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igenlodeFinally getting round to reviewing this one, which has been sitting on my bedside table waiting to be reviewed 'properly' since I finished it in June last year! I have to say I'm not sure what the significance of the title "A Fire of Driftwood" is, since it doesn't appear to refer to any of the stories in the collection -- presumably it is intended to evoke the idea of random items gathered together under the same cover?
I read this book shortly after Georgette Heyer's "Pistols for Two" and couldn't help comparing the two, in terms of both being books of short stories by authors much better known for their best-selling full-length novels. I feel that Broster definitely wins out in terms of this comparison; possibly it helps that most of the stories in this volume are not in the same genre as her better-known work, but even those which share the same themes and settings as the novels are much more successful as miniatures in their own right than I found Heyer's short stories to be. It may be that a romantic comedy of manners requires enough space to work in terms of convincing character development, or it may be that the Heyer stories (written I believe for magazine publication) really were merely hack-work churned out to earn money. At any rate they were not intended for publication side by side, and definitely get repetitive when encountered en masse.
I don't know what the history behind the various stories in "A Fire of Driftwood" was -- the book credits them simply as "a collection of short stories by D.K. Broster" with a common copyright date of 1932, but that doesn't necessarily preclude separate publication at an earlier date. They are very varied, but the common element is perhaps that they tend to be much darker than her novels. Broster's books certainly never shied away from tragedy, all the way back to her two early novels written in collaboration, but where it occurs it is 'high tragedy' presented as having a redeeming nobility; many of these stories have a much more bitter edge to them, and the three that I remembered most clearly from previous reading are all in their various ways verging on the unpleasant.
As in "Pistols for Two", the first story in the book is what I suspect amounts to a deliberate subversion of the author's most popular tropes -- I wrote in my notes at the time that it was "clever, and cynical, and cruel", and that the author was probably well pleased with the creation of a conscious anti-heroine who tramples over all the ideals associated with her other works in this setting. "Our Lady of Succour" is a polished and accomplished piece of writing that leaves a thoroughly uncomfortable taste in the mouth.
"The Inn of the Sword" is probably the nearest thing to a short-form 'traditional' Broster story in this book, with all the standard elements (Chouans, heroic young noble leader, redemption through war/lost love), but again with the bitter twist, with the protagonist assassinated on account of a misunderstanding -- though it could be said to echo the dénouement of "The Flight of the Heron".
Of course one is left curious as to which element of that ending was 'based on historical fact', as per the author's note!
"On Parole" was for me perhaps one of the most unexpected entries; from the title I had automatically assumed that it would be a variant on "Mr Rowl", but in fact it is an excursion into pre-revolutionary France, with the French monarchy at war with England. The protagonist is a fairly intolerable young sprig of the nobility who is redeemed via a unexpected twist when he accidentally compromises the honour of a fellow-countryman, fights a duel in consequence, and loses... Definitely not a traditional Broster, but more light-hearted than many of the stories in this book, and one of the few with an unambiguously happy ending.
"The Laurel of the Race" returns to the familiar setting of the Chouan resistance, with a story of a gentle scholar who sacrifices himself for a young man's sake because he is the son of the woman he once loved. There are echoes of "The Inn of the Sword", with the theme of Chouans taking vengeance over a misunderstanding, but here it is more or less a willed suicide.
The first time I read this I couldn't get past the injustice of it, but I think Broster was going for martyrdom...
"The Aristocrat" is one of the stories that I consciously remembered from this book, along with the stories of the possessed sword and of the sash window.
A cynical little parable about a beautiful white Persian cat that transforms the life of the sans-culotte youth who craves her, and is ultimately his undoing.
"The Admiral's Little Letty" I didn't remember, but did recognise when I came to it. It was a story that I always had disliked, being more or less an anti-"Mr Rowl": a 'broke-parole' officer lies and seduces a naive girl into helping him escape without regard to the consequences to her. But I can sort of see the redemption and 'coming of age' respectively that Broster was going for now. Letty, however, remains annoying and her protege not very admirable...
The contents page of the book is divided into two parts without explanation, but in retrospect Part I would appear to be the 'historical' stories and Part II the 'modern' stories, although in the case of several of the latter the opening sequence is little more than a frame. "All Souls' Day" is one of those, and in fact, given that the opening recounts worldly 20th-century travellers encountering an ancient book in the house of a country curé, I initially confused it with one of the later stories in this collection ("The Book of Hours") which revolves around just such a scenario!
With hindsight this is probably one of the weakest tales in the book, not because there is anything especially wrong with it but just because there doesn't seem to be very much substance to it. It's a brief story set in the 17th century about the ghost of a enemy that comes back as a warning, but since he isn't actually saving the protagonist from anything other than a mild case of illicit fornication the stakes are not that high.
"The Crib" is definitely unusual - I would have placed this story as being by Elizabeth Goudge rather than DK Broster! It is the tale of a very ordinary low-church woman who takes refuge in a 'high' Anglican church, and is vouchsafed a genuine religious miracle...
I remembered "The Book of Hours" midway through the book with prior dislike, and didn't care for it any more on repeat acquaintance. Again, I can sort of see what the author intended here: a false belief is restored by the ironic means of a false miracle. I'm just not very keen on irony.
"Fate the Eavesdropper" is quite different from anything else that we have come across up to this point. There is sword-play, but it takes place in a modern-day sporting setting with wire fencing-masks and electric light, and Marten is a London barrister with a train to catch.
Again, the story revolves around irony, with an accidental death that looks like murder, where the dying man and his opponent collude in an attempted cover-up. There is some rather heavy-handed foreshadowing, but the actual accident is cleverly set up: Agnew is clumsy and hits with unnecessary force, and there is "too much of a scrimmage", which allows the foil to break without either man noticing in the heat of the moment...
"The Promised Land" is another powerful and nasty story, this time reminiscent of Barbara Vine: the tale of the Worm that Turns, and then goes mad because she can't face up to the reality of what she has done. It's psychologically plausible -- we identify with scatty, romantic Ellen and her sense of oppression -- and there are hints of Elizabeth Goudge in the nightmare and the dreams. But it's basically a horror/nemesis theme rooted firmly in the contemporary world.
"Clairvoyance" is the second of the three most memorable stories, and it's the queerest mixture of horror, beauty and oblivious broad comedy in the framing structure. It's a tale of hypnotism that goes wrong, when a young girl is possessed by the vengeful spirit of a samurai sword. (It's strange to see 'anime' associated terms like 'daimio' [sic] and 'wazikashi' in a Broster story!)
"The Window" is the other story I always remembered from this book, and in many ways it's basically a horror story not all that far removed from Stephen King -- a protagonist who ends up trapped at the malice of the inanimate. But I remember thinking before that there is no real reason in the backstory why it should be the *window* that holds the haunting... other of course than the fortuitous resemblance to a guillotine!
Rated overall 3/5 on the grounds of enjoyment: as a short story collection it is undoubtedly accomplished, displaying an impressively wide range, from a handful of 'classic' D.K. Broster settings, all of which work well in the short form, to modern-day stories of the supernatural or of ironic coincidence. I simply don't like very many of them very much -- this sort of thing with its deliberately disturbing aftertaste is not my preferred reading material.
I read this book shortly after Georgette Heyer's "Pistols for Two" and couldn't help comparing the two, in terms of both being books of short stories by authors much better known for their best-selling full-length novels. I feel that Broster definitely wins out in terms of this comparison; possibly it helps that most of the stories in this volume are not in the same genre as her better-known work, but even those which share the same themes and settings as the novels are much more successful as miniatures in their own right than I found Heyer's short stories to be. It may be that a romantic comedy of manners requires enough space to work in terms of convincing character development, or it may be that the Heyer stories (written I believe for magazine publication) really were merely hack-work churned out to earn money. At any rate they were not intended for publication side by side, and definitely get repetitive when encountered en masse.
I don't know what the history behind the various stories in "A Fire of Driftwood" was -- the book credits them simply as "a collection of short stories by D.K. Broster" with a common copyright date of 1932, but that doesn't necessarily preclude separate publication at an earlier date. They are very varied, but the common element is perhaps that they tend to be much darker than her novels. Broster's books certainly never shied away from tragedy, all the way back to her two early novels written in collaboration, but where it occurs it is 'high tragedy' presented as having a redeeming nobility; many of these stories have a much more bitter edge to them, and the three that I remembered most clearly from previous reading are all in their various ways verging on the unpleasant.
As in "Pistols for Two", the first story in the book is what I suspect amounts to a deliberate subversion of the author's most popular tropes -- I wrote in my notes at the time that it was "clever, and cynical, and cruel", and that the author was probably well pleased with the creation of a conscious anti-heroine who tramples over all the ideals associated with her other works in this setting. "Our Lady of Succour" is a polished and accomplished piece of writing that leaves a thoroughly uncomfortable taste in the mouth.
"The Inn of the Sword" is probably the nearest thing to a short-form 'traditional' Broster story in this book, with all the standard elements (Chouans, heroic young noble leader, redemption through war/lost love), but again with the bitter twist, with the protagonist assassinated on account of a misunderstanding -- though it could be said to echo the dénouement of "The Flight of the Heron".
Of course one is left curious as to which element of that ending was 'based on historical fact', as per the author's note!
"On Parole" was for me perhaps one of the most unexpected entries; from the title I had automatically assumed that it would be a variant on "Mr Rowl", but in fact it is an excursion into pre-revolutionary France, with the French monarchy at war with England. The protagonist is a fairly intolerable young sprig of the nobility who is redeemed via a unexpected twist when he accidentally compromises the honour of a fellow-countryman, fights a duel in consequence, and loses... Definitely not a traditional Broster, but more light-hearted than many of the stories in this book, and one of the few with an unambiguously happy ending.
"The Laurel of the Race" returns to the familiar setting of the Chouan resistance, with a story of a gentle scholar who sacrifices himself for a young man's sake because he is the son of the woman he once loved. There are echoes of "The Inn of the Sword", with the theme of Chouans taking vengeance over a misunderstanding, but here it is more or less a willed suicide.
The first time I read this I couldn't get past the injustice of it, but I think Broster was going for martyrdom...
"The Aristocrat" is one of the stories that I consciously remembered from this book, along with the stories of the possessed sword and of the sash window.
A cynical little parable about a beautiful white Persian cat that transforms the life of the sans-culotte youth who craves her, and is ultimately his undoing.
"The Admiral's Little Letty" I didn't remember, but did recognise when I came to it. It was a story that I always had disliked, being more or less an anti-"Mr Rowl": a 'broke-parole' officer lies and seduces a naive girl into helping him escape without regard to the consequences to her. But I can sort of see the redemption and 'coming of age' respectively that Broster was going for now. Letty, however, remains annoying and her protege not very admirable...
The contents page of the book is divided into two parts without explanation, but in retrospect Part I would appear to be the 'historical' stories and Part II the 'modern' stories, although in the case of several of the latter the opening sequence is little more than a frame. "All Souls' Day" is one of those, and in fact, given that the opening recounts worldly 20th-century travellers encountering an ancient book in the house of a country curé, I initially confused it with one of the later stories in this collection ("The Book of Hours") which revolves around just such a scenario!
With hindsight this is probably one of the weakest tales in the book, not because there is anything especially wrong with it but just because there doesn't seem to be very much substance to it. It's a brief story set in the 17th century about the ghost of a enemy that comes back as a warning, but since he isn't actually saving the protagonist from anything other than a mild case of illicit fornication the stakes are not that high.
"The Crib" is definitely unusual - I would have placed this story as being by Elizabeth Goudge rather than DK Broster! It is the tale of a very ordinary low-church woman who takes refuge in a 'high' Anglican church, and is vouchsafed a genuine religious miracle...
I remembered "The Book of Hours" midway through the book with prior dislike, and didn't care for it any more on repeat acquaintance. Again, I can sort of see what the author intended here: a false belief is restored by the ironic means of a false miracle. I'm just not very keen on irony.
"Fate the Eavesdropper" is quite different from anything else that we have come across up to this point. There is sword-play, but it takes place in a modern-day sporting setting with wire fencing-masks and electric light, and Marten is a London barrister with a train to catch.
Again, the story revolves around irony, with an accidental death that looks like murder, where the dying man and his opponent collude in an attempted cover-up. There is some rather heavy-handed foreshadowing, but the actual accident is cleverly set up: Agnew is clumsy and hits with unnecessary force, and there is "too much of a scrimmage", which allows the foil to break without either man noticing in the heat of the moment...
"The Promised Land" is another powerful and nasty story, this time reminiscent of Barbara Vine: the tale of the Worm that Turns, and then goes mad because she can't face up to the reality of what she has done. It's psychologically plausible -- we identify with scatty, romantic Ellen and her sense of oppression -- and there are hints of Elizabeth Goudge in the nightmare and the dreams. But it's basically a horror/nemesis theme rooted firmly in the contemporary world.
"Clairvoyance" is the second of the three most memorable stories, and it's the queerest mixture of horror, beauty and oblivious broad comedy in the framing structure. It's a tale of hypnotism that goes wrong, when a young girl is possessed by the vengeful spirit of a samurai sword. (It's strange to see 'anime' associated terms like 'daimio' [sic] and 'wazikashi' in a Broster story!)
"The Window" is the other story I always remembered from this book, and in many ways it's basically a horror story not all that far removed from Stephen King -- a protagonist who ends up trapped at the malice of the inanimate. But I remember thinking before that there is no real reason in the backstory why it should be the *window* that holds the haunting... other of course than the fortuitous resemblance to a guillotine!
Rated overall 3/5 on the grounds of enjoyment: as a short story collection it is undoubtedly accomplished, displaying an impressively wide range, from a handful of 'classic' D.K. Broster settings, all of which work well in the short form, to modern-day stories of the supernatural or of ironic coincidence. I simply don't like very many of them very much -- this sort of thing with its deliberately disturbing aftertaste is not my preferred reading material.