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    God on the Rocks
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    God on the Rocks
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    God on the Rocks
    Ebook207 pages2 hours

    God on the Rocks

    By Jane Gardam

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    It is with great pleasure that Europa Editions makes this Booker Prize short-listed novel newly available to the legions of Gardam fans.
     
    Originally published in Great Britain in 1978, the novel describes Margaret Marshs coming of age one summer between the world wars. Caught in the backwash of a fervently religious father, a mother bitterly nostalgic for what might have been, the tea and sympathy of some thoroughly secular neighbors and the bawdy jokes of her nanny Lydia, Margaret's world hurtles towards a shattering moment of truth. Drama, tragedy and a touch of farce lend themselves to Gardams typically eloquent prose. With subtlety and precision, God on the Rocks provides an intimate portrait of the tensions that divide men and women, present and past, and the love and sorrow that lingers throughout.
     
    Jane Gardam's reputation in the United States has been greatly enlarged by the critical acclaim and commercial success garnered by her latest novels, last year's Man in the Wooden Hat and her masterpiece Old Filth. Now, newcomers and fans alike can enjoy the pleasure of the splendid writing that established Gardam's considerable canon some four decades ago.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherEuropa Editions
    Release dateOct 26, 2010
    ISBN9781609450212
    Unavailable
    God on the Rocks

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    Reviews for God on the Rocks

    4/5

    99 ratings15 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Strange but quite compelling read, set in a 1930s seaside town, where eight-year old Margaret, child of Primal Saints parents, is taken out by the unsuitable maid, Lydia. She sees a different world, with Lydia's liaisons with a man; meanwhile her mother imagines the path her life could have taken with an old flame (who has just returned to town), and her father is starting to see Lydia as more than just a soul to be saved...The writing is extremely funny at times: "It was brawn and shape for tea." but also has a sadness at the way life turns out. Put me somehow in mind of Beryl Bainbridge's writing.
    • 4/5
      Another one from the 1978 Booker shortlist. This was a very enjoyable read, but one which seems impossible to compare objectively with the last one I read, Rumours Of Rain - reading the two consecutively just makes you realise what a difficult job the judges have. Set in a Northern seaside town between the wars, the first part of the book is told from the point of view of Margaret, a precocious eight-year old who is starting to see beyond the strict religious indoctrination she has been brought up with, and the story then widens out to focus on the people around her. A lovely book full of deft comic touches, warmth, wisdom and intriguing perspectives.
    • 4/5
      Wish someone would confirm for me what happened at the end.
    • 4/5
      The author creates a very believable child as the main character, who tries to make sense of her family and village environment: evangelical preacher father, crazy(?) people in nearby mansion, hints of mother's true love, eccentric nanny, etc. Despite these elements, this isn't a gothic novel--it's a touching story of people's need to relate.
    • 4/5
      A good absorbing read; nothing earthshaking. The most remarkable and improbable eight year old you will ever meet outside of science fiction, observes and tries to find the logic in her world, which contains some very odd characters. For her mother, caught in a stifling marriage to a fundamentalist bank manager, the past knocks on the door, presents an opportunity, and shows the futility of trying to right what went wrong way back when. A bit too much "I see what you're doing there" with the author's technique. Still, I wanted to see how it all came together, and it did, rather appropriately.Review written in February, 2011
    • 4/5
      This early novel by Gardam had it's moments, but I can't say that I enjoyed it as much as Old Filth, the book that set me in search of more works by this author. I got lost somewhere in the middle--perhaps due to the favt hat I was listening to the book on audio during Thanksgiving commutes to and from the airport. I should go back and reread it, but there are too many other books calling from my stacks and shelves.The story begins with a focus on eight-year old Margaret, daughter of a rabidly evangelical minister. Her mother, Elinor, a convert to this small religious sect, has recently given birth to a son. A rather flashy young maid, Lydia, is hired to help with the housework--and to take Margaret for outings as a treat to make up for the lack of her mother's attention. Elinor fears that Lydia is a bad influence, but her husband insists that "Lydia was sent" by the Lord.Where I started to get lost was when Margaret encounters on her walks people her mother knew when she was young. The story suddenly shifted its focus to Ellie, her friendships with Charles and Binky (neighbors who have recently moved back into the family home) and with an artist named Drinkwater. I had difficulty sorting out these people and others and telling when the story was in the distant past, the less distant past, and the present. At the end, I found myself at a memorial service, not sure who was being memorialized or why, who tried to save who, what had happened to Elinor, etc. Utter confusion--and what I could figure out, I had no idea where it occurred in the sequence of the story.So I'm giving this one an extra half star for what may be my own inattention, but I think 3.5 stars is about right.
    • 4/5
      I read this a little time ago now, but I enjoyed this engagingly story set in Yorkshire and featuring a cast of well observed characters, with the central character being a young girl trying to make sense of her world. The themes are ones that Jane Gardam revisits in some of her other books (Bilgewater, Faith Fox), but this added to my enjoyment.
    • 4/5
      Not quite as good as "Old Filth," which is the only other book by Gardam I've read to date (although I will surely read the rest). But then again, "Old Filth" is a very hard act to follow and "God on the Rocks", for all it was shortlisted for the Booker back in 1978, was (I think) Gardam's first.In this novel, Gardam's humor is by turns scathing and sweet and surprising. Her characters are marvels of three-dimensional creation. Here, between the two World Wars, we have quiet, self-contained, old-before-her-years Margaret, growing up in an alarmingly religious household with her mother Ellie, who has just had another child, and her father, Kenneth, Pastor of an evangelical church. Enter stage left -- Lydia, a somewhat blowsy, vulgar and undeniably alluring 'maid'. Lydia and Margaret go on day trips, where the world becomes far more complicated than Margaret had imagined up until this point: they visit a lunatic asylum, wherein lives an old lady with many secrets and a painter who paints, among other things, quite a lot of snakes.Lydia evokes all sorts of emotions, not least of them from pious Kenneth. Ellie, in turn, revives a friendship with a long-lost love, the estranged son of the lady in the asylum. In other words, everyone's life gets a good shaking up, resulting in a rocky cliff of disillusion, which echoes the title -- God on the Rocks. Gardam uses a complicated omniscient point of view in this work -- multiple voices and multiple time frames, and if she doesn't quite pull it off on every page, she comes close enough for it not to matter. You have to pay attention when you read Gardam, so as not to miss anything, and the effort is well rewarded. Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      This is an older book of Gardam's which was recently published in the U.S. It is quite a complex story revolving around an 8 year old girl, Margaret, who is trying to make sense of the chaos of her home life. Her home life involves odd and unhappy parents, religion, Lydia, a sensual girl who helps in the house, and a madhouse next door with connections to Margaret's home. Needless to say, it's an unusual book. and for not fans of linear narratives.
    • 4/5
      In God on the Rocks bit by vague bit the reader slowly learns more about the relationships, especially between the members of two families within a English seaside town, until it all becomes clear in the end, with a few surprises thrown in for delectable measure. Gardam's prose is limpid, never fussy or overwrought. The dialogue is at times maddeningly, tantalizingly evasive and vague.

      Most of the this summer world is viewed through the lens of an eight year old girl, Margaret, whose father insists on a rigidly religious household. Margaret's mother, a fanciful woman, tries to maintain the proprieties expected of the her banker-cum-charismatic-preacher husband, while Margaret at once chaffs at her father's teachings and proselytizes of her own accord. She is certainly a child who often "gets beyond herself" in her vexation with the seemingly queer ideas of adults. However, our omniscient narrator will sometimes shift her focus to other characters such as Margaret's mother Elinor. With these shifts much of that which has only been half understood begins to become clearer.

      With the introduction of a voluptuous maid, a new baby in the household, and the return of Elinor's childhood friends to the area, family bonds are stretched to a breaking point.

      God on the Rocks is a well paced book full of odd types and underlying mysteries of love, acceptance and change.
    • 5/5
      This is the story of eight-year-old Margaret Marsh. Daughter of overly-religious sectarian parents, Margaret finds little affection at home. Margaret's main caretaker is a bawdy servant, taken in by her father as a sort of religious project. Lydia is the most challenging of converts, she is also the only member of the household who shows Margaret much affection. Margaret's mother is overworked and overtired, and chaffing at the boundaries of her religious life. Margaret's father is everyone's holier-than-thou nightmare. During the summer an indiscretion on the part of Margaret's father sets in motion a series of events that will end in tragedy. The plot of this book is quite straightforward. It is the elaborate details, rather than the plot, that give this book its brilliance. Gardam does not stray away from the absurd. She reminds me much of Barbara Comyns. This is a well-executed book, well-worth the time to read.
    • 3/5
      Margaret is eight, growing up in a super-religious family where her father is the pastor and they're more defined by what they can't have than what they believe. Lydia, the maid, arrives that summer and takes Margaret out on Wednesday afternoons, upending the whole family's life without even trying to, while the minister attempts to convert her.I think this is one of those stories where for much of it nothing much happens and it goes along so quietly that you don't realize what it's about until the end. I'm not sure I ever fully "got it" to be honest. I spent most of the book trying to figure out if I liked it or not and once I decided I was solidly underwhelmed I was so far into it that I decided I'd rather finish it than not.
    • 2/5
      Resembles some of Ian McEwan's most boring works. It was not for me. It's rather slow and the religiously fervent father subplot the book jacket promised is just so bland. I like Gardam's writing but ultimately this novel has neither sufficient plot nor sufficient character drive for me.
    • 4/5
      A charming and unpredictable coming of age story set between the two world wars in a seaside village in northern England. Gardam switches up the POV and weaves her characters’ lives around each other until the wonderfully satisfying and for me, surprising, conclusion.
    • 4/5
      Written in the 1970s but set forty years earlier, this is one of those quiet, revelatory novels of family secrets and childhood understanding whose sensitivity to melancholy seems so well-suited to that period in Britain between the wars.It's a lovely novel. Though no passages of writing leapt out at me, I'm left with a strong jumble of impressions of English seaside towns, men picking through the surf with trouser-legs rolled up and knotted handkerchiefs on their head, a heavy sense of memory and lost opportunities, a productive opposition between dogmatic religious fervour and a joyous, fleshy sexuality.Except for the charming and serious eight-year-old, Margaret, most of the people in here are obsessed with choices they made years before, looking back variously to spoiled romances, to the first War, to when they still had money, to before dementia set in. This sense of looking back is reinforced by an epilogue set after 1945, and the effect is to make all the characters seem clear but also somehow indistinct, impressionistically blurred by memory. They are not unlike figures in a Renoir painting, one of which – perhaps this one – plays a small, pivotal role in the story. Gardam seems like a wise and generous storyteller and I will definitely read more of her.