Household Ghosts: A James Kennaway Omnibus: Tunes of Glory; Household Ghosts; Silence

Canongate Classics

by James Kennaway

Tunes of Glory
Household Ghosts
Silence This volume collects three of the very best works by James Kennaway, the brilliant young novelist and screenwriter who tragically died in a car crash at the early age of forty. Memorably filmed with Alec Guinness and John Mills, Tunes of Glory is a grippingly dramatic exploration of the glamour and the brutality of post-war army life as the tensions and conflicts in the officers' mess of a Highland regiment lead to shame and tragedy. Household Ghosts is a claustrophobic tale of family tension, love triangles and the persistence of the past-one of Kennaway's favourite themes. Set in a country house in Scotland the book is haunted, like the privileged family it describes, by the ghosts of Scotland's own turbulent history. Taken from completed drafts on the author's desk, Silence tells of the accidental meeting and the complex union between a white man and a black woman in times of racial tension and sexual violence. Set in a North American city in midwinter Kennaway's last and brilliantly succinct novel expands into a universal allegory of suffering and death.

Genres: Fiction

480 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1961

About the author

James Kennaway was born in Perthshire, Scotland in 1928 and went to public school at Trinity College, Glenalmond. After serving as an officer with the Cameron Highlanders, he attended Trinity College, Oxford, where he earned a degree in economics and politics. After graduating, he worked as an editor for a London publishing firm and married his wife Susan in 1951; their sometimes turbulent relationship is documented in The Kennaway Papers (1981), which she published after his death.

His first novel, Tunes of Glory (1956), earned critical acclaim and was adapted by Kennaway for an Oscar-nominated motion picture starring Alec Guinness. His other novels include Household Ghosts (1961), The Mind Benders (1963), The Bells of Shoreditch (1963) and Some Gorgeous Accident (1967). Two books, The Cost of Living Like This (1969) and Silence (1972), a novella, appeared posthumously. Kennaway was also an accomplished screenwriter, writing several screenplays, three of them based on his own novels. At the age of 40, James Kennaway suffered a massive heart attack while driving home and died in a car crash just before Christmas in 1968.

Reviews

[Ben Bergonzi · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book of three novels, all casting a jaded eye on human weaknesses, but each of them told with immense psychological accuracy and in a superb elegant voice - whether the voice of the narrator or the utterly believable dialogue of the characters pinned down in their settings, and trapped in their obsessive rivalries. The books are also all very different and emblematic of the decades in which they were published. First is Tunes of Glory, the 1950s book that prompted the wonderful, classic film with Alec Guinness and John Mills (scripted by Kennaway and very close to the novel.) A peacetime garrison where the men have nothing to do but drink and do Highland dancing, whose rough-diamond Colonel, having risen from the ranks in wartime, is about to be unseated by a stickler for discipline whose claim to command seems to come from teaching at Sandhurst and working in Whitehall, but whose reason was shaken by his experiences in Japanese captivity. Second is the early 60s titular Household Ghosts, a book whose deeply-felt elliptical dialogue and blended third- and first-person narration plunge us deeply into the world of a gentry family where the central character, the superbly realised proud, vulnerable Mary is trapped in a miserable marriage, forced to keep up appearances whilst distracted by a cruel lover and an eccentric 'touched' brother. Finally, written in the late 60s but published in the early 70s is the incredible Silence, an incredible Gothic blaxploitation thriller about a white man and a black woman, wounded physically and mentally, holed up in a Harlem flat over cold snowy nights, whilst racial battles rage in the streets below. This one, though only a novella, is alone worth the price.
In all, a great book. Kennaway died aged only 40 leaving a sparse body of work, though it varies from these literary novels to the script of such a popular film as Battle of Britain. He is also remembered for the love affair between his wife and David Cornwell (John le Carre) who I am sure would have given a lot to write as well as Kennaway. His themes - male rivalries, pride, love triangles - and his methods - exact descriptions, allusive dialogue, great concision - are reminiscent of the great, underrated, English novelist Nigel Balchin. Having read this book I would find it very hard to pick a favourite from the two.