THE NEWSPAPER OF CLAREMONT STREET

by Elizabeth Jolley ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 1, 1987

When writers expand successful short stories into novels, the results are nearly always thin and problematic. (One recent example from the mystery genre: Lawrence Block's When the Sacred Ginmill Closes.) And so it is with this strained novella, expanded from a simple, pleasant, fable-like story in Jolley's 1986 collection, Woman in a Lampshade. ""The Newspaper of Claremont Street"" is elderly Australian charwoman Margie Morris, who relays the latest domestic news as she cleans one house after another along middle-class Claremont Street. But, while trading gossip or singing hymns to brighten her work, ""Weekly""--as she's known to one and all--is always single-mindedly adding up her wages, most of which she's been hoarding for years, saving up so she can buy herself the one all-important, life-transfiguring thing: land. In the short-story version, this quest for a place and vista of one's own--culminating in a dance of jubilation around a pear tree--had both a spare, stately force and a wry, ironic tilt. Here, however, it's encumbered with socio-psychological details that reduce ""Weekly"" to a clinical case: she recalls her imprisoned mother and her ne'er-do-well brother in awkwardly inserted flashbacks. (""Thoughts from times long ago came crowding into her mind."") Moreover, the novel version is dominated by a not-quite-believable subplot: ""Weekly,"" atoning for her bygone, unintentional betrayal of that wastrel brother, allows herself to be thoroughly manipulated by a pathetic old Russian ÉmigrÉ, a spoiled madwoman/baby who threatens to spoil the charwoman's dream of quiet, landed retirement. (""Weekly felt she must not fail Nastasya. It seemed to her that not failing people was what counted in her life and in the lives of others."") An appealing tale made puffy and ordinary through the addition of sentimental melodrama: minor, under-par work from a modestly talented writer who--partly thanks to Aussie-mania--has been widely overrated.

Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1987

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1987

Categories: FICTION