Last night, as I was drifting off to sleep, 88% done Day’s End by H. E. Bates (the preciseness of the percent via my kobo), I thought of an adjective that described the book perfectly. I leaned over towards my kobo, but then thought By the time I turn it on the kobo …. Then I kind of hit around to see if there was a pencil. There wasn’t. Now I don’t remember what the adjective was. I think it begin with an S.
This haziness with my adjectives actually ties back to the book. I’m pretty hazy on Day’s End. The book isn’t long, and it’s full of hodge-podge English pastoral where your mind goes to cozy country cottages with pink and lilac bushes out front and thatched roofs and rolling hills and then thinking of all these things, the stories themselves kind of fade away. Even calling them stories is rather generous; most are scenes detailing the small agonies of the underclass. A waitress being stood up on a date, a shepherd searches out a doctor to attend to his pregnant wife, a man with disabilities is mocked by children in church. It’s like a Vanitas painting (I had to look up the term): at first glance everything is bountiful and lively, but a second glance and it’s really a painting of fruit rotting and flowers drooping. Transient.
I’m not sure exactly why Day’s End‘s stories are collected together just now. The little blurb at the start of the book tells me that Bates died in 1974, so maybe the older stories have reached the public domain to be reissued perhaps? There’s no information as to when most of the stories were written, but a note is made that some come from the 1920s and 1930s. They don’t feel, in style, like the 1920s though, the way, for example, listening to Gershwin feels like the 1920s and 1930s. Maybe because there’s no slang. Maybe because adjectives and adverbs are used judiciously. Maybe because there’s a core of universality that runs through the stories. But even that can’t overcome the haziness. The stories feel like waves washing the seashore; they come and go and lulled me into drowsiness without making that much of an impression. The sea is still the sea. The sand is still the sand. Proust makes me feel that way too, so at least Bates is in good company.
These are stories for reading in a hammock on a lazy summer day.
Day’s End by H. E. Bates went on sale May 14, 2015.
I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.