If we shadows have offended
Anita Brookner
A NICE CHANGE by Nina Bawden Virago, £15.99, pp. 192 .1•••••• Is it unfair to suggest that television has contributed to the dumbing down of contemporary fiction? A story too easilY absorbed, and then as easily forgotten, is likely to be the pattern for a novel that is less demanding than it should be. This also works in reverse: Jane Austen's acerbity was nowhere to be encountered in Pride and Prejudice (Persuasion did rather better). A feeling that the romantic mechanisms were too easily exposed, the happy endings assumed before their time, interfered with the necessary stealth, s° that all ended too well too soon.
Something of the same facility informs Nina Bawden's new novel. She is all, excellent and exceptionally clear-sighted author, but here she turns fiction-writing on its head and appears to be working within the parameters of a lavish television production: exotic setting, easilY distinguished cast of characters, interesting encounters, and a generally neat conclu- sion. The blurb suggests that A Nice Change is reminiscent of A Midsummer Night's Dream: one more blurring of the boundaries which it behoves the reading public to keep firmly fixed in its collective mind. Perhaps easy fictions are the order of about. To Certainly there are a lot of them To the Hotel Parthenon in an out of the way Greek resort come Tom, a Labour MP, and his unsuspecting wife may' Also in the minibus are Portia, his erst- while mistress, a comic couple named Boot, Philip Mann, an American publisher whose wife has recently committed suicide, Prudence Honey, a very young doctor at a, London hospital, two elderly ladies, one 01 whom turns out to have been a famous fill actress, and Vic Jones, retired builder, and Tom's father. Prudence's grandmother, disembarking from the Morning Tide' comes in handy when one of the elderly sisters drowns and she can put her training as a nurse to good use. The hotel is awasu, frames, with Zimmer ames, Japanese tourists and a convention of psychologists. The food 0 poor, the bar untended and the plumbing erratic. So far so predictable. What is perhaps not predictable is the easy resolution of the various tragedies: the drowning, the concealed infidelity, the bereavement. All this is busily sorted out because Portia falls in love with Vic, Philip falls in love with Prudence, Tom is elevated to the Lords, and his unsuspecting wife has, or will have, twins. And Prudence's grand- mother will happily become housekeeper to the defunct actress's middle-aged son. There is also a certain amount of blushing and swooning: the young doctor, Prudence, Surely too emotional for her calling, is swept off her feet by the 59-year- old publisher, although we are told that she is still in thrall to her young lover, Daniel.
Presumably it was this lightness of touch that led to the hazy comparison with A Midsummer Night's Dream. All ends happi- 1Y. Portia and Vic marry and live in Isling- ton; Philip and Prudence marry and live in Montagu Square. Beryl Boot, whose name really gives the game away, deserts her hus- band and his crooked dealings and buys her own little house in Greece. The surviv- ing sister or twin is unmarked by the drowning incident. That only leaves the Japanese, the psychologists, and the old ladies on Zimmer frames. Nothing happens to them, and they can fade out when no longer required to provide comic relief. At least that spares the natives from having to act up, This is not a difficult read, but it is surprisingly heavy-going. The writer, who has previously excelled in compassionate scrutiny of family problems, gives the impression here that she is enjoying a holiday from serious work. As a holiday of sorts (and we are told on more than one occasion that it is a package holiday) it is a useful metaphor: sex and disorientation are both included. One may enter various cavils. Would a man whose mad wife had committed suicide only four weeks previously fall in love in the very short interval indicated by the time frame? Would the unsuspecting wife really not be touched by the finger of suspicion? Is a two-week package tour the ideal convales- cence for a man recuperating from an operation for piles? Will we see this on television? And are the semi-mythological couplings guaranteed to delight our weary contemporaries? Or will they too need a Special dispensation in order to appreciate what is really a rather unambitious exer- cise?
Nina Bawden can be unsparing when she chooses to be: the damaged children and adolescents who have appeared in her previous novels have proved as much, as have the middle-aged misfits who struggle to make sense of their lives without straining the reader's credulity. In A ',Vice Change her characters no longer behave; they disport themselves. Those of us Who demand more will look rather askance at this. But Nina Bawden has many devoted readers who will forgive her any- thing,
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