STAYING ON

by Paul Scott ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 3, 1977

It is a temptation to plead with browsers to postpone this fine brief novel until after reading Scott's brilliant Raj Quartet (four sequential novels published together in 1976)--sharp-edged impressions of the rise, pinnacle, and remove of the British presence in India. However, as in the coda of a symphony, there are here lingering elements of the author's overview of a cultural clash in which the lives of acquiescing--or unwilling--participants are essentially irrelevant. The old village of Pankot (a major setting in the Quartet) now sports a glass-and-concrete hotel ominously thrust beside the decaying Smith's, an elderly hostelry to which the Smalleys' rented bungalow belongs. Twenty-five years after the English Presence has evaporated, Tusker and Lucy Smalley--a childless, impecunious couple in their seventies-are vestigial remainders and, to the Indians, exotic curios. The Smalleys have pasts of unprepossessing performance--and steady, quiet failure--and their rebellion against a life of p's and q's has finally surfaced in elaborate verbal combat. But they are only dimly aware that behind the war games in their moldering doll house is real hate, grief, and, too late, love. Tusker is admired--for his ability to attain a stiff pukka drunk and rage profanely--by the meek husband of the splendidly carnivorous mammoth who owns Smith's; Lucy weaves webs of lacy deceit. But dreadful plans are afoot, and Tusker dies clutching an eviction notice. And Lucy mourns in their double loo--the symbolism of the exiles' ""thrones"" not unnoticed. Again Scott illumines character with a sense of both the tragic and ridiculous, and this is a memorable portrait of two hanging on after the party is over: ""I mean everyone else gone home and just Tusker and me, peering out into the dark, waiting for transport home that never turned up."" Funny, sad, insidiously moving.

Pub Date: Aug. 3, 1977

ISBN: 0307751503

Page Count: -

Publisher: Morrow

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1977

Categories: FICTION