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When I Was Otherwise
A black comedy with an outrageous heroine as well as a vivid evocation of life in old age. This skillfully wrought examination of character and relationships opens with macabre impact, as a bland newspaper report describes the discovery of two dead women—one of them a skeleton—in a North London house. The women are revealed to be the sister and sister-in-law of the man who shared the house. The story of these characters' lives is told through a blend of powerful characterization and social satire, and summons the mingled tragedy and humor of old age to powerful effect. The author teases the reader toward the known and awful ending by cutting backward and forward in time, and gradually constructing the complex pattern of feelings and events that define even the most mundane-seeming lives. He plays a similar and equally skillful game with our perceptions of and judgements on the characters, creating believable, fallible, and ultimately highly engaging individuals.
300 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1984
5 people are currently reading
60 people want to read
About the author
Stephen Benatar
17 books25 followersStephen Royce Benatar (born 26 March 1937) is an English author from London. His first published novel, The Man on the Bridge, was published in 1981. His second novel, Wish Her Safe at Home, was published in 1982 and reissued in 2007 and 2010. He is known for self-publishing and self-promoting his novels.
His first novel, written at the age of 19 and titled A Beacon In the Mist, was rejected, as were 11 subsequent novels. At the age of 44 his novel The Man on the Bridge was accepted by Harvester, and edited by Catharine Carver. He received a £400 advance for the novel. His second published novel, Wish Her Safe at Home, was published by The Bodley Head the following year. The book was inspired by the 1947 film The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. It was runner-up for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. He also won an Arts Council bursary. One novel, Such Men Are Dangerous, was published by Scunthorpe Borough Council. However, sales of his published books were poor, and he took to self-publishing subsequent novels, including Father Of The Man, Recovery and The Golden Voyage Of Samson Groves.
In 2007, he tried to get Wish Her Safe at Home republished as a Penguin Classic but they turned him down despite an introduction by Professor John Carey hailing it as a masterpiece. He was turned down by 36 other publishers, so after slightly rewriting some of the passages he self-published 4,000 copies under his own Welbeck Classics imprint. He bumped into a man when returning some leftover wine from his book launch, and asked him to look at his book; that man was Edwin Franks, the managing editor of The New York Review of Books's publishing arm. Franks "read the book straight away and was knocked out", and The New York Review of Books published the novel in January 2010. Screen rights have been bought by a screenwriter who met Benatar in a bookshop, Henry Fitzherbert. In March 2011, Capuchin Classics will re-issue When I Was Otherwise in the UK with an introduction by academic Gillian Carey. Manuscripts and proofs of plays and novels by Benatar are archived by the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University, along with drafts, short stories, notebooks, research material, book review, and letters.
His first novel, written at the age of 19 and titled A Beacon In the Mist, was rejected, as were 11 subsequent novels. At the age of 44 his novel The Man on the Bridge was accepted by Harvester, and edited by Catharine Carver. He received a £400 advance for the novel. His second published novel, Wish Her Safe at Home, was published by The Bodley Head the following year. The book was inspired by the 1947 film The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. It was runner-up for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. He also won an Arts Council bursary. One novel, Such Men Are Dangerous, was published by Scunthorpe Borough Council. However, sales of his published books were poor, and he took to self-publishing subsequent novels, including Father Of The Man, Recovery and The Golden Voyage Of Samson Groves.
In 2007, he tried to get Wish Her Safe at Home republished as a Penguin Classic but they turned him down despite an introduction by Professor John Carey hailing it as a masterpiece. He was turned down by 36 other publishers, so after slightly rewriting some of the passages he self-published 4,000 copies under his own Welbeck Classics imprint. He bumped into a man when returning some leftover wine from his book launch, and asked him to look at his book; that man was Edwin Franks, the managing editor of The New York Review of Books's publishing arm. Franks "read the book straight away and was knocked out", and The New York Review of Books published the novel in January 2010. Screen rights have been bought by a screenwriter who met Benatar in a bookshop, Henry Fitzherbert. In March 2011, Capuchin Classics will re-issue When I Was Otherwise in the UK with an introduction by academic Gillian Carey. Manuscripts and proofs of plays and novels by Benatar are archived by the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University, along with drafts, short stories, notebooks, research material, book review, and letters.
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June 13, 2025Benatar takes a risk by revealing the fates of his characters off the bat. When I Was Otherwise begins with a news article in the Guardian in March 1983 about the discovery of the remains of two elderly women and the widower living alone in the house with them. Apparently, one of the women, the older of the two, had already been dead for a year and only her bones remain. The younger woman had just died, and the man has refused to speak to anyone. I came into this expecting a darkly comedic and definitely macabre mood. But was surprised to read an intricate account of the personal and shared histories of these three people. The storytelling is non-linear, and Benatar takes great care to make sure the reader is never lost. The initial mystery of figuring out where and when we are at the beginning of every chapter is part of the joy of reading this strange, moving book. It's incredibly layered, and the characters are humanized as details of their lives come to light. Certain remarks and impressions take on deeper meaning as the story unfolds. Daisy, Marsha, and Dan go from being caricatures in a bizarre metro article to relatable people entitled to our regard and sympathy. The story tracks to before WWII and jumps back and forth until the group's final years together in the 1980s. We learn how they've dreamed, and how things don't quite turn out the way they imagined. Ofc there's still a lot of comedy because life is weird and, as Daisy puts it, laughter is the only thing to keep us sane. But it's bittersweet because joy is temporary and aging in an ageist world sucks.
The final chapters are reminiscent of Rachel Waring's descent into madness in Wish Her Safe at Home, Benatar once again demonstrating, in unsettlingly persuasive fashion, how the mundane could easily deteriorate into mania, and that the line between what we deem decent and obscene is easily crossed.
The final chapters are reminiscent of Rachel Waring's descent into madness in Wish Her Safe at Home, Benatar once again demonstrating, in unsettlingly persuasive fashion, how the mundane could easily deteriorate into mania, and that the line between what we deem decent and obscene is easily crossed.
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May 5, 2025My goodness, what a book, recommended by Deborah. Daisy is an utterly outrageous character and I couldn't get enough of her. "Daisy was never so fond of people as when she was away from them...it was an attitude, as a matter of fact, that was usually reciprocal". I suspect some might see her as simply monstrous but I have to admit her hyperactive mania would liven up any encounter. She provides a masterclass in the art of freeloading and cadging, at the same time being truly heroic in the rescue and nursing work she does during the Blitz and very kind and caring to her short-lived husband. Of course she is generally well over the top, and it's Benatar's skill that we can both enjoy her manically witty wordplay, bursting into song and rantings, but at the same time sense her verging insanity: "things were often going too quickly for her, bumping down the hill like a crazed toboggan...as always at these times she was totally powerless to do anything but step on the accelerator". Other reviews deal with the exceptional way this book illustrates ageing and reclusiveness, but another theme I felt it had was confusions of personal identity as being the next-door neighbour of insanity. Maybe the title references this and the kin relations between people were confusing enough that the previous reader (you know who you are!) had helpfully sketched a family tree in the front. Benatar's handwritten dedication in the front appears to be written to Beryl, one of the book's minor characters. I sense we are being toyed with! In particular I felt very bewildered in the final section, when it seemed to me that the dull and downtrodden (though embarrasingly coquettish and somewhat sex-mad) Marsha seemed to have turned into her sister-in-law Daisy. A confusing and startling scene about removal of a thick patina of make-up reinforced my confusion ("like layer upon layer of heavy wallpaper...the cold water in the basin...soon became a stagnant khaki pool with orange tints"). I wonder if this is a deliberate confusion by the author, as the menage a trois (which also seems to incorporate a folie a deux with Marsha and her brother in survivalist mode) spirals down to its gruesome conclusion. There's no writer quite like Benatar in his dancing around the wafer-thin border between fun and madness.
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April 5, 2025I first came across Stephen Benatar when V. recommended his extraordinary Wish Her Safe At Home, the terrifying and tender narrative of a woman, Rachel, who is gradually descending into neurosis and decay. Since then, I’ve read The Man on the Bridge, so this was my third foray into his work. When I Was Otherwise has much in common with Wish Her Safe at Home, holding the same horrid fascination.
Its main character, Daisy, like Rachel, is entirely lacking in self-awareness. As we move between Daisy’s early wartime experiences as a (courageous and efficient) nurse and ambulance driver and her increasingly frail and fractious, widowed old age after she moves in with brother-in-law Dan and his sister Marsha, we witness Daisy ‘playing the giddy goat’, as she puts it: blunt, teasing, malicious, witty and monstrously hypocritical. Daisy prides herself on being outspoken and amusing, but remains oblivious of how offensive and hurtful she’s being, even when her attention is brought to it. She’s at turns scornful and droll, utterly shameless in cadging meals, sherry and cigarettes whenever and from whoever she can, and takes immense pride in her literary education, quoting Kipling, Shakespeare and Congreve in her take-downs of her lesser educated sister-in-law. I was somehow reminded of the famous and much-lauded Jenny Jones poem Warning (‘When I am an old woman I shall wear purple… And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves… Pick the flowers in other people’s gardens/And learn to spit’), a poem I’ve always disliked for the same reasons as so many people love it.
Benatar is cringe factor #10 – although squirming with embarrassment at Daisy’s faux pas, I couldn’t put this book down. Daisy teems with resentment: her own mother had refused to play chess with her husband because ‘she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of outdoing her’, while her ‘cheap denigrations and joyless assumptions’ had destroyed any ‘drive or backbone’ her father might have had, leaving him equally disparaged and condemned in Daisy’s estimation:
Daisy dunked her langue du chat as if she were holding her mother by her ankles.
…
“Poor Daisy. No wonder you disliked her.”
“Disliked her?” Her mother’s head fell off. The rest was eaten and enjoyed. “I wouldn’t have lowered my standards so much as to simply dislike her. I detested her. And still do. Now more than ever.”
“Even though she’s dead?”
“What difference does that make?”
None of that would work if the reader didn’t also get moments where the characters recognise and, if not acknowledging, at least experience painfully their own flaws and failure to amend them: after an explosive scene in which Daisy has again gone too far and she and Marsha (‘like some terrible ogress’) almost come to blows, Daisy
heaved herself up from the bed, moved to her wooden chair beside the table, sat with both arms on the tablecloth, cheek resting on her hands. She hadn’t meant any harm. She truly hadn’t. She knew she did sometimes upset people but it was never because she actually wanted to. It was only some devilry which wouldn’t let her stop. She wished she could get to know herself better; learn what made her act the way she did.
The novel is full of such brutal exchanges, but also excels in the comic, such as when Daisy and Marsha’s husband Andrew enjoy a flirtatious lunch together during which they speak so entirely at cross-purposes that Andrew ends up believing the film star Mary Pickford is actually a man.
It’s also often heart-rendingly sad, unsparing in its portrayal of old age and decay, right to the painful and morbid ending. The book begins with the (true) newspaper report of a neglected house where an elderly man is living alongside the two bodies of his companions, one of them a skeleton. We have all seen ‘that house’ in the street where a recluse exists behind grimy windows and mountains of hoarded belongings blocking the door, while the sad remains of a life lived more freely exist in the old rose still growing by the front door or the windchime that swings from an upstairs window. It’s all impossibly poignant, and Benatar captures that melancholy nostalgia very precisely.
All this sounds negative so it’s hard to say why the book is nevertheless so fascinating and pleasurably readable. One factor is Benatar’s talent for dialogue, and another is his ability to draw a character with truly reprehensible or despicable traits in a way that is entirely sympathetic, as he also does with Marsha, the foolish, coquettish wife who turns out to have a heart of stone and a libido to match.
Despite his talent, Benatar has struggled for due recognition and is famous for accosting potential readers in bookshops and offering them a signed copy of his books (all the copies I've bought from charity shops have been signed by the author). It’s baffling, and makes me wonder if he might have been better to publish under a female pseudonym. I say this because more than one reader has taken exception to his portrayal of the inner experience of the central women in this and his other novels, seeing it as a form of ill-informed misogyny. I can’t agree: I think his insight is telling and sharp, but with only 11 reviews on here, it seems Benatar has a long way to go before his genius is seen.
Its main character, Daisy, like Rachel, is entirely lacking in self-awareness. As we move between Daisy’s early wartime experiences as a (courageous and efficient) nurse and ambulance driver and her increasingly frail and fractious, widowed old age after she moves in with brother-in-law Dan and his sister Marsha, we witness Daisy ‘playing the giddy goat’, as she puts it: blunt, teasing, malicious, witty and monstrously hypocritical. Daisy prides herself on being outspoken and amusing, but remains oblivious of how offensive and hurtful she’s being, even when her attention is brought to it. She’s at turns scornful and droll, utterly shameless in cadging meals, sherry and cigarettes whenever and from whoever she can, and takes immense pride in her literary education, quoting Kipling, Shakespeare and Congreve in her take-downs of her lesser educated sister-in-law. I was somehow reminded of the famous and much-lauded Jenny Jones poem Warning (‘When I am an old woman I shall wear purple… And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves… Pick the flowers in other people’s gardens/And learn to spit’), a poem I’ve always disliked for the same reasons as so many people love it.
Benatar is cringe factor #10 – although squirming with embarrassment at Daisy’s faux pas, I couldn’t put this book down. Daisy teems with resentment: her own mother had refused to play chess with her husband because ‘she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of outdoing her’, while her ‘cheap denigrations and joyless assumptions’ had destroyed any ‘drive or backbone’ her father might have had, leaving him equally disparaged and condemned in Daisy’s estimation:
Daisy dunked her langue du chat as if she were holding her mother by her ankles.
…
“Poor Daisy. No wonder you disliked her.”
“Disliked her?” Her mother’s head fell off. The rest was eaten and enjoyed. “I wouldn’t have lowered my standards so much as to simply dislike her. I detested her. And still do. Now more than ever.”
“Even though she’s dead?”
“What difference does that make?”
None of that would work if the reader didn’t also get moments where the characters recognise and, if not acknowledging, at least experience painfully their own flaws and failure to amend them: after an explosive scene in which Daisy has again gone too far and she and Marsha (‘like some terrible ogress’) almost come to blows, Daisy
heaved herself up from the bed, moved to her wooden chair beside the table, sat with both arms on the tablecloth, cheek resting on her hands. She hadn’t meant any harm. She truly hadn’t. She knew she did sometimes upset people but it was never because she actually wanted to. It was only some devilry which wouldn’t let her stop. She wished she could get to know herself better; learn what made her act the way she did.
The novel is full of such brutal exchanges, but also excels in the comic, such as when Daisy and Marsha’s husband Andrew enjoy a flirtatious lunch together during which they speak so entirely at cross-purposes that Andrew ends up believing the film star Mary Pickford is actually a man.
It’s also often heart-rendingly sad, unsparing in its portrayal of old age and decay, right to the painful and morbid ending. The book begins with the (true) newspaper report of a neglected house where an elderly man is living alongside the two bodies of his companions, one of them a skeleton. We have all seen ‘that house’ in the street where a recluse exists behind grimy windows and mountains of hoarded belongings blocking the door, while the sad remains of a life lived more freely exist in the old rose still growing by the front door or the windchime that swings from an upstairs window. It’s all impossibly poignant, and Benatar captures that melancholy nostalgia very precisely.
All this sounds negative so it’s hard to say why the book is nevertheless so fascinating and pleasurably readable. One factor is Benatar’s talent for dialogue, and another is his ability to draw a character with truly reprehensible or despicable traits in a way that is entirely sympathetic, as he also does with Marsha, the foolish, coquettish wife who turns out to have a heart of stone and a libido to match.
Despite his talent, Benatar has struggled for due recognition and is famous for accosting potential readers in bookshops and offering them a signed copy of his books (all the copies I've bought from charity shops have been signed by the author). It’s baffling, and makes me wonder if he might have been better to publish under a female pseudonym. I say this because more than one reader has taken exception to his portrayal of the inner experience of the central women in this and his other novels, seeing it as a form of ill-informed misogyny. I can’t agree: I think his insight is telling and sharp, but with only 11 reviews on here, it seems Benatar has a long way to go before his genius is seen.
July 2, 2019
‘When I Was Otherwise’ by Stephen Benatar was one of my odd little pickups. I was attracted to it because of how it had been written, inspired by a small article in the Guardian newspaper, the story is a fictional answer to ‘how did that happen?’
The book starts with that article, police have broken into a house after fears of neglect to find the rotting remains of an old woman who had been dead for over a year, the recent remains of another old woman and a befuddled old man. They were related, the old man and the recently deceased woman were brother and sister, and the woman who had been dead longer was their sister-in-law.
The book then takes us to the day they moved in together and the party they had to celebrate that move. As the characters reminisce we are taken back to other times the characters had met up and then the book takes us away, drifting back and forward in time, telling parts of their story as we go. It’s like a web or a tapestry, most of it told through conversations and often over food and drink. In particular we follow Daisy, the sister-in-law and she is a fascinating character.
Through snippets scattered throughout the text we learn that she grew up in a family she hated for being too strait-laced, became a nurse at the front in WWI, married a man with TB who onlu lasted a couple of years, carried on nursing in Britain during the Blitz, moved into a friend’s house after hers was bombed, nursed the friend through her final years and was left the house, sold the house and moved into little bedsits before finally moving in with her husbands relatives. We find out that she hated her mother-in-law (and has a problem with authority and conformity generally) and that she was kept at a distance from much of the family.
As a person, she is both scathing and kind, manipulative and painfully honest, confident and secretly very insecure. This insecurity most often shows in her habit of pushing people away with rude jokes, her need to be on top and her painful, painful passive aggression. She is always running down her looks, apologising for being a burden and trying to prod people into giving her compliments. My favourite was this; “Will somebody tell me please if I’ve received a compliment? It doesn’t happen often and I’d like to know.”
Daisy also cadges drinks (coffee, tea, sherry, whisky - anything liquid), and carefully rationalises all her selfish acts with selfless reasoning. However, there is a glimpse of her good sides. She does care for those she loves, encouraging her husband to stand up to his tyrannical mother and nursing her best friend for years. She’s interesting because she is so contradictory but we get the feeling if a few more people accepted her, she may have turned out much better.
Daisy and the sister-in-law, Marsha, also have an interesting relationship. Scared by her forthrightness, the two hadn’t met up much but when Daisy comes to dinner they almost get on. What’s more Daisy gets on much better with Marsha’s husband, Andrew, than she does. Marsha and Andrew have been married a year or so and although he finds her sweet, he is irritated by her sheltered upbringing, her naïveté and her painfully obvious ways of being affectionate. More intrigued by the prickly Daisy, the two meet secretly behind Marsha’s back to have meals and joke about everyone else. The relationship never gets physical though and is later broken off.
When they are elderly and move in together, Marsha takes the role of nagging mum, Dan takes the role of easy-going father and Daisy as rebellious teen (even though she’s the oldest). It would seem the most likely to snap is Daisy but Marsha is not as in control as she seems… It is telling that she rates her greatest accomplishment as snipping the end of her husband’s condoms.
(The brother-in-law, Dan is nice, a bit dopey and doesn’t come into the story all that much.)
I love the way the book is written. The conversations are well-observed and the characters are full and interesting. I also loved how the structure, of little snippets back and forth, lets the reader accumulate detail - I bet it’d be a completely different book on reread. Finally, I really enjoyed how the main characters of the plot are old people - proper old people like the ones that were around when I was little. They eat painfully unappetising food, have a pot of tea at the ready, reminisce about handsome old film stars and constantly break into old songs. Like the old people I remember, they have war stories and stick to their old ways, not adopting new technologies and styles. It’s a funny book, a grim book and a well told one. I really liked it.
The book starts with that article, police have broken into a house after fears of neglect to find the rotting remains of an old woman who had been dead for over a year, the recent remains of another old woman and a befuddled old man. They were related, the old man and the recently deceased woman were brother and sister, and the woman who had been dead longer was their sister-in-law.
The book then takes us to the day they moved in together and the party they had to celebrate that move. As the characters reminisce we are taken back to other times the characters had met up and then the book takes us away, drifting back and forward in time, telling parts of their story as we go. It’s like a web or a tapestry, most of it told through conversations and often over food and drink. In particular we follow Daisy, the sister-in-law and she is a fascinating character.
Through snippets scattered throughout the text we learn that she grew up in a family she hated for being too strait-laced, became a nurse at the front in WWI, married a man with TB who onlu lasted a couple of years, carried on nursing in Britain during the Blitz, moved into a friend’s house after hers was bombed, nursed the friend through her final years and was left the house, sold the house and moved into little bedsits before finally moving in with her husbands relatives. We find out that she hated her mother-in-law (and has a problem with authority and conformity generally) and that she was kept at a distance from much of the family.
As a person, she is both scathing and kind, manipulative and painfully honest, confident and secretly very insecure. This insecurity most often shows in her habit of pushing people away with rude jokes, her need to be on top and her painful, painful passive aggression. She is always running down her looks, apologising for being a burden and trying to prod people into giving her compliments. My favourite was this; “Will somebody tell me please if I’ve received a compliment? It doesn’t happen often and I’d like to know.”
Daisy also cadges drinks (coffee, tea, sherry, whisky - anything liquid), and carefully rationalises all her selfish acts with selfless reasoning. However, there is a glimpse of her good sides. She does care for those she loves, encouraging her husband to stand up to his tyrannical mother and nursing her best friend for years. She’s interesting because she is so contradictory but we get the feeling if a few more people accepted her, she may have turned out much better.
Daisy and the sister-in-law, Marsha, also have an interesting relationship. Scared by her forthrightness, the two hadn’t met up much but when Daisy comes to dinner they almost get on. What’s more Daisy gets on much better with Marsha’s husband, Andrew, than she does. Marsha and Andrew have been married a year or so and although he finds her sweet, he is irritated by her sheltered upbringing, her naïveté and her painfully obvious ways of being affectionate. More intrigued by the prickly Daisy, the two meet secretly behind Marsha’s back to have meals and joke about everyone else. The relationship never gets physical though and is later broken off.
When they are elderly and move in together, Marsha takes the role of nagging mum, Dan takes the role of easy-going father and Daisy as rebellious teen (even though she’s the oldest). It would seem the most likely to snap is Daisy but Marsha is not as in control as she seems… It is telling that she rates her greatest accomplishment as snipping the end of her husband’s condoms.
(The brother-in-law, Dan is nice, a bit dopey and doesn’t come into the story all that much.)
I love the way the book is written. The conversations are well-observed and the characters are full and interesting. I also loved how the structure, of little snippets back and forth, lets the reader accumulate detail - I bet it’d be a completely different book on reread. Finally, I really enjoyed how the main characters of the plot are old people - proper old people like the ones that were around when I was little. They eat painfully unappetising food, have a pot of tea at the ready, reminisce about handsome old film stars and constantly break into old songs. Like the old people I remember, they have war stories and stick to their old ways, not adopting new technologies and styles. It’s a funny book, a grim book and a well told one. I really liked it.
September 9, 2012
I think this will bear a second read, I was often distracted while I read it and there is a lot going on in the conversations between the characters. Or maybe some of those bits were too long and boring? Not sure yet.
What struck me was the characterisation. I thought that was rather genius. He seems to have a way of capturing the mundane with gritty realism. Rather Mike Leigh actually. This would have made a good film. I found some of the less attractive elements of myself in those characters and I hope that's a psychologically generic experience of such good reading rather than something peculiar to me! The other great achievement of this novel was, I think, in how it really does get you by the chin and thrust you up against the more likely issues that old age will bring. You might find you have to move in with others when you'd rather not. You might find you have to tolerate your dwelling rather than control it. Limbs, speech and mind will fail you just when you needed them most to make a point, answer a verbal attack, justify yourself.
I only bought this in the first place because the author charmingly approached me in Waterstones. I suppose it would have been more interesting to talk to him after reading this not before. What I would really like to know, and I think the publishers are guilty of a henious dis-service here, is the relationship between the novel and the real life incident mentioned in the blurb, foreword and first chapter. OK I got it (3 times) there was this incident reported in a newspaper. And now there is this book. What is the missing link? I don't know if the news report simply inspired a complete fiction or if Mr. Benatar researched the history of this incident and used real life events and real names. Irritating.
Anyway, what a perceptive writer. This is a well crafted thing. I would recommend if you're the sort of person who chooses their stories for their human understanding.
What struck me was the characterisation. I thought that was rather genius. He seems to have a way of capturing the mundane with gritty realism. Rather Mike Leigh actually. This would have made a good film. I found some of the less attractive elements of myself in those characters and I hope that's a psychologically generic experience of such good reading rather than something peculiar to me! The other great achievement of this novel was, I think, in how it really does get you by the chin and thrust you up against the more likely issues that old age will bring. You might find you have to move in with others when you'd rather not. You might find you have to tolerate your dwelling rather than control it. Limbs, speech and mind will fail you just when you needed them most to make a point, answer a verbal attack, justify yourself.
I only bought this in the first place because the author charmingly approached me in Waterstones. I suppose it would have been more interesting to talk to him after reading this not before. What I would really like to know, and I think the publishers are guilty of a henious dis-service here, is the relationship between the novel and the real life incident mentioned in the blurb, foreword and first chapter. OK I got it (3 times) there was this incident reported in a newspaper. And now there is this book. What is the missing link? I don't know if the news report simply inspired a complete fiction or if Mr. Benatar researched the history of this incident and used real life events and real names. Irritating.
Anyway, what a perceptive writer. This is a well crafted thing. I would recommend if you're the sort of person who chooses their stories for their human understanding.
August 10, 2020
Up there with House Mother Normal in terms of geriatric nightmares. Barbara seems acutely aware of the absurdity of life, consciousness and our social selves.
December 17, 2022
A black comedy beginning with a macabre newspaper article about police finding an old woman’s skeleton and the remains of another woman and a confused, addled old man. The man and the recently deceased woman were brother and sister, and the woman who had been dead longer was their sister-in-law. From this unexplained mix of characters the author extrapolates their story
Daisy, the long dead woman, led a raucous life and though she couldn’t stand her in-laws, after all was said and done she wound up moving in with her dead husband’s family to spend her declining years in being attended to even though she claimed she was perfectly fit and could have taken care of herself.
We see what their life was like through conversation and dinners, mostly with the two women sniping at each other while the simple brother tries to cajole them into getting along in a more friendly manner. We also discover that Daisy and Marsha’s husband Andrew once had a non-physical affair that Daisy kept secret until one day when its revelation would be most hurtful, though Daisy is not 100% a bad apple and there is evidence that sometimes when she cares for people, she really cares. In other words, the author skillfully adds nuance to an odd relationship that came from a story with few known details. Most of the focus is on Daisy and we see the story through to the end of her life and beyond knowing beforehand how things will turn out for all concerned though until given author Benatar’s conjecture we did not know why.
The story is amusing and gruesome in equal parts, and all from the mind of a writer who apparently achieved his greatest success in self-publishing several novels and here was spurred by a few details from a newspaper story he previously knew nothing about. Highly recommended reading from the marvelous Stephen Benatar.
Daisy, the long dead woman, led a raucous life and though she couldn’t stand her in-laws, after all was said and done she wound up moving in with her dead husband’s family to spend her declining years in being attended to even though she claimed she was perfectly fit and could have taken care of herself.
We see what their life was like through conversation and dinners, mostly with the two women sniping at each other while the simple brother tries to cajole them into getting along in a more friendly manner. We also discover that Daisy and Marsha’s husband Andrew once had a non-physical affair that Daisy kept secret until one day when its revelation would be most hurtful, though Daisy is not 100% a bad apple and there is evidence that sometimes when she cares for people, she really cares. In other words, the author skillfully adds nuance to an odd relationship that came from a story with few known details. Most of the focus is on Daisy and we see the story through to the end of her life and beyond knowing beforehand how things will turn out for all concerned though until given author Benatar’s conjecture we did not know why.
The story is amusing and gruesome in equal parts, and all from the mind of a writer who apparently achieved his greatest success in self-publishing several novels and here was spurred by a few details from a newspaper story he previously knew nothing about. Highly recommended reading from the marvelous Stephen Benatar.
December 2, 2017
An intimate setting , a warm house in lonely London inhabited by 3 seniors, I hardly thought that one of the characters I can most relate to in literature would be an acerbic, curmudgeonly 85 year old woman.
The narrative point of view - 3 old people remembering their lives as they end, is poignant and eternally sad. The opposite of a Bildungsroman where hope and ambition and opportunity loom at every corner and even loss has a larger meaning: with the 3 dying tenants of the decaying house, their is no such redemption, only sadness. What could have been, and ever dawning torschlusspanik, ever receding possibility : they will never go to Vienna.
But the lives they have lived have In their own way, been rich.
The relation between the 3 which evolves in flashback some would consider reminiscent of the age of innocence by Edith Wharton, new land archer and the outcast Olenska, or more uncharitably of Becky sharpe.
Underneath all that polite English civility lies a sharper sting of a thing , reminiscent of Somerset Maugham , the genteel evil of the razors edge of the painted veil: "the dog it was that died."
The narrative point of view - 3 old people remembering their lives as they end, is poignant and eternally sad. The opposite of a Bildungsroman where hope and ambition and opportunity loom at every corner and even loss has a larger meaning: with the 3 dying tenants of the decaying house, their is no such redemption, only sadness. What could have been, and ever dawning torschlusspanik, ever receding possibility : they will never go to Vienna.
But the lives they have lived have In their own way, been rich.
The relation between the 3 which evolves in flashback some would consider reminiscent of the age of innocence by Edith Wharton, new land archer and the outcast Olenska, or more uncharitably of Becky sharpe.
Underneath all that polite English civility lies a sharper sting of a thing , reminiscent of Somerset Maugham , the genteel evil of the razors edge of the painted veil: "the dog it was that died."
May 28, 2014
Isn't it fantastic when you stumble across a book, by an author you never heard of, which turns out to be an unjustly neglected gem?
Unfortunately, this isn't one of those books.
It wasn't awful, I don't suppose. But unless somebody changed the definition of a "classic" while I wasn't looking, I've been hoodwinked. Damn you, Capuchin Classics, for the hours you have cost me and for the £1.49 I spent in that charity shop. At least it was for a good cause.
The writing was of a decent standard, but I found the over-reliance on dialogue - some of it quite repetitive, and not wholly convincing - a little off-putting. This probably wouldn't have been quite so bad if the character of Daisy had been a bit easier to tolerate but God, she grated on the nerves.
That may make me sound unfeeling, I know. I am honestly an empathetic soul. Daisy, however, could test the patience of a saint.
Above all, I think what disappointed me most was that I expected some revelatory insights into what it means to grow old. That's kind of what the blurb on the back led me to believe, anyway (Damn you, Times Literary Supplement). Speaking as someone who for many years has dealt with the elderly and the sick, I don't feel that this book had anything particularly interesting to add to that debate.
Unfortunately, this isn't one of those books.
It wasn't awful, I don't suppose. But unless somebody changed the definition of a "classic" while I wasn't looking, I've been hoodwinked. Damn you, Capuchin Classics, for the hours you have cost me and for the £1.49 I spent in that charity shop. At least it was for a good cause.
The writing was of a decent standard, but I found the over-reliance on dialogue - some of it quite repetitive, and not wholly convincing - a little off-putting. This probably wouldn't have been quite so bad if the character of Daisy had been a bit easier to tolerate but God, she grated on the nerves.
That may make me sound unfeeling, I know. I am honestly an empathetic soul. Daisy, however, could test the patience of a saint.
Above all, I think what disappointed me most was that I expected some revelatory insights into what it means to grow old. That's kind of what the blurb on the back led me to believe, anyway (Damn you, Times Literary Supplement). Speaking as someone who for many years has dealt with the elderly and the sick, I don't feel that this book had anything particularly interesting to add to that debate.
July 18, 2011
Told largely through dialogue, but also graced by passages of quietly witty narration, this book unfolds the stories of three main characters. Dan - unassuming, straightforward, kind-hearted, but naive: Marsha - who clumsily attempts the roles of coquette and model wife with equal, tragi-comic results and Daisy, whose witty, waspish, overwhelming character is belied by a failure to construct an emotionally or practically rewarding life. The novel both teases and involves the reader as it makes chronological jumps to unravel the twisted skein of relationships between the three protagonists, making the book an engaging puzzle as well as a compelling read.
Benatar's gift for credible dialogue is astonishing, and he is able to bring to life and develop characters very powerfully in this way, creating scenes and atmospheres which encompass many moods, from the dark and bleak to the joyful. The book is forensic in its analysis of the blessings and pitfalls of human life, especially where growing old is concerned, but wears its author's talents very lightly, the style never seeming forced or contrived.
For anyone who revels in the English language being well used, and in the moving depiction of characters, this is a book not to miss.
Benatar's gift for credible dialogue is astonishing, and he is able to bring to life and develop characters very powerfully in this way, creating scenes and atmospheres which encompass many moods, from the dark and bleak to the joyful. The book is forensic in its analysis of the blessings and pitfalls of human life, especially where growing old is concerned, but wears its author's talents very lightly, the style never seeming forced or contrived.
For anyone who revels in the English language being well used, and in the moving depiction of characters, this is a book not to miss.
August 15, 2016
A strange book which I found difficult to get on with, particularly at first. Disjointed scenes of the present, sudden flashbacks to the past make it a demanding read. It has a very good feel for the 1930s.
Marsha and Dan are brother and sister and spend their last few years living together along with Daisy, their sister-in-law. Marsha and Daisy are found dead, the latter for up to a year.
The book is really concerned with events leading up to the deaths. Dark but amusing in parts it is depressingly true to life. Marsha and Daisy's reclusive life is sketched in all its psychological horror as though observed through a magnifying glass. Who will snap first and why? Within a claustrophobic relationship laced with anger and resentment, revenge will follow...
Marsha and Dan are brother and sister and spend their last few years living together along with Daisy, their sister-in-law. Marsha and Daisy are found dead, the latter for up to a year.
The book is really concerned with events leading up to the deaths. Dark but amusing in parts it is depressingly true to life. Marsha and Daisy's reclusive life is sketched in all its psychological horror as though observed through a magnifying glass. Who will snap first and why? Within a claustrophobic relationship laced with anger and resentment, revenge will follow...
February 12, 2011
I really wanted to enjoy this book having met the author and found him to be a very charming and friendly man. However I found the pace was too slow and nothing really happened and the language just didn't quite ring true, but there again it was set before my time with characters that a couple of generations older than me.
December 15, 2011
Love Daisy. She is so life-ruiningly awful. Drenched in ink-black humor, really funny, but also sad and smart about how deforming it is to have no friendships with other women.
dropped
June 27, 2013OMG!! I met the author and he signed the copy for me. But i only bought it because he was watching me. I've read part one, and its soooo boring.
Not my type of book!
Not my type of book!
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