Unexplained Laughter

by Alice Thomas Ellis

Lydia has a cottage in Wales to which she retires to recover from a broken love affair. She is accompanied against her will by Betty, who is concerned for her well-being and likes to do the cooking. While Lydia would prefer to be alone and will not admit to suffering from nerves, when she starts hearing odd noises in the night she is quite pleased to have a companion.
Then they meet some of the local people and Lydia begins to realise that the search for peace on earth can be a vain exercise, that tragedy and misunderstanding not only travel well but are to be found proliferating in the remotest corners.

Genres: Fiction, British Literature, Humor, Modern, Book Club

155 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 1985

About the author

Alice Thomas Ellis was short-listed for the Booker prize for The 27th Kingdom. She is the author of A Welsh Childhood (autobiography), Fairy Tale and several other novels including The Summerhouse Trilogy, made into a movie starring Jeanne Moreau and Joan Plowright.

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Once you get too exclusive, too obsessed with a place, you are worshipping false gods. I think we may be called upon to wander'

As I was reading this book on my 17th holiday in 25 years spent in Cumbria I felt a little glimmer of self-recognition. I adore Cumbria in the same way that Lydia, the heroine of this short novel, adores the seclusion and revivifying potential of her small cottage nestling deep in a isolated valley in Wales.

However this novel is not about calm and gentle seclusion, though it starts out that way; instead it develops in part into a faintly sinister reflection on jealousy and obsession and the ways the discarded and the overlooked can still have an affect upon the socially oppressive tyrant.

Alice Thomas Ellis' works have witty and sharp dialogue, her heroes/heroines are very rarely hugely heroic and then again, her put upon drudges very rarely have the overtly redeeming qualities necessary to make you feel for them. Her books are peopled with characters who miss the point or who force the point too ardently. The snob and the boor rubbing shoulders with the sarcastic and the naïve. She lulls you into thinking that surely there is going to be a redemptive romance just lurking around the corner which will tie everything up beautifully and make all things well but no. Her actors have more backbone than Brookner's and her plots are not as off the wall as Spark, surely all must come good. Well if it doesn't at least it never actually comes bad. Or at least not often.

You leave the pages of Alice Thomas Ellis with .........hmmmm, it does not engender a smile particularly and certainly not a laugh, but its not a sneer or a tut or a raised eyebrow, perhaps its a smirk. Her characters are fun but they would keep you on edge. What I mean is, I do not think you enter her stories thinking to find the echo of a lost friend or future one. Her characters are not particularly pleasant but nor are they horrible. They challenge you to think even as you suck your breath in at something they have said.

The long running theme is that of 'belonging'. Throughout, Lydia is searching for her place. Having just crashed out of an unhappy love affair she finds herself sharing her house with a woman she does not like. The novel, amongst other things, is her trying to find her place. Her place with people, her place in the village, her place in her own skin. For Lydia it often seems to come down to where you will end up at the finish:

'The porch was made of slate like the peaceful gravestones. It was reassuring to make your dwelling place of the same indigenous material as your grave. Living and dying here you would feel much the same'

'I must think of myself more as a migrant bird, more like a swallow then an invader......just as the swallow, I shall return each year to this nesting-place - and sod them if they don't like it. But the sorrow was still there, the sorrow of not belonging. She determined that when she died she would be buried in the graveyard here, and then let them try to distinguish her dust from the dust of the district.'

She leaves the cottage with so much unresolved, unsorted, unexplained if you like. She is 'almost in tears with the misery of departure' but as she drives out of Wales her spirits rise for no apparent reason and then the last sentence

'As soon as she got back to London she would give a party and have a good laugh'

So in the end perhaps Ellis is telling us, the unexplained laughter of the title is not the maniacal cackling Lydia hears in the undergrowth outside the cottage where she is beginning to struggle to an identity and some sense of belonging but rather the empty, shallow, social giggle which she will invent, mould, create because its expected, the done thing.

[Abby · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love all her books, but this is the best of them. She always writes about the same thing: a group of oddly-assorted Brits who are thrown together in a place that is not their home because of a funeral, a vacation, a perceived problem, whatever. And then something magical happens. Usually the magic is almost entirely secondary to the plot -- it's just happening also. She manages to combine two completely different worlds: witty people socializing and all the layers of meaning that go with it, and the raw, unexplainable natural world, creeping in when you least expect it.

[Sherry · Rating 5 out of 5]

A most enjoyable novel! Wicked wit and a brilliant understanding of the social conventions that often stifle us - a black comedy that made me laugh out loud. Loved this one.

[Maggie Rainey-Smith]

I read a different edition, paperback, published in 1985 with the front cover showing Diana Rigg and Elaine Paige from a BBC TV film of the movie - found the paperback in a small shed at the back of a terraced house I was lucky enough to be living in, in Kalamata, Greece in 2007 - I'd not read anything by Alice Thomas Ellis before this and thoroughly enjoyed this book - a real treat "All falling in love is infatuation,' said Lydia. 'then if he marries you they say it's love. Then when you divorce him they say it's a tragedy because love has failed, when really it's all due to an eventual recovery from infatuation, which is a sort of brain disease.' I'd love to have seen the BBC series with Diana Rigg and Elaine Page.

[Veronica Zundel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'd forgotten what a glorious writer Alice Thomas Ellis is, and was thrilled to find this handbag-sized (but still substantial) little novel. Urbane Lydia goes to her country cottage in Wales, with a colleague she doesn't much like, to get over yet another failed romance. There among the lives, loves and hates of the locals, she learns much about herself, about the quest to be 'good' and her own limitations. Laugh out loud funny at times, yet also often spiritually and ethically profound, with a sense of the constant presence of 'the beyond', this is a treat for any who, like Lydia, love social comedy and yet also yearn for meaning. An excellent 'distraction from chemotherapy' read.

[Gretchen Bernet-Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lydia is the outspoken type, a worldly woman most people have met at some point in time and alternatively liked or loathed. Staying in an isolated cottage in Wales, the villagers are bemused by Lydia and her friend Betty but not unperceptive. Likewise those inhabitants are analysed in thought and word by Lydia who snipes and picks at them, then feels guilty for being mean and tries to patch over the cracks.

Earlier Lydia’s unfaithful partner Finn had broken her heart so long-suffering Betty cops the flack while remaining steady, a sounding board, a voice of normality. I would say the author has deliberately made them yin and yang. There are religious discussions and relationship examinations and uncomfortable jaunts to an agricultural fair and a picnic. Plus an eye-opening walk in the hills.

The plot swirls around neurotic Elizabeth, dour farmer Hywell, young Angharad with a ‘disability’, a handsome trainee priest, a sleazy GP doctor and cameo by a pheasant. People waft in and out like a stage play, except the reader doesn’t have the benefit of prompts or cues. I enjoyed reading this compact, oddly styled paperback with its mystery narrator but chapters would have been nice.

Similar in genre to Kate Atkinson, this novel is unusual either because of the era in which Alice Thomas Ellis wrote it, or the way the arbitrary conversations of the characters maintain a mesmeric thread. I would have liked more Welsh scenery but my imagination was captured by the spooky element of laughter. ’Where is this leading?’ I wondered, but reaching the end I was neither surprised nor disappointed.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this maybe 10/15 years ago, and I found that I had the same problems now as I had then, although I also think I found a lot more to enjoy and also understand in the various characters.

Let's begin with the problem - the novel wobbles in the middle, or at least that's where it's most noticeable, a lack of narrative drive - quite a few novels have this problem - they kind of lose impetus, but with A.T.E. this is compounded by her not using what we could call - simple narrative, instead she opts for, I think, about 95% dialogue, so it's like a play - without the stage directions.

Mostly the conversation between characters is very witty and funny, but sometimes I'm confused, for example things are happening, which I don't see - for example in a group conversation - it seems people are talking in asides, or they've turned away from the main interlocutor.

However, the end picks up - because it has the narrative drive back - and I like that.
More good points - Lydia is a wonderful, mercurial main character - here's an example, where her friend Betty wonders why women can't be priests:

"'It wouldn't be the same,' said Lydia. 'A woman talking about hellfire would just sound like a fishwife. The priesthood needs men. There's little enough they're good for else. I think they should be left to get on with it. Women can be mothers and men can be priests. I think that's fair. A lot of men are distraught at not being able to give birth and there's little to be done about that. It's ungrateful to want to be both.'"

And there is plenty more like that.

She uses situation comedy to keep the lightness - for example Lydia keeps forgetting to cook a pheasant - road kill- and when is goes in the oven it is "high", but she slaps in a ball of butter and then eats the whole lot - later that night Betty is very sick - the vegetarian, who has declined the pheasant, in favour of salad.

And then there are the evil - no, sort of spoilt-baby characters, her ex, Finn, the salacious Dr Wynn, the hysterical Elizabeth, and the comedy is all balanced out by Lydia's more serious meditations on Stan - who is her version of Satan with an 'a' missing, and the delightfully frank comments from Beuno - the ordained priest.

And then interweaving through the whole are the lyrical episodes of Angharad's story - which tie in ever so delicately with Lydia's religious musings.

In fact there is so much to like in this novel - but it needs to be read slowly, you have to allow a little time to digest all the threads which are inter-played against each other

[Lynne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Even though this was written in the 1980s, and there are some cultural references (Princess of Wales etc) this is very similar in some ways to Stella Gibbons' far superior (and funnier) Cold Comfort Farm. Packed with types rather than characters, we have Lydia the world-weary, cynical London hack, her down-trodden companion, Betty and then the stereotypical Welsh characters: Hywel the dour farmer (tick) Elizabeth unhappy wife (tick) Beuno sort of love interest traineed vicar (tick) Wyn the randy doctor (tick) and the common incomers (from oop north) the Molesworths and daughter April (tick), not to mention Angharad, the 'defective' child woman who roams the hillsides like some mad Celtic spirit (tick). Lydia, like Flora, causes chaos and upset to the rigid community, plucking pheasants, kissing vicars and being generally unpleasant, although terribly clever.
Personally, this has dated badly. None of the characters are credible although some of the writing is sublime, particularly when Elis Thomas describes a storm. Sadly, overall it tries to be too clever and just ends up being unfunny and arch. This is the second Elis Thomas novel I've read, and I don't recall particularly enjoying the earlier one either!

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this less than the two previous Ellis novellas I recently read, but the story's characters and circumstances are very similar. Like the others, this also contains entertaining insights with commentary about people and religion, satirical views of life and death, and a bit of the supernatural. Lydia exhibits a sharp wit but is not as likable as the main characters in the other books, although all of their personalities likely represent the author herself. She displays a relentless negative view of people and mistreats them with cutting remarks, possibly depicting the darker side of Ellis' humor. Or perhaps were attitudes formed from the tragedies in her own life. Lydia is starkly honest in a way that is not socially acceptable, and in reality, people would not hang around her very long. But she gets away with it in the story because her occupation as a writer provides some celebrity status, giving her a pass. I would probably understand and appreciate more about the story's deeper meanings if I possessed a fundamental knowledge of Catholicism. Lydia's attitude toward "Stan" (Satan's name if drop one letter a) is amusing.

[Hilary Tesh · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first encounter with Alice Thomas Ellis and I loved it. Lydia's caustic observations of her Welsh neighbours run alongside those of the feral Angharad who watches and listens secretly. Lydia voices, often outrageously, what silent Angharad cannot, perhaps. Whilst Lydia can be intolerant and malicious, her companion Betty is gentle and caring, but which of them has the more realistic view? And then there's Lydia's imaginings, flights of apparent fancy which disguise her attempts to explore her own beliefs. The Unexplained Laughter is left unexplained and whether Lydia has learned anything is also obscure. The writing varies between lyrical descriptions, acute observations and hilarity. After I had finished the book I looked up the following interview with the author, definitely worth reading to understand her work better:
http://www.catholicculture.org/cultur...

[Jocelyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is wickedly funny and cleverly written. I began Alice Thomas Ellis's book just two days ago when I took a sneak peak into its pages. I’ve been reading most of this Saturday morning and just finished Unexplained Laughter (A Penguin Book, 1986.) Brilliant. A truly delightful read. Heralded on the front cover as, “A fast, wicked and devastating black comedy,” it is all of that and more. And what the author leaves unsaid is telling: Like when we are given the barest ideas of Angharad’s abnormalities, and at the same time an intimate insight into the poor girl’s apartness, her lack of acceptance to the point where she thinks of herself as dead. Angharad is given the last word —and the first— she is the all-seeing ghost; and in her monologues throughout the story, I love the allusion to a Dylan Thomas poeticness… “Listen…” Unexplained Laughter is a lovely and very rich tale.

[Helen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Liked the writing, especially the occasional sharp witty turn of phrase, and the character of Lydia with all her many faults. There is no saccharine happy ending (in fact nobody seems very happy at all) and the unexplained laughter is never really explained, except perhaps in a spiritual way by Beuno. Set in Wales but it really belongs in the books-about-Wales-being-observed-by-outsiders category, and some of the villagers are rather stereotypical. Angharad is particularly problematic as an all-seeing figure who does not actually speak (but whose inner monologues we eavesdrop on). Enjoyable nonetheless.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the, incredibly cynical, voice of Lydia. Every other page was a new revelation. I kept finding the author describing ordinary things or events in new ways that made me say, "oh course! that's just how I see it!!"... (see her describing a thunderstorm). She had me by the second page with Lydia's hilarious attempt as food critic. Brilliant.
I could have done without the "voice" interspersed in the narrative, ( I hear enough of my own inner voices thank you very much).

[Louise Culmer · Rating 2 out of 5]

A holiday in Wales where nothing much happens.

Another rather odd novel with a group of rather tiresome characters to whom nothing much happens. I kept hoping it would get more interesting, but it never did. I think all the whole Alice Thomas Ellis was better at writing non fiction than fiction.

[Sherry · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book - but that was mostly for feeling an affinity for the main character Lydia, rather than being overly impressed with the style of writing or the pace of the unfolding plot. In some respects, the ambience of the book reminded me of the TV series "Doc Martin" - darkly witty.

[Beth Bonini · Rating 3 out of 5]

”It seemed insanely silly to Lydia that she should be standing in her own kitchen flanked by two women for whom she had no time. She thought of the people she liked, whose company she enjoyed. Not one of them could be described as ordinary. Lydia played only with court cards. Her friends were mostly interestingly self-destructive: drinking, and smoking, and embarking on disastrous relationships. Their clothes were expensive and had cigarette burns in them, their licenses had been taken away from them, their faces showed signs of what is known as the ruins of great beauty, they were always in various stage of depression; and, being the way they were, this had the effect of making them exceedingly witty with the scaffold humour that Lydia preferred. Few of them were caused by melancholy to sit staring slackly into the middle distance.

I’ve now read two of Alice Thomas Ellis’s novels, and a collection of her ‘Home Life’ columns for The Spectator. I may be slightly rushing to judgement, but I think it’s fair to say that I like something in her writing style, which is clever and acerbic, and yet I don’t feel a particular affinity for characters and storylines.

In this very slim novel, which Wikipedia claims is her best-known, a pair of Londoners - Lydia and Betty - visit Lydia’s cottage in Wales. Lydia’s ostensible purpose is to recover, or at least distance herself, from a lover’s betrayal; and Betty has been longing for a bit of green. They are presumably both journalists, although only Lydia’s career is definitely named: “She had invited Betty to stay by accident, or rather by drunken mischance, at one of those fatal office parties.”

Lydia is opinionated, provocative, mercurial, self-absorbed and easily bored; she has a penchant for making mischief. The pleasant and complaisant character of Betty is her foil, and yet both characters are disruptors in the sense that they have inserted themselves into a strange setting and then caused changes to the atmosphere of the place. The storyline, which isn’t much, is mostly to do with their interactions with the locals - who have their own awkwardnesses, secrets and uncomfortable interactions.

The counterpart to Lydia is a mysterious girl called Angharad. Although she stays silent and hidden - and the characters of Lydia and Betty never meet her - they are aware of, and disturbed by, her presence. Angharad provides her own running commentary to local events, and is also a disruptor.

At the end of the novel, it is suggested that Lydia has been unexpectedly changed (or at least affected) by her interactions with the Welsh locals, but I’m not sure that I believe it. The narrator asserts that “Lydia was not a true voyeur, being largely uninterested in her raw material and more concerned with the shape and patina of the finished article.” Although Lydia and her companion have co-existed with these neighbours for a little while - although they have observed and even broken bread with each other - one feels that as soon as they leave, the slight disturbance they have created is so inconsequential and transitory that it might have not existed at all. Although I had some enjoyment from the writing in this book, I feel like this reading experience will be similarly short-lived.

[Tara Marin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this old book at a used book store and picked it up 3 years later. It’s so dark. SO funny. And I just love an omnipresent narrator. It really mixes all the inexplicable, complicated layers of how we behave and think and interact, alongside the inexplicable strangeness of nature that is always around us. So glad this one found me. Also, cottage-core AF. (Also FWIW the cover of the edition I have is way cuter than what GoodReads has on here)

[Colin · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘A fast, wicked and devastating black comedy’ is the front cover strap line on my 1980s Penguin edition of Unexplained Laughter. I’m not sure that any of that description reflects my own reading of the book, but then I suppose ‘somewhat dull comedy of manners significantly enlivened by the author’s pithy use of language and drily witty dialogue’ probably doesn’t quite cut the publisher’s mustard in the same way. Lydia takes her dull vegetarian friend Betty to a remote cottage in Wales to recover from a failed love affair, but soon finds that there are other human and supernatural dramas playing out in the valley that puts her own into a different perspective.

[Betty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another mordant, witty book from Wales (1985 pub date). Not much happens, but the reader is massively entertained by one trenchant observation after another.

Random sample: 'Betty is a wonderful cook,' she said, as they walked slowly back across the fields. 'And she knows all about wild mushrooms and things.' The conversation had become intensely boring. (p. 53)

Not all the musings are trivial. Religion, death, misery all are grist for Ellis' mill.

[Terry Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this book, enough to want to read more by this author and have just started another one :)

[Angie Rhodes · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read it, and to be honest, it didn't grab me at all,

[Hilary · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't think why I have left it so long before reading another book by Alice Thomas Ellis. She never fails to entertain and this is every bit as witty and observant as her other books.

[Crabby Patty · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked it, it was very short but not enough happened, plus the laughter was explained relatively quickly. Cute book :]

[Julia · Rating 2 out of 5]

1.5 stars for this one.

I didn't like it because it wasn't written from the heart, although one of those artistic pieces where the author has written a story about two women from London, Lydia & Betty who go to the rural part of Wales to stay in Lydia's cottage for three weeks while the shallow & rude Lydia recuperated from the ending of her shallow relationship with the good looking Finn; and their brief sojourn with the locals as outsiders. Which to be honest was unfounded, as living in a rural area myself, no way would the locals invite you round for tea if you're not from there. Especially coming from London. And using the place as a holiday hideaway is an even bigger knife to a rural community; in reality they would have been hated there and driven out of the village as strangers.

It contained passages within written in italics to give the illusion of darkness and something sinister happening within the main story; hence the title 'Unexplained Laughter.' Which to be honest were just little adjuncts of confusion as far as I was concerned. ??? If someone could explain it to me: I'd be grateful! Some sort of ghost who used to live in the village, crouching at the windows of Lydia's cottage and sinisterly laughing?

The story didn't tie up properly in the end.

The extra half star was for interesting insights about country people and what their philosophy of life is.

Apart from that, the story didn't stand for anything really, except as I said, a silly, artistic piece of work.

[Igenlode Wordsmith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lydia is a snarky journalist who carries off a casual acquaintance to her holiday cottage in Wales in order to get over her latest unfaithful lover (and is appalled to realise that Betty, to whom she thought she was doing a favour, had only come along because she was sorry for Lydia).
She looks down on Betty. She looks down on the locals (and tries out her sex-appeal in a semi-automatic way on the men). She looks down on the tourists. She is brittle and witty and unreasonable, sometimes deliberately and sometimes with a slightly guilty conscience. Nothing much happens.

This is the type of book that explains why I don't get on with 'literary fiction', I'm afraid. It's all style and no substance, barely any characters beyond caricature, no real plot and no consequences to speak of, and it isn't my style of humour at all. (I didn't find "Cold Comfort Farm" amusing either.) And then there is the literary device of Angharad, the farmer's lunatic little sister, who is the 'something nasty in the woodshed' of this book, and who interjects little incoherent snippets of narrative in italics throughout, for no very clear reason. (Initially she tells us that she is a ghost, but this is apparently not true; she is - probably- a real girl, although Lydia never actually witnesses her existence.) As with the other plot strands, there is no great significance to Angharad's existence, and nothing changes by the end of the hook.

[Hariklia Heristanidis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of the sentences and passages in this book are beyond 5 stars: shockingly hilarious and truthful; and the protagonist Lydia is the sort of friend you most enjoy having a drink with.

"This was unkind of Lydia, for Betty was not popular with men, which was another reason for Lydia to dislike her, since Lydia was one of those women who find something contaminating in ugliness and prefer to mingle only with those who are at least as attractive as themselves."

I so wanted to love this book - but only liked it. I loved Lydia and her dull but reliable acquaintance Betty, I loved parts of it, but (sadly) the book as a whole did not completely engage me.

[Amz · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unsure why I decided to finish it. I suppose I did it for the adverbs. They were very good. Many parts were very funny, very Welsh, but the plot--if one could argue there was a plot--was pushed along through endless and nonsensical dialogue between characters, which isn't my favorite way to tell or hear a story.

Still, I do respect Ellis as a writer, and could see the ways in which her personal story were revealed in this novel. The dead child. The passages about death's closeness and omnipresence.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can't remember if I've read any other Thomas Ellis. I enjoyed this very much - the story of witty, clever and often mean and nasty Lydia, meeting her neighbours at her new cottage in Wales. Sharp, funny writing and interesting insights into human nature make this very worth reading. It's an funny read after Witchlight, as Anghared reminded me of Corrag - an unearthly creature flitting around the hillsides watching what goes on amongst "normal" folk, though the two novels couldn't be more different.

[Kat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Was prepared to tuck into a restorative countryside holiday, a character's self-discovery, a wayside romance, a twee village fair but was delivered a spiky social commentary. Satisfying but still feel kind of empty at the end of it, but that's kind of a good thing. Lydia reminds me a LOT of a close friend of mine. Will be reading more of Thomas Ellis' work.

[Victoria · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this a hard read and I failed to connect with the characters