Brevity is Power

The Pumpkin Eater by Penelope Mortimer

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Somehow it is common knowledge that Penelope Mortimer's 'The Pumpkin Eater' charts the cut and thrust of her tempestuous marriage to the more famous John Mortimer, successful literary luminary, father of many beautiful progeny and blessed with a wit and warmth apparently so irresistible that to know him was to forgive him all his misdemeanours, of which there were reputed to be many. What, I wondered, could the wife of such a philanderer have to say beyond bean-spilling and bitter recrimination?

The answer is a lot - heaps - all of it in the form of a gripping fictional read that betrays no hint of self-indulgence in front of or behind the scenes. Mortimer is funny as well as painfully self-aware and intelligent. She saves all her fire for her own shortcomings, or rather for those of her protagonist, making plain as she goes that, for all its flaws, the driving force of the relationship being described, even as it disintegrates before our eyes, is pure love.

The novel opens with the protagonist on the therapist's couch. Clearly some terrible meltdown has brought her there, but she parries endearingly with her interlocutor, refusing to see herself as defeated or as a victim. We learn of the nature of the meltdown only gradually, through a series of narrative cut-backs to the past. The marriage is her third, but for her it is the Real Thing. There are many children, both from her previous relationships and this one, though precisely how many is never revealed. I loved this: the general sense of hordes of offspring and her need and passion for them, even as she can see that it is this very need that is sucking the life-blood out of her and of the marriage itself.

A chaotic creature, albeit a loving one, it soon becomes clear why the husband is withdrawing more and more from the family mayhem, hiding in the demands of his working life. We start to suspect his infidelities long before the wife does. Indeed, poignantly and ringing so true, it is the wife herself who is the last to find out. It was there under her very nose and she couldn't see it. Didn't want to see it.

The excellence of 'The Pumpkin Eater' is all about its sparse, gripping often hilarious prose and the total absence of judgement with regard to what is going on. Mortimer simply describes significant moments, showing the unravelling rather than commenting on it. In the process she takes us into the core of a collapsing relationship and the emotional implosion as this impacts on the woman. There is no finger-pointing, no if-onlys. All that matters to the author - and to the reader - is what is being lost.

As the book builds to its climax the heartbreak of it grew and grew. We are being invited to witness nothing less than the end of Love - the big I-need-to-breathe-the-same-air-as-you kind of love that hurts the most because it is so wondrously all-consuming. Step by step we see the protagonist being brought to her knees. She suffers, but never pities herself. Until, saddest of all to me, she ceases to care. It is only by not caring that she herself - let alone the marriage - can survive.

'The Pumpkin Eater' is a slither of a book. I read it in one gulp. But the brevity is part of its power. If you are brave and see into the heart of things as Penelope Mortimer clearly does, then you do not need a tome to spell out your tale.



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