A House and its Head by Ivy Compton-Burnett

 

Summary (from the publisher): A radical thinker, one of the rare modern heretics, said Mary McCarthy of Ivy Compton-Burnett, in whose austere, savage, and bitingly funny novels anything can happen and no one will ever escape. The long, endlessly surprising conversational duels at the center of Compton-Burnett's works are confrontations between the unspoken and the unspeakable, and in them the dynamics of power and desire are dramatized as nowhere else. New York Review Books is reissuing two of the finest novels of this singular modern genius—works that look forward to the blackly comic inventions of Muriel Spark as much as they do back to the drawing rooms of Jane Austen.

A House and Its Head is Ivy Compton-Burnett's subversive look at the politics of family life, and perhaps the most unsparing of her novels. No sooner has Duncan Edgeworth's wife died than he takes a new, much younger bride whose willful ways provoke a series of transgressions that begins with adultery and ends, much to everyone's relief, in murder.

Review: Told almost exclusively through dialogue, this is savage novel that follows the domestic life of the Edgeworth family. Duncan Edgeworth and his wife Ellen live with their two grown daughters, Sibyl and Nance and the nephew they raised as their own, Grant. When Ellen dies, Duncan takes a new, much younger bride. This development provokes a series of events that include the mundane - the moving of the first wife's portrait - the extreme - adultery and murder. 

My copy of this describes this novel as a "series of conversational duels" and that is surprisingly apt. This novel is a confrontation of what is left unspoken or is inherently unspeakable. From bland conversational chit chat, the reader picks up on what isn't said and what has actually been done. At first, I was struck by the patriarchal and repressed nature of the household, with the father's capricious nature and the way he strikes out verbally at various members seemingly on a whim. But as the novel unfolds, it is revealed that is far from the most immoral of the characters in this book. The level of depravity certain members of this household will stoop to, spurred on by their jealous desires, is startling to behold.  

This is spare in plot and most of the characters come across as cold and unfeeling. In some ways, I do believe many of them are unfeeling. Because this is almost entirely dialogue, it is at times difficult to follow who is speaking or the reader's assumptions about what is occurring are wholly correct. From a technical standpoint, I suppose this is a masterpiece in its deployment of dialogue to convey characters' personalities and motivations. But I did not enjoy reading it. And I also think it paints a very bleak view of human nature that I don't relate to at all. 

Stars: 3