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Plagued by the Nightingale
'Papa says we should have a child,' he said. 'A dear little child to run around and call us mama and papa. I can give it paralysis, what can you give it, my dear?'This extraordinary novel, first published in 1931, recounts the love story of the American girl Bridget and the young Frenchman Nicolas whom she marries. Bridget goes to live with his wealthy, close-knit family in their Breton village and finds there a group -- mother, father, sisters, and brother-in-law -- who love each other to the exclusion of the outside world.But it is a love that festers, for the family is tainted with an inherited bone disease, a plague which, Bridget slowly discovers, can also infect the soul. Then Luc -- young, handsome, healthy -- arrives and Bridget is faced with a confronting the Old World with the courage of the New she makes the bravest choice of all...In subtle, rich and varied prose Kay Boyle echoes Henry James in a novel at once lyrical, delicate and shocking.
190 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1931
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About the author
Kay Boyle
98 books42 followersKay Boyle was a writer of the Lost Generation.
Early years
The granddaughter of a publisher, Kay Boyle was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and grew up in several cities but principally in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her father, Howard Peterson Boyle, was a lawyer, but her greatest influence came from her mother, Katherine Evans, a literary and social activist who believed that the wealthy had an obligation to help the less well off. In later years Kay Boyle championed integration and civil rights. She also advocated banning nuclear weapons, and American withdrawal from the Vietnam War.
Boyle was educated at the exclusive Shipley School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, then studied architecture at the Ohio Mechanics Institute in Cincinnati. Interested in the arts, she studied violin at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music before settling in New York City in 1922 where she found work as a writer/editor with a small magazine.
Marriages and family life
That same year, she met and married a French exchange student, Richard Brault, and they moved to France in 1923. This resulted in her staying in Europe for the better part of the next twenty years. Separated from her husband, she formed a relationship with magazine editor Ernest Walsh, with whom she had a daughter (born after Walsh had died of tuberculosis).
In 1928 she met Laurence Vail, who was then married to Peggy Guggenheim. Boyle and Vail lived together between 1929 until 1932 when, following their divorces, they married. With Vail, she had three more children.
During her years in France, Boyle was associated with several innovative literary magazines and made friends with many of the writers and artists living in Paris around Montparnasse. Among her friends were Harry and Caresse Crosby who owned the Black Sun Press and published her first work of fiction, a collection titled Short Stories. They became such good friends that in 1928 Harry Crosby cashed in some stock dividends to help Boyle pay for an abortion. Other friends included Eugene and Maria Jolas. Kay Boyle also wrote for transition, one of the preeminent literary publications of the day. A poet as well as a novelist, her early writings often reflected her lifelong search for true love as well as her interest in the power relationships between men and women. Kay Boyle's short stories won two O. Henry Awards.
In 1936, she wrote a novel titled Death of a Man, an attack on the growing threat of Nazism, but at that time, no one in America was listening. In 1943, following her divorce from Laurence Vail, she married Baron Joseph von Franckenstein with whom she had two children. After having lived in France, Austria, England, and in Germany after World War II, Boyle returned to the United States.
McCarthyism, later life
In the States, Boyle and her husband were victims of early 1950s McCarthyism. Her husband was dismissed by Roy Cohn from his post in the Public Affairs Division of the U.S. State Department, and Boyle lost her position as foreign correspondent for The New Yorker, a post she had held for six years. She was blacklisted by most of the major magazines. During this period, her life and writing became increasingly political.
In the early 1960s, Boyle and her husband lived in Rowayton, Connecticut, where he taught at a private girls' school. He was then rehired by the State Department and posted to Iran, but died shortly thereafter in 1963.
Boyle was a writer in residence at the New York City Writer's Conference at Wagner College in 1962. In 1963, she accepted a creative writing position on the faculty of San Francisco State College, where she remained until 1979. During this period she became heavily involved in political activism. She traveled to Cambodia in 1966 as part of the "Americans Want to Know" fact-seeking mission. She participated in numerous protests, and in 1967 was arrested twice and imprisoned. In 1968, she signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge,
Early years
The granddaughter of a publisher, Kay Boyle was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and grew up in several cities but principally in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her father, Howard Peterson Boyle, was a lawyer, but her greatest influence came from her mother, Katherine Evans, a literary and social activist who believed that the wealthy had an obligation to help the less well off. In later years Kay Boyle championed integration and civil rights. She also advocated banning nuclear weapons, and American withdrawal from the Vietnam War.
Boyle was educated at the exclusive Shipley School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, then studied architecture at the Ohio Mechanics Institute in Cincinnati. Interested in the arts, she studied violin at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music before settling in New York City in 1922 where she found work as a writer/editor with a small magazine.
Marriages and family life
That same year, she met and married a French exchange student, Richard Brault, and they moved to France in 1923. This resulted in her staying in Europe for the better part of the next twenty years. Separated from her husband, she formed a relationship with magazine editor Ernest Walsh, with whom she had a daughter (born after Walsh had died of tuberculosis).
In 1928 she met Laurence Vail, who was then married to Peggy Guggenheim. Boyle and Vail lived together between 1929 until 1932 when, following their divorces, they married. With Vail, she had three more children.
During her years in France, Boyle was associated with several innovative literary magazines and made friends with many of the writers and artists living in Paris around Montparnasse. Among her friends were Harry and Caresse Crosby who owned the Black Sun Press and published her first work of fiction, a collection titled Short Stories. They became such good friends that in 1928 Harry Crosby cashed in some stock dividends to help Boyle pay for an abortion. Other friends included Eugene and Maria Jolas. Kay Boyle also wrote for transition, one of the preeminent literary publications of the day. A poet as well as a novelist, her early writings often reflected her lifelong search for true love as well as her interest in the power relationships between men and women. Kay Boyle's short stories won two O. Henry Awards.
In 1936, she wrote a novel titled Death of a Man, an attack on the growing threat of Nazism, but at that time, no one in America was listening. In 1943, following her divorce from Laurence Vail, she married Baron Joseph von Franckenstein with whom she had two children. After having lived in France, Austria, England, and in Germany after World War II, Boyle returned to the United States.
McCarthyism, later life
In the States, Boyle and her husband were victims of early 1950s McCarthyism. Her husband was dismissed by Roy Cohn from his post in the Public Affairs Division of the U.S. State Department, and Boyle lost her position as foreign correspondent for The New Yorker, a post she had held for six years. She was blacklisted by most of the major magazines. During this period, her life and writing became increasingly political.
In the early 1960s, Boyle and her husband lived in Rowayton, Connecticut, where he taught at a private girls' school. He was then rehired by the State Department and posted to Iran, but died shortly thereafter in 1963.
Boyle was a writer in residence at the New York City Writer's Conference at Wagner College in 1962. In 1963, she accepted a creative writing position on the faculty of San Francisco State College, where she remained until 1979. During this period she became heavily involved in political activism. She traveled to Cambodia in 1966 as part of the "Americans Want to Know" fact-seeking mission. She participated in numerous protests, and in 1967 was arrested twice and imprisoned. In 1968, she signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge,
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August 10, 2020There was a character in this novel who felt to me as if he'd strayed in from a different book, he seemed so endowed with health and vitality compared to the other characters. He didn't appear very often in the story but whenever he did, he caused havoc—all the female characters swooned over him. I found myself imagining how the story might have worked if he had been left out, and concluded that it would have been fine without him.
I read the foreword on finishing the book and learned that this was Kay Boyle's first novel, published in 1930. The foreword was written in 1980 by the author herself, and it is a very interesting piece of writing. How often do we get a chance to read an author's opinion, from the vantage of her seventy-eight years, of what her twenty-eight year old self had written. She remarks on the descriptions of the Rance river estuary near St Malo in Brittany where this novel takes place, and wonders how her younger self saw so much colour in everything. But the really interesting thing is her revelation that the man whom all the female characters were besotted with was suggested by her editor, and wasn't part of the original story. What's more, Boyle says that he was the only completely invented character, and admits the rest of the story was quite autobiographical. No wonder the other characters and the descriptions of the place felt so real to me—and he seemed so not a part of the story.
The main character is American like the author herself. Kay Boyle married a French student when she was nineteen and moved to France with him. A few years into the marriage, Boyle left her husband to live with an American poet called Ernest Walsh who eventually died of TB. If I mention these biographical details, it's because, in this book, the main character, Bridget, has just moved to France with her young French husband. The novel strays from complete autobiography by making the young French man the one who is dying of TB, but from the careful descriptions of the landscape and the French family at the center of the story, it's easy to imagine that the holiday home in Brittany where Bridget's story takes place resembled the one Kay's husband's family owned and that she must have stayed there with them long enough to observe them and the countryside closely.
Here's an example of her observational skills:
…the old fingers fumbled in her skirt and drew out her crocheting. Her hands were always a happy independent couple in themselves; in themselves a complete 'ménage' continuously occupied in some rapid work they shared between them and in which the old lady herself had no part. Now did these two elderly members toss the wool back and forth, weaving and working in and out in perfect accord and as with minds of their own..
I wonder if Kay Boyle's writing hand was working independently of her heart when she wrote this fiction using people she'd known intimately and who had more or less welcomed her into their family. On second thoughts, it doesn't matter. What she gives us here is a perfect record of a certain kind of deeply catholic bourgeois French family, not viewed from the inside as we might be used to, but viewed from the outside which is very rare.
I enjoyed it enough to begin a second Boyle book when I'd finished, and I've a third sitting waiting. I'm back in one-book-leads-to-another mode and relieved not to have to make the difficult decision of what to read next.
I read the foreword on finishing the book and learned that this was Kay Boyle's first novel, published in 1930. The foreword was written in 1980 by the author herself, and it is a very interesting piece of writing. How often do we get a chance to read an author's opinion, from the vantage of her seventy-eight years, of what her twenty-eight year old self had written. She remarks on the descriptions of the Rance river estuary near St Malo in Brittany where this novel takes place, and wonders how her younger self saw so much colour in everything. But the really interesting thing is her revelation that the man whom all the female characters were besotted with was suggested by her editor, and wasn't part of the original story. What's more, Boyle says that he was the only completely invented character, and admits the rest of the story was quite autobiographical. No wonder the other characters and the descriptions of the place felt so real to me—and he seemed so not a part of the story.
The main character is American like the author herself. Kay Boyle married a French student when she was nineteen and moved to France with him. A few years into the marriage, Boyle left her husband to live with an American poet called Ernest Walsh who eventually died of TB. If I mention these biographical details, it's because, in this book, the main character, Bridget, has just moved to France with her young French husband. The novel strays from complete autobiography by making the young French man the one who is dying of TB, but from the careful descriptions of the landscape and the French family at the center of the story, it's easy to imagine that the holiday home in Brittany where Bridget's story takes place resembled the one Kay's husband's family owned and that she must have stayed there with them long enough to observe them and the countryside closely.
Here's an example of her observational skills:
…the old fingers fumbled in her skirt and drew out her crocheting. Her hands were always a happy independent couple in themselves; in themselves a complete 'ménage' continuously occupied in some rapid work they shared between them and in which the old lady herself had no part. Now did these two elderly members toss the wool back and forth, weaving and working in and out in perfect accord and as with minds of their own..
I wonder if Kay Boyle's writing hand was working independently of her heart when she wrote this fiction using people she'd known intimately and who had more or less welcomed her into their family. On second thoughts, it doesn't matter. What she gives us here is a perfect record of a certain kind of deeply catholic bourgeois French family, not viewed from the inside as we might be used to, but viewed from the outside which is very rare.
I enjoyed it enough to begin a second Boyle book when I'd finished, and I've a third sitting waiting. I'm back in one-book-leads-to-another mode and relieved not to have to make the difficult decision of what to read next.
July 16, 2018
Though this is the only Boyle I’ve read, I can’t recommend that you start with this one, her first published novel. I kept putting it down after each chapter—perhaps because each reads like a vignette, but also because nothing impelled me forward—until I got to the last few chapters when something actually started happening.
At its start, I was reminded of The Garden of the Finzi-Continis in that the family, while living inside an area not easily accessible, is an enclosed world unto itself. With the three sisters in competition for marriage to the only male visitor not related to them, I thought of May Sinclair’s The Three Sisters. These are superficial comparisons, but I can recommend those two novels.
And though I don’t usually ‘hope’ for certain endings, I did here and felt deflated when the opposite happened. Not because it happened, but because it was an obvious set-up.
In the introduction Boyle discounts her younger writing self. At least she's self-aware. I will read more of her.
At its start, I was reminded of The Garden of the Finzi-Continis in that the family, while living inside an area not easily accessible, is an enclosed world unto itself. With the three sisters in competition for marriage to the only male visitor not related to them, I thought of May Sinclair’s The Three Sisters. These are superficial comparisons, but I can recommend those two novels.
And though I don’t usually ‘hope’ for certain endings, I did here and felt deflated when the opposite happened. Not because it happened, but because it was an obvious set-up.
In the introduction Boyle discounts her younger writing self. At least she's self-aware. I will read more of her.
August 22, 2016
”Ah, well,” he said to Bridget. “You can’t just give freedom. It’s a much more complicated thing than taking it away.”
There is a bird singing in the man-made cage. A nightingale brethren sang in its wild and the cage felt it was their song. No one had to do the dirty work of kidnapping a nightingale from it’s home; a pet store exchanges dirt on hands. There are theories about why the og bird hasn’t come to sing this time, but even Hans Christian Andersen doesn’t know. Bridget bought the bird for her bed-ridden sister-in-law, Charlotte. Brightly handsome doctor Luc, another feather in the hand of the family, wants Bridget for himself and he speaks to her about the nightingale as if either of them were going to do anything about its freedom. Furtive hands and eyes make nothing true.
Some people are born into families that cherish their heads on pillows. I loved how Boyle slowly immersed Bridget into the pot of suffocating family. Pull back the eyelids of goodnight and sweet dreams to rise and shine ownership. Her own blood don’t know what she or her far flung siblings are doing with their days. Here are these French people who could marionette one another’s fishing lines. I felt longing for being ignored when encountering the tight hugs, myself. It is too late when sister-in-law Marthe is asking if someone’s death would mean putting off her belligerent marriage plans. I would have wanted to throw Marthe off a cliff, yet it's also strangely moving how she can make up sisters on her terms within her books. The problem with this brood is their faces melt together except the typical singling out one not to hate just to hate the rest more. "Except for Charlotte you can all die!" Nicolas doesn't say these exact words but still. There is another brother who doesn’t make time for them if he can help it. Julie has rough ways (constantly being belittled in favor of her sisters, though). A sister’s marriage to the doctor Luc wouldn’t save their lives, no matter what whisper they are hearing says (I bet it isn’t coming from the bird’s cage). If Nicolas could get over himself and stop blaming his wife for his unemployment and their mooching off the hated family? What then. I don’t know anything about happy families. I could see Nicolas watching happy families, particularly well-to-do-devil-may-care kinds. Why them and why not me? He tries his parents for their money. When that fails he pouts and stews to the sky. Charlotte’s husband, their first cousin and afflicted with the same disease of the legs, refuses a loan. I loved how Charlotte still tries to wheedle a job for her brother out of Jean. She's kind of stupid but unusually loyal in that bunch. I also wanted to shake her when she has yet another damned kid with this quivering turd of a husband. (At least Nicolas tries outside of the family once, for a job.) Some of their children already have these no legs to stand on and it is on the grounds of not wanting to pass this on to anyone else that Nicolas refuses his father’s conditions of fifty thousand francs to have a baby. I never know if he cared about this past his own self pity (or how bad his injuries are. He's plenty active). There’s a (kind of amusing in the evil socialite kind of way) Oncle Robert to flatter and unsuccessfully ply as well. They have money why don’t they give it to him?! Genetics fault everything isn’t easy, money grubbing, whine. Boyle’s Crazy-Hunter frustrated me with a nagging feeling that Boyle supported the girl’s conviction that her parents should fund her but I waaaaaaaant it dreams instead of just getting a job and being free. I didn’t get that vibe this time. These inmates twist and flail in protest that why can’t I just have what I want, only in ‘Nightingale’ like it came from a heart beyond the grave. There’s death in this book that made me cry like a baby who has no one to comfort them and I was not even hoping for a happy outcome. I cared about what happened to them despite wanting to slap almost everyone for not just getting damned jobs. Work absolutely sucks (for most people) but there is a world of difference between after-hours me-time and what they have. It is hard to judge them (well, without nagging of my hypocrisy) since I don’t always skip the Thanksgiving where I’ll hear about how I frivolously spend money when my elderly relative - who in reality has much, much more money than I have- is perishing in poverty. It is incredibly hard to sidestep the guilt when you’ve done the self preservation move. I wish there had been someone in this book who made that choice and lived with it to show a difference from the sucking it up or whining. Frederick the brother, maybe, except he shows up to be a douche to his sick sister still.
I loved Boyle’s Year Before Last much more than this book. ‘Year’ I loved so much I got that wonderful most myself feeling reading it. It has to be what it would be like to live inside another’s head and get echoes of loving what they love. Bridget loves Nicolas in the hopeless way for someone who already loves her less, like in ‘Year’, but this was like standing on the opposite side of a shore and if I tried with all my might to wish different for them it would never do. Bridget watches sister-in-law Annick’s sweet face and she doesn’t know if Annick the wannabe missionary, the inevitable nun, is from a well of I know the right way to live or is living with them. Is she just escaping or following a true calling by joining the convent. I wanted to have a good suspicion about Annick one way or the other and I didn’t. Boyle was right on when Bridget is regretting the ending of their idle summer and I could hold onto that for why she stays, a wanting for everyone to be together. The Luc possibility never needed to be a door to fly out of if she isn’t just staying for stupid Nicolas. She also could have stayed with him somewhere else and she didn't.
February 9, 2015
Did not work for me, unfortunately, though had some flashes of the brilliance of her later works - far too many unnecessary adjectives.
For some reason I just found myself unable to be that interested...
For some reason I just found myself unable to be that interested...
November 7, 2012
One of my immediate comments about this novel would be that it was poorly translated but for the fact that it was written in english in the first place. Some of the sentences were so long and unwieldy, and do understand that I quite enjoy meandering through grammatical clauses and sub-clauses as a rule, that i lost the will to live part way through them and they often made no real sense to me even after two or three re-readings.
One shorter example of 'what are you talking about woman ?' may suffice,
I should like to have had successful ancestors, by which I mean that they could have died sick, ill or despairing but whether they knew it or not they had still got the best of the details which take you by the flesh and wear you to the bone
eh what ?
The story itself is of a newly married american woman who returns with her french husband to the rather insular bosom of his family in rural France. The family suffer from a bone weakness but also from an inability to look beyond their own limited sphere of life. They seek to revivify their future by absorbing the life force from any people who join their circle from the healthier outer world. Bridget, the American bride, watches and reflects as this spiral of ennui threatens to swallow her rebellious husband, Nicolas. Well I say spiral, that would probably suggest movement and activity, the family could probably not engender enough energy to create anything akin to a spiral or whirlpool.
One of the most powerful sections is about halfway through the book when the family, complete with Luc, the stud for whom all the unmarried daughters ( Annick, a devout girl seeking the convent, Marthe, an overly-romantic girl seeking the perfect male body and Julie, a girl described in terms that suggests she is the outdoorsy type and seeking who knows what but Boyle hints none too subtlely about that)have various levels of lust; well this family would not have lust you understand, it would more likely be an ever so slightly raised eyebrow, all cross a stretch of the river to picnic on an Island. They then witness the tidal river rushing up in fullest force and crashing around the Island creating a huge torrent which they then re-cross to the safety of the mainland. Only the interloper, Luc, the new blood, is able to do adequate battle with the power of nature and Boyle uses the image of the torrent to show the family's inability to battle with its own nature.
She does has a lovely ability to use language in a way that startles and can make her point quickly
Here was his defeat for them all, then, in his whole shrinking face which was presently reduced to a small relentless fist before them
The stark anger of this image is brilliant and I can understand how its immediacy acts as a challenge to the meanderings of the sentence structure in the narrative as a whole which communicates the lacklustre atmosphere and crushing expectation of family and tradition under which the individuals live but I found the act of reading this relatively short novel was a wading exercise rather than a stroll.
There were some incongruous images which didn't pull me up short to think about something in a new way as such images can do, rather did they make me waste time trying to decipher what the writer meant and by that i mean it took me out of the action of the novel and removed me from it. I spent an age trying to get into the head of Kay Boyle. That is not what good images should do surely, they shouldn't make me focus on the writer they should make me focus in what's written.
Why am i having these bunches of old lavender, these dried knots of garlic infecting the thoughts that i have? Why this chop suey mess of uncertainty in me?
What does that mean?
The family were all very self-obsessed or at least very family obsessed and had no sense of a world beyond which needed/deserved/merited their attention. They all needed a good shake yet both Bridget and Luc, the two outsiders, behave in exactly the same way as the family, losing any real sense of action beyond their own needs. At one point one of the young children responded towards his grandmother in a way that i felt would have been perfectly understandable towards any of them
In his small strong fist Riquet grabbed and held firmly the pleat of flash that sagged in his grandmother's throat. The blood rushed to her face and her words were strangled in her mouth. She sat in her chair with her face swollen, gurgling as her grandson strangled her
Riquet for President I say. The only sad thing is his mother stopped him in time
ps Just in case you are wondering I went through the whole of the novel and although nightingales feature in the story I have no real idea of what the title is supposed to signify. As this was the reason i bought the book in the first place, because I found it's title intriguing, this was a bit of a swizz
One shorter example of 'what are you talking about woman ?' may suffice,
I should like to have had successful ancestors, by which I mean that they could have died sick, ill or despairing but whether they knew it or not they had still got the best of the details which take you by the flesh and wear you to the bone
eh what ?
The story itself is of a newly married american woman who returns with her french husband to the rather insular bosom of his family in rural France. The family suffer from a bone weakness but also from an inability to look beyond their own limited sphere of life. They seek to revivify their future by absorbing the life force from any people who join their circle from the healthier outer world. Bridget, the American bride, watches and reflects as this spiral of ennui threatens to swallow her rebellious husband, Nicolas. Well I say spiral, that would probably suggest movement and activity, the family could probably not engender enough energy to create anything akin to a spiral or whirlpool.
One of the most powerful sections is about halfway through the book when the family, complete with Luc, the stud for whom all the unmarried daughters ( Annick, a devout girl seeking the convent, Marthe, an overly-romantic girl seeking the perfect male body and Julie, a girl described in terms that suggests she is the outdoorsy type and seeking who knows what but Boyle hints none too subtlely about that)have various levels of lust; well this family would not have lust you understand, it would more likely be an ever so slightly raised eyebrow, all cross a stretch of the river to picnic on an Island. They then witness the tidal river rushing up in fullest force and crashing around the Island creating a huge torrent which they then re-cross to the safety of the mainland. Only the interloper, Luc, the new blood, is able to do adequate battle with the power of nature and Boyle uses the image of the torrent to show the family's inability to battle with its own nature.
She does has a lovely ability to use language in a way that startles and can make her point quickly
Here was his defeat for them all, then, in his whole shrinking face which was presently reduced to a small relentless fist before them
The stark anger of this image is brilliant and I can understand how its immediacy acts as a challenge to the meanderings of the sentence structure in the narrative as a whole which communicates the lacklustre atmosphere and crushing expectation of family and tradition under which the individuals live but I found the act of reading this relatively short novel was a wading exercise rather than a stroll.
There were some incongruous images which didn't pull me up short to think about something in a new way as such images can do, rather did they make me waste time trying to decipher what the writer meant and by that i mean it took me out of the action of the novel and removed me from it. I spent an age trying to get into the head of Kay Boyle. That is not what good images should do surely, they shouldn't make me focus on the writer they should make me focus in what's written.
Why am i having these bunches of old lavender, these dried knots of garlic infecting the thoughts that i have? Why this chop suey mess of uncertainty in me?
What does that mean?
The family were all very self-obsessed or at least very family obsessed and had no sense of a world beyond which needed/deserved/merited their attention. They all needed a good shake yet both Bridget and Luc, the two outsiders, behave in exactly the same way as the family, losing any real sense of action beyond their own needs. At one point one of the young children responded towards his grandmother in a way that i felt would have been perfectly understandable towards any of them
In his small strong fist Riquet grabbed and held firmly the pleat of flash that sagged in his grandmother's throat. The blood rushed to her face and her words were strangled in her mouth. She sat in her chair with her face swollen, gurgling as her grandson strangled her
Riquet for President I say. The only sad thing is his mother stopped him in time
ps Just in case you are wondering I went through the whole of the novel and although nightingales feature in the story I have no real idea of what the title is supposed to signify. As this was the reason i bought the book in the first place, because I found it's title intriguing, this was a bit of a swizz
June 24, 2014
In her preface to this reprint of her first novel, which was originally published in 1930, Kay Boyle writes that "the meaning of the book may perhaps be that there is always in life the necessity to choose," which isn't my favorite moral: I mean, yes, but sometimes the choice you get to make is to have both/and, rather than either/or, but many stories about choices only look at the either/or kind. So I started this book a little bit ready to dislike it, but ended up pretty pleased. Boyle's prose feels very considered, poised: involved descriptions of the coastal landscape of Brittany (a river that meets the sea, the inrushing tide, gulls on the wing) serve as metaphor for the protagonist's situation: the broad possibility of the ocean, the comparative narrowness of the river, the sense of freedom in the wind and waves, but the sameness of them, too.
Boyle's heroine, Bridget, is an American in her early twenties who is married to Nicolas, who's French. When the book opens, Bridget and Nicolas are resting after having just arrived at his parents' house: the book starts thus: "She came gradually to be awake, lying soft and rested in the plumed bed, deep in the protective palm of his family" (7). But a protective palm can close into a fist, preventing escape, and escape ends up being a major theme and concern. Bridget and Nicolas don't have money; his parents do; his father says he'll give them fifty thousand francs if they have a child. But Nicolas has a bone disease that's clearly genetic, and doesn't want to pass it on to a son he might have. Meanwhile, Nicolas's father is full of judgment: he judges what Bridget wears to swim, scolds her when she lies in the grass, polices what his 32-year-old daughter reads, withdraws his permission for another daughter to go on a church trip. Other family members dream of their own escapes: one of Nicolas's sisters wants to go into a convent, another wants desperately to marry a friend of the family, Luc. But Luc's intentions and affections are unclear, until they're clarified by Bridget's presence: he wants her.
And so, Bridget finds herself with a choice between two men, except not exactly: her choice is between the stasis of life with Nicolas's family and the cost of escape, the cost of change. (In the preface, Boyle notes that the novel is largely autobiographical, except that there was no Luc figure in reality: he was added at the advice of a publisher who wanted a romantic subplot. And he's a bit too much a figure of romance, too gallant and dashing and also inscrutable. I would perhaps have liked to read the version of this book without him.)
What I liked best in this book was the language, the pacing and tone, and description. There are some excellent set pieces: a fire in town, with Bridget and one of Nicolas's sisters joining the bucket brigade; a summer afternoon that was meant to be a peaceful family picnic but is encroached upon by a group of English tourists; a visit from a fastidious uncle.
Boyle's heroine, Bridget, is an American in her early twenties who is married to Nicolas, who's French. When the book opens, Bridget and Nicolas are resting after having just arrived at his parents' house: the book starts thus: "She came gradually to be awake, lying soft and rested in the plumed bed, deep in the protective palm of his family" (7). But a protective palm can close into a fist, preventing escape, and escape ends up being a major theme and concern. Bridget and Nicolas don't have money; his parents do; his father says he'll give them fifty thousand francs if they have a child. But Nicolas has a bone disease that's clearly genetic, and doesn't want to pass it on to a son he might have. Meanwhile, Nicolas's father is full of judgment: he judges what Bridget wears to swim, scolds her when she lies in the grass, polices what his 32-year-old daughter reads, withdraws his permission for another daughter to go on a church trip. Other family members dream of their own escapes: one of Nicolas's sisters wants to go into a convent, another wants desperately to marry a friend of the family, Luc. But Luc's intentions and affections are unclear, until they're clarified by Bridget's presence: he wants her.
And so, Bridget finds herself with a choice between two men, except not exactly: her choice is between the stasis of life with Nicolas's family and the cost of escape, the cost of change. (In the preface, Boyle notes that the novel is largely autobiographical, except that there was no Luc figure in reality: he was added at the advice of a publisher who wanted a romantic subplot. And he's a bit too much a figure of romance, too gallant and dashing and also inscrutable. I would perhaps have liked to read the version of this book without him.)
What I liked best in this book was the language, the pacing and tone, and description. There are some excellent set pieces: a fire in town, with Bridget and one of Nicolas's sisters joining the bucket brigade; a summer afternoon that was meant to be a peaceful family picnic but is encroached upon by a group of English tourists; a visit from a fastidious uncle.
March 23, 2022
The story is about a loving French family (at first). If they hadn't had to face "obstacles" to their idyll the reader would have seen them only as affectionate people. Yet, because they had to face those "obstacles" what turned out was ugly. Watching them was like watching the decaying of a beautiful flower. Worse. It was like watching as the beautiful top layers fell off and what was under them wasn't pretty.
I admit I don't fully understand the ending - the meaning of it. Does it mean that decaying was infectious?
What I do know, is I was gripped and touched by the novel. Kay Boyle asked a few raw questions and I admire how she was searching for the answers.
I admit I don't fully understand the ending - the meaning of it. Does it mean that decaying was infectious?
What I do know, is I was gripped and touched by the novel. Kay Boyle asked a few raw questions and I admire how she was searching for the answers.
October 11, 2018
Because I am writing a manuscript set in the 1920s I am trying to read as many novels written in the 20s that I can. Having said that I quickly realised there was nothing specific to that decade in Plagued by the Nightingale. I also quickly realised that this was a marvellous, very eclectic novel.
The author Kay Boyle provides an introduction written over fifty years later. Please read this introduction after you have finished the novel as it contains spoilers. Interestingly Boyle is quite hard on herself about her writing and I’m not in agreement with one or two of her pronouncements.
“This extraordinary novel, first published in 1931, recounts the love story of the American girl Bridget and the young Frenchman Nicolas whom she marries. Bridget goes to live with his wealthy, close-knit family in their Breton villages and finds there a group - mother, father, sisters and brother-in-law who love each other to the exclusion of the outside world.”
The descriptions of the Breton village and the awful predicament Bridget finds herself in are what I will remember of this novel, long afterwards. Just as I still remember a small hut in the snow, somewhere and a dying man, from another novel of Boyle’s. You can say of a novel (such as this one) that not much happens but if something of it stays with you then I believe it is a testament of the writer’s skills.
Here is one of the passages I’m sure will stay with me:
“The world, edged with a little lip of pure mud, floated round and round them. Afternoon warm and blue and humid shimmered about the fat heavy heads of the elm-trees over the wall, and the straw roof of the pig-house was flung down like an old hat under the chins of the elms. The terrace proceeded sedately from the wall, drawing up with a gesture of disdain the fresh new yews from the edge of the pond. And Charlotte’s house strode up upon the terrace, its erect line assailed by white wings and the roof scarlet as the crest of a cock.
The world floated round and round them, the low hills with the poplar row and the river, the soft afternoon coiled about the elm heads, and the terrace withdrawing the glossy yew from the touch of the pond.”
The author Kay Boyle provides an introduction written over fifty years later. Please read this introduction after you have finished the novel as it contains spoilers. Interestingly Boyle is quite hard on herself about her writing and I’m not in agreement with one or two of her pronouncements.
“This extraordinary novel, first published in 1931, recounts the love story of the American girl Bridget and the young Frenchman Nicolas whom she marries. Bridget goes to live with his wealthy, close-knit family in their Breton villages and finds there a group - mother, father, sisters and brother-in-law who love each other to the exclusion of the outside world.”
The descriptions of the Breton village and the awful predicament Bridget finds herself in are what I will remember of this novel, long afterwards. Just as I still remember a small hut in the snow, somewhere and a dying man, from another novel of Boyle’s. You can say of a novel (such as this one) that not much happens but if something of it stays with you then I believe it is a testament of the writer’s skills.
Here is one of the passages I’m sure will stay with me:
“The world, edged with a little lip of pure mud, floated round and round them. Afternoon warm and blue and humid shimmered about the fat heavy heads of the elm-trees over the wall, and the straw roof of the pig-house was flung down like an old hat under the chins of the elms. The terrace proceeded sedately from the wall, drawing up with a gesture of disdain the fresh new yews from the edge of the pond. And Charlotte’s house strode up upon the terrace, its erect line assailed by white wings and the roof scarlet as the crest of a cock.
The world floated round and round them, the low hills with the poplar row and the river, the soft afternoon coiled about the elm heads, and the terrace withdrawing the glossy yew from the touch of the pond.”
February 1, 2014
I came across this book when visiting an exhibition of Man Ray portraits. Kay Boyle was one of the post war authors who was part of the French artistic clique. I loved it. I will be seeking out more of her work. Subtle but expressive prose, exquisitely drawn characters, with wonderfully believable faults. Like a feminist Henry James - female characters to the fore, and with the power. Astounding.
July 18, 2013
(7/10) Plagued by the Nightingale seems to take place in some kind of misty dream version of France, an inescapable hamlet where everyone is related and nothing happens until someone abruptly dies or gets married. It's homely but also unhomely, in the Freudian sense. Boyle's prose creates a kind of strange veil between the reader and the story. All of the characters seem to be overflowing with emotion, often unreasonably so, and yet it all unfolds at a bit of a remove.
In some ways this is very much an American modernist novel, while in other ways it fits comfortably into Henry James' American-in-Europe milieu. The setting it depicts seems to almost exist outside of time, marked by the central characters' endless and repetitive passions, squabbles, and harsh intimations. That makes Plagued by the Nightingale sound much more dramatic than it is. These passions and heartbreaks are conveyed by tiny gestures and passing remarks that are obsessed over by all.
This makes it a frequently irritating book to read, and I'm still not sure if I would consider it a good novel as such. It achieves a fascinating narrative effect, but judged on conventional merits the characters are weak and the plot repetitive. The climax hinges on a choice between exciting rebellion and familial loyalty, the crux of many romance plotlines, but here both choices ultimately seem a bit of a drag. Still, that seems only appropriate. The novel is striking not because it makes you fall in love with the characters but because it alienates you from them. In this Boyle may, despite the old-fashioned storyline, have been quite ahead of her time.
In some ways this is very much an American modernist novel, while in other ways it fits comfortably into Henry James' American-in-Europe milieu. The setting it depicts seems to almost exist outside of time, marked by the central characters' endless and repetitive passions, squabbles, and harsh intimations. That makes Plagued by the Nightingale sound much more dramatic than it is. These passions and heartbreaks are conveyed by tiny gestures and passing remarks that are obsessed over by all.
This makes it a frequently irritating book to read, and I'm still not sure if I would consider it a good novel as such. It achieves a fascinating narrative effect, but judged on conventional merits the characters are weak and the plot repetitive. The climax hinges on a choice between exciting rebellion and familial loyalty, the crux of many romance plotlines, but here both choices ultimately seem a bit of a drag. Still, that seems only appropriate. The novel is striking not because it makes you fall in love with the characters but because it alienates you from them. In this Boyle may, despite the old-fashioned storyline, have been quite ahead of her time.
September 24, 2013
I'm not sure I really "got" this book. It is the story of a young American woman who marries a French man with some sort of genetic bone disease which has just started to take effect, and leaves him weak and cynical. They go to live with his family in a rural french town, and while she is happy to be part of a large family for once, she often seems to look down on the family for their unworldliness. Her husband is miserable that he must rely on his family for support and he becomes increasingly morbid and cruel. Meanwhile, three of his sisters are vying for the affection of a family friend who comes to visit several times throughout the corse of the novel. He, of course, falls for our young heroine, and she is torn between her now morbid husband and this fresh new face.
The writing is incredibly flowery and descriptive, sentences often meandering on for several lines, and half the time I have no idea what they said. My biggest problem was that nothing much really happened. Every chapter felt like it was taking one step forward and two steps back. For some reason I expected more.
The writing is incredibly flowery and descriptive, sentences often meandering on for several lines, and half the time I have no idea what they said. My biggest problem was that nothing much really happened. Every chapter felt like it was taking one step forward and two steps back. For some reason I expected more.
August 10, 2016
This is a first novel by American Kay Boyle published in 1930, written in a lyrical, almost over-elaborate style which masks the unpleasant and sometimes horrifying themes of inherited disease, death, mean small-mindedness and self-sacrifice. Its style is initially off-putting, but worth persevering with as it is that which raises it above a conventional love story. The picture of the family life and rituals in Brittany, as observed by the young American, Bridget, is well done and the scenes of the family picnics at Castle Island are wonderfully observed and heavily symbolic. One critic has put the effect of the book very well when he comments: "the author has written on two levels, the explicit and the implicit; the flowers she gathers on the upper level distill, drop by drop, a bitter brew on the unseen level, and it is that position that in the end accomplishes her tragic effect."
October 14, 2007
A highly autobiographical novel, according to the introduction. It was good anyway. Kay Boyle is very good at being sparse and still achieving a specific voice or purpose.
October 20, 2010
eh...
October 21, 2010
A struggle to read. Boyle's writing is so larded with useless adjectives and overly dreamy language, I just wanted to put the book down and read something more straightforward.
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