you're looking for uncomplicated fun delivered through very clever, droll writing, I strongly recommend Stone of Chastity.