Bethany

by Anita Mason

Kay's displeasure with Alex for inviting an enigmatic guru and his followers to stay with them for the summer changes to interest and involvement and then to a realization that a destructive confrontation is imminent

219 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1981

About the author

Anita Frances Mason is an English novelist. Her work includes science fiction, speculative fiction and historical fiction and explores questions of alternative communities, the tension between the individual and the collective, religion as a force of meaning and oppression, the politics of sexuality, and the relevance of history to the present.

Reviews

[Alex Ankarr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sly, subtle portrayal of the implementation of cult structures and procedures in a social grouping. Complete with an abusive, narcissistic bully posing as caring commune leader, and submissive devotees serving dual function as enforcers - and all without ever being so crude as to explicitly state the purpose of the narrative. Compliance is rewarded, and consent vigorously manufactured to Newspeak assertions that up is down and the earth is - metaphorically - flat. Resistance and dissent are vehemently discouraged. But will one prospective mug/mark manage to evade the net?

Clever. And unsettling. Not a jolly read, but a memorable one.

[Booksofdoom · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my favourite books ever..

I don't know what it is, but the mixture of characters and the way their interactions are described, is genious.


The main character is Kay, whos companion of Alex owns the house that gives the novel its title. Alex was a jeweler and bought Bethany as part of her exile from normality. However, who without income finds herself deep in debt.

To mend her economy Alex invites some friends to join them at Bethany to an attempt communal living. The friends are: Simonw charismatic and an advocate of alternative lifestyles. Simon's partner Dao. Simon’s friend Peter and his partner Coral. And the couples' children.

At first Kay does not approve of the company, but gradually, Simon begins to influence the household, persuading especially Kay into many of his ideas. Alex on the other hand begins to question Simon and their conflict threatens to ruin the experiment.

[Melinda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Still processing this book. Slow, meditative prose with an underlying sense of dread.

[David Lai · Rating 1 out of 5]

Bethany is a house and grounds owned by Alex and shared with her lover Kay, the narrator. When Alex invites some friends to stay and they all form a "group", one of them, Simon, becomes their self-appointed guru, therapist, emotional hegemon, "Organiser" and spokesperson. What Simon says goes; he dominates everything that happens in the house, and in particular has Kay publicly or privately repudiating her own words and actions, criticising her own motives, submitting to his view of her, of human life, of everything.

Kay's reservations about Simon are hesitant and half-hearted, even when she can see that he has jumped to a false conclusion because he is ignorant of a certain fact (for example, in the care of animals); she essentially agrees with his world-view and repeatedly pays homage to his "logic"; he is never subjected to the kind of criticism to which he subjects Kay; he acts as if he owns the house even before proposing to buy it from Alex, who he eventually suggests should leave!

Alex is something of a wildcat in all this, not sticking to the rules, going missing, failing to pull her weight, making the community's financial problems worse. Because of Simon's emotional domination, Kay becomes estranged from her and comes to believe that Alex must indeed be expelled from her own house.

I kept thinking that there would come a point when Kay would see through all Simon's quasi-religious therapy-speak and snap out of the spell cast by this loathsome and sinister tupenny ha'penny guru, but the tone and vocabulary of her narration don't change at all throughout the novel, even when Alex finally calls his bluff and makes the group leave, finally speaking up for herself, asserting her ownership of the house, dishing a bit of dirt on Simon and restoring the household to its original composition.

Kay doesn't change; her belief-system doesn't change; we've had to inhale two hundred pages of Buddhist-type sanctimony for nothing.

[Bethany Squire · Rating 1 out of 5]

Despite what its name may suggest this book just wasn't my cup of tea