Book review: A Cautious Approach

STANLEY MIDDLETON died last year well on in his ninth decade, soon after finishing this novel, his 45th. Though he won the Booker Prize way back in 1973, I doubt if his novels ever enjoyed big sales, though I like to think he had clusters of discriminating and devoted readers.

Considering how many other elderly novelists have been cut adrift by publishers with whom they had enjoyed a long relationship, it is to the credit of the editors, or perhaps an editor, at Hutchinson, that Middleton never suffered such rejection. He didn't of course deserve to. He was a very good and always interesting novelist, and a rather stranger one than a brief description of his books might lead you to suppose.

They are all set in the English Midlands, many in a town which he called Beechnall, which is probably Nottingham, not that this matters. The character almost all belong to the educated but unflashy middle-class, dipping sometimes a notch or two below, rarely rising higher.

They are usually middle-aged — Middleton was himself in his forties and working as a schoolmaster when he was first published. Most of them are married, some widowed, a few divorced. Some of them at least in every novel are interested in the arts, especially literature and music, and willing to discuss their interest with those who are not fortunate enough to share it, and are sometimes curious about it.

All the characters do a lot of explaining, and, though Middleton is carefully meticulous about scene-setting, describing houses, gardens, walks, etc, the novels are mostly made up of conversation. There are few striking incidents, though almost every novel has one or two, sometimes surprisingly violent. They give occasion for more talk.

There is, one must admit, a sameness about the novels. In memory one slides into another, and even admirers might be hard put to place particular characters in particular novels.

They are all inhabitants of Middleton-land, territory ignored by more fashionable writers. One may suspect that in real life many of them would be rather dull, and one may confess that a little goes a long way even in the novel. Yet each new novel is compelling in its own right.

Despite the ordinariness of characters and setting, the apparent naturalism is deceptive. His people ring true, but in manner, though not matter, he is not a realistic novelist.

His people say things which in real life they would only think. They ask probing questions which in real life they would not dare, or would be too shy to put, and they receive full and revealing answers instead of provoking embarrassment or getting a brush-off as would be all too probable in real life. In short, Middleton has his characters speak with a freedom people usually deny themselves.

In this way his work belongs to drama rather than the novel. Though some of his characters are self-contained, they are never inarticulate.

He is technically more daring than many seemingly experimental novelists. He employs one unusual device: the embedding of a previous conversation in the current one.

Two characters will be engaged in conversation. One will break off to recount, often at considerable length, a conversation he or she has had with another character. Of course people do this sort of thing in conversation, but very rarely in the comprehensive manner Middleton employs.

Sometimes the device seems awkward, as well as improbable. Clearly this didn't worry Middleton. In his novels conversations are carried on to reveal character and relationships. He allows people to express themselves, so that we may understand them.

This last novel follows a familiar pattern. Two solitary men meet on Christmas morning. (One, rather surprisingly, introduces himself with the words, "I'm heterosexual"; later you wonder if that is full truth.) They arrange to meet again.

This character, Andrew, brings along a woman to whom he was once engaged, who is now divorced from her husband. The other, George, is attracted to her, but at first believes that the attachment between her and Andrew is stronger than it proves to be. His approaches are, as the title indicates, cautious, also uncertain. Will they or won't they? In some novels you might be sure of how things will develop and end. Middleton keeps you guessing.

There are a few scenes that might have been shortened if Middleton had lived to revise the novel, but in general it is up to standard. For his admirers it will offer familiar pleasures, mixed with regret that there will be no more new Middletons. Those, on the other hand, who don't know Middelton territory could do a lot worse than start here.

A CAUTIOUS APPROACH

by Stanley Middleton

Hutchinson, 220pp, 18.99