The Catherine Wheel: Text Classics

by Elizabeth Harrower, Ramona Koval (Introduction)

Twenty-five-year-old Clemency James has moved from Sydney to a chilly bedsit on the other side of the world. During the day she studies for the bar by correspondence; in the evenings she gives French lessons to earn a meagre wage. When she meets Christian, a charismatic would-be actor, she can see he's trouble - not least because he's involved with an older woman who has children. She is drawn to him nonetheless: drawn into his world of unpayable debts and wild promises.

First published in 1960, The Catherine Wheel is Elizabeth Harrower's third novel and the only one of her books not set in Australia. In it she turns her unflinching gaze on the grim realities of 1950s London, and the madness that can infect couples.

Elizabeth Harrower was born in Sydney in 1928 and moved to London in 1951. Her first novel Down in the City was published in 1957, and was followed by The Long Prospect a year later. In 1959 she returned to Sydney where she began working for the ABC and as a book reviewer for the Sydney Morning Herald. In 1960 she published The Catherine Wheel, the story of an Australian law student in London, her only novel not set in Sydney. The Watch Tower appeared in 1966. No further novels were published until May 2014 when Harrower's 'lost' novel, In Certain Circles, was released. Her work is austere, intelligent, ruthless in its perceptions about men and women. She was admired by many of her contemporaries, including Patrick White and Christina Stead, and is without doubt among the most important writers of the postwar period in Australia. Elizabeth Harrower lives in Sydney.

'I love The Watch Tower, but I love The Catherine Wheel more. Like all the Harrower books, with their psychological mysteries, their droll humour, their brilliant language and ear for voices, The Catherine Wheel takes your hand from the first page and beckons you in.' Ramona Koval

Genres: Fiction, Australia, London, Classics, Novels, 20th Century, British Literature

302 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1960

About the author

Elizabeth Harrower is an Australian novelist and short story writer.

(from Wikipedia)

Elizabeth Harrower is regarded as one of Australia's most important postwar writers, and is enjoying a recent literary revival. Born in Sydney in 1928, her first novel, Down in the City, was published in 1957 and was followed by The Long Prospect (1958) and The Catherine Wheel (1960). Her most well-known work, The Watch Tower, was published in 1966 to huge acclaim. Four years later she finished In Certain Circles , but withdrew it before publication for reasons she has never publicly spoken of. The manuscript was rediscovered recently by her publisher who felt it should be published immediately. Harrower has since received rave reviews, including comparisons with Emile Zola and F Scott Fitzgerald.

Reviews

[zed · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have not enjoyed this book one bit. After 90 pages I thought to myself that it would kick on.

Nope! It got more and more monotonous.

I got to the 250th page and had had enough. Page after page of waffle that is so repetitive as to be the literary equivalent of Chinese Water torture.

But I soldiered on to the end. Why? I asked myself. I have many books sitting round my house and I kept reading on for some unknown reason. The same meaningless boring chat back and forth by the same boring people from beginning to end and I kept reading. Not one of the characters was of interest. The narrator boringly explains page after page not very much at all. Yeah she is head over heels in something or other with a failed actor who is is is…. I don’t know what, a dull boring mind screw? I don’t mind the challenging but this was not challenging. It was dull. The same repetitive stuff page after page.

[Kira · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very clever language. Conveyed the grimness of postwar London well, but I was too frustrated with the blindness and bad decisions of the main character to really enjoy it. Sympathetic to her blind spots, but ultimately so impatient with her that I just wanted to jump into the book and shake her. Glad to have finished this book and looking forward to reading something less annoying.

[Text Publishing · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘I love The Watch Tower, but I love The Catherine Wheel more. Like all the Harrower books, with their psychological mysteries, their droll humour, their brilliant language and ear for voices, The Catherine Wheel takes your hand from the first page and beckons you in.’
Ramona Koval

‘A brilliant achievement.’
Washington Post on The Watch Tower

‘First published in 1966, this book has traces of Patrick White mixed with the darkness of the brothers Grimm. It is a great novel due a rediscovery in the way that Stoner was championed by John McGahern.’
Irish Times on The Watch Tower

‘A remarkable achievement.’
Australian Book Review on Down in the City

‘Rich and rewarding.’
Starred review, Kirkus

‘The Catherine Wheel is a great starting point for those new to Harrower’s work, those readers who are unafraid to face the darker aspects of desire we’re sometimes too ashamed to acknowledge.’
3am Magazine, Top Reads for 2015

[Catherine Davison · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm at a loss to understand what others see in this book. I found it boring, simply boring. I could not understand Clem's participation in Christian and Olive's small world. How should we find it credible that an intelligent young Australian woman who is studying law and who speaks a foreign language well enough to teach it would be so concerned for the hurt feelings of an obnoxious man who she observes from the beginning is not quite right? It made little sense to me and I just found Clem's character annoying and Christian and Olive deplorable. I'll admit that perhaps I was reading the book with too much of a 21st Century sensibility but even so, there was no reason for Clem to fall into this guy's abusive clutches. A tedious read.

[Lesley Glaister · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a strange and maddening read. The 'heroine' is quite wet and we watch her become embroiled with a con artist, very sexy and convincing. But because the reader can see what's happening it's like watching a very slow car crash. I read it feeling cross and frustrated though with fascination.

[Naim Frewat · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'll give Elizabeth Harrower another chance. I think she captured well the inner workings of a psyche gradually drawn down into a destructive obsession. What I did not like was the simplistic plot, which would have made this book a tedious read had it been lengthier.
Sums up the book nicely:
" As if love ever lasted! As if it could or should! Of course it might..."
While the style seemed, for the most part, pretty straightforward, there were some notable sections that I captured for future reference.
"And now the reasons for those tears were like a presence in the room, implacable, forcing me to know what I would not: that my tears were for a lost simplicity, for a failure I would lack the innocence to repeat. "

[Mandy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Elizabeth Harrower can certainly write, there’s no doubt about that, and I thoroughly enjoyed her other acclaimed book The Watchtower. I thought at first that this was going to be as good for it starts promisingly with some marvellous writing. Clem is a young Australian who moves to London to study. There’s a really authentic feel to the descriptions of the rather grimy London of the 50s, the boarding houses, the landladies, the teashops, the cold and the rain. All is going pretty smoothly until Clem meets the unstable and alcoholic Christian, and although she can see his many faults, she is inextricably drawn to him and it appears that she cannot resist him. As a psychological study of an obsessive relationship with a troubled narcissistic man, it’s both perceptive and acute. But the book soon becomes repetitious and tiresome as we read about yet one more drunken episode. Christian does not improve for the reader on acquaintance. As a study of alcoholism (a subject Harrower also addresses in The Watchtower) the book is scarily real. Although leavened with flashes of humour, it’s a pretty grim read, but that I could accept if it wasn’t also rather tedious after a while.
There’s an illuminating and very useful introduction from Ramona Koval, but best not to read this until afterwards as it gives too much of the plot away. Definitely a book worth reading, but not as entertaining or as compelling as The Watchtower.

[Boorrito · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Who was I to divert a river single-handed?"

Yes...but that doesn't mean you should jump into that river either.

I didn't find The Catherine Wheel as good as The Watch Tower. That doesn't make it a bad book, however. It's just rougher and less refined than her later classic. In The Watch Tower there's the balance of Clare to Laura's absolute submission to Felix, while here Clem trashes herself for...what, exactly? To get burnt and so know better next time? It's not an obvious case of romantic delusion, she's never quite ready to say she loves him and wants to possess him alone, but her pity for him is just as powerful and traps her just as effectively. (There's an excellent New Yorker article about Harrower's work that I read while reading this and it's spot on.)

Elizabeth Harrower nails down the kind of man that frankly, it's hazardous to be in the near area of, nevermind caught up with, again with a level of insight I haven't seen anywhere else. It's horrifyingly claustrophobic. I was glad to have finished it and left it behind.

[Cat Woods · Rating 2 out of 5]

Grrr! The narrator of this insanely frustrating and anticlimactic tale is so blissfully naive and ignorant that I wanted to fling this book across the room on numerous occasions. Instead, i flicked through ten pages here and there only to discover she was STILL an ignorant idiot, STILL being deluded and manipulated by a narcissistic ass and STILL moping about it. Certainly this might be a classic, but I've read many Australian authors - and female authors - of much greater skill and insight.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Catherine Wheel, so named for the 4th century saint who refused to renounce her religious belief, was a form of torture used for execution used as recently as the 19th century, but it's also the name of a spectacular firework that spins high in the sky, emitting dazzling sparks and flame but fizzling out into smoke and acrid ash.  It's a very apt title for Elizabeth Harrower's third novel about the toxic relationship between two needy characters, Clemency James and Chris Roland.

Published in 1960 after Harrower's return from eight years in London, The Catherine Wheel is written in a claustrophobic first person narrative, from Clem's perspective.  She's a young woman studying Law by correspondence, and though she received a small inheritance from her father, money is tight so she's living in a London bed-sit run by Miss Evans, and she takes in students for French lessons in the evenings.  She's a very private person with only two friends, Helen and her brother Lewis, and when she's not studying, she's reading books and minding her own business. She's not interested in the other 'inmates', and is mildly snooty towards Jan, a bubbly 30-year-old who works in a bank, and she's standoffish towards Mrs Parry, a widow from South Africa who rues not having any qualifications now that she has to earn a living.

The reader is alerted to Clem's character early on.  Her name is ironic, there's no clemency about her at all.  If she does anything for anybody else, whatever she says to justify it, it's not out of mercy or kindness, it's because it suits her to do it.  We're told in Chapter One that her facial appearance had disguised her all her life as a nice quiet girl.  She had learned to play a role back in Sydney: she is acutely conscious of class and is peeved that her strategy for dressing beyond her social class doesn't work in Britain.

Even about my overcoat, I noticed, there was something unintentionally deceitful.  The look of discreet simplicity advertised to knowing eyes its considerable cost. True, it was now three years since I had bought it in Sydney, but it had a boring monumental resistance to time and still contrived to  seem subtly out of place in the local shops, as my other clothes did in Miss Evans's.

At home the single aim was to present a  front of expensive elegance, whereas in London it was obligatory to show what one was and did: this uniform for genuine socialists, this for hereditary shoppers in Harrods, and so on... (p.4)

Unintentional? I don't think so.  Best not to trust this narrator...

The arrival of an out-of-work actor changes everything.  Chris Roland has been hired to clean the windows, and from time to time, he and his common-law wife Olive house-sit in Miss Evans' absence.  He's excessively good looking even though the couple are so poor that they each have only one outfit, and he's excessively charming too.  So is he the Prince Charming who will break through her reserve, as the unlikely friendship with Helen and Lewis Grenville did?  Clem doesn't have a promising track record:

I'd known few men of principle, and none who combined integrity with intellect. I had respected almost no one, and felt the lack.

Then, all my life I had been ill of emotion.  (p.26_

All she had wanted, was to be left alone, so the friendship with Helen and Lewis had surprised her.

Not to have people or things, not to be had by them.  My very survival, it seemed, had hinged on the absence of feeling from my life. How pure was freedom and isolation! (p.26-7)

She fears emotional snares, yet walks right into one with Chris. 

TO read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2025/11/20/t...

[Patricia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clem is a young Australian woman studying Law in 1950s London. She has a small inheritance and makes ends meet by teaching French. She becomes emotionally entangled with a young man who is employed as a window cleaner. It seems that Clem is uncertain how to navigate the social distinctions in post war England. She is eager to show rejection of class distinctions but this is misunderstood and taken advantage of. Or perhaps Christian, the window cleaner, is the perennial user, the man who employs his good looks to extract money and affection from vulnerable people.

It was always intriguing but I lost patience with Clem and her infatuation. Christian challenges her tolerance over and over again and increases the awfulness of his behaviour. Clem becomes unable to reason her way out of her situation and it all ended in a way that I didn't find satisfactory. Or convincing.

I was always interested but I didn't always enjoy seeing Clem brought down so cruelly.

[Justin Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not usually interested in woman-falls-for-inappropriate-man stuff, but Harrower does it much better than most, and our narrator's reflectiveness made it bearable. Plus Harrower is such a great writer that she could choose much worse material and make it work.

[Yvonne Janot · Rating 4 out of 5]

I adore Harrower’s use of language! Did I get frustrated with Clem’s reasonings? Hell yeah! But this was written in the 60s and is therefore not entirely comparable to how (most) women would handle this kind of toxic relationship these days. Well
worth a read.

[Annie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well written but frustrating to read although I could not put it down in the hope that Clem would come to her senses. Christian is a horrible, emotionally abusive character and the book does show how intelligent, educated women can become willing victims in abusive relationships.

[Jade17 · Rating 2 out of 5]

I couldn't wait for this tawdry, exhausting one-sided love story to end...

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read my thoughts here
https://bookaroundthecorner.com/2020/...

[zespri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clemency James has left Sydney for a bedsit in London. It is London of the 50's, and she is studying by correspondence and making ends meet by giving French lessons in the evenings. Her life is mapped out and her routines established. Dull, but a tidy little life with a goal in sight.

Enter Christian. O goodness. How we want to warn Clemency, how we want her to say something, resist, be sensible once again. Anything, but this headlong path to disaster.

I loved this book, creepy and sad, but very telling of the human condition, and beautifully written.

[Maureen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't think I enjoyed this Harrower novel as much as the others I've read, but it is still an engrossing read. It shows how a person gets pulled into the vortex created by a mentally ill, alcoholic and controlling partner, something of a theme in Harrower's novels. At times I wanted to pull my hair with frustration at Clemency's stupidity over Christian, but, putting myself in her shoes, I can see how she was sucked in and came to behave as she did. She had a fundamental decency which caused her to act (as she thought) in the best interests of Christian.

[Calzean · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wonderfully written.
Clem James studies law by correspondence and gives French lessons to earn some money. She is quiet, nice, respected. She meets Christian and falls to his charisma. Christian is a cad, a user of women, a drunk and a manipulator.
The story is interesting in that Clem is smart, her friends warn her of Christian and she knows his weaknesses. But yet she still can't let him go.

[Claire · Rating 2 out of 5]

Melodrama that I just wanted to end. Some great exploration of obsessive relationships but it was so repetitive and I wasn't wholly convinced by the motivations of the main character, Clem.

[Sam · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maddening. I read half, then skimmed through to the end when I realised this just would not get any better. Watching this woman get sucked in by a con man was boring and infuriating. Two stars because she’s such a great writer. The last page is the best in the book.