Mrs Gulliver (2024)
Why this one?
Martin’s Property won the UK’s 2003 Women’s Prize for Fiction (then the Orange Prize) , and is among my favourite winners of that particular award (having now read them all). This popped up on Netgalley and, having read nothing else by the author, I thought it was worth giving a go. I also found its concept intriguing.
Valerie Martin (nee Metcalf; 1948- ; active 1977- ), was born in Sedalia, Missouri, USA. She studied at the University of New Orleans before graduating from the MFA Program for Poets & Writers at the University of Massachusetts in 1974. She became a teacher at college level soon after, and has continued with her teaching work despite her significant success as a writer.
Her first published work was 1977’s Love: Short Stories, with her first novel Set in Motion following in 1978. Her 1990 novel Mary Reilly, a retelling of the Jekyll and Hyde story from the perspective of a servant, won the Kafka prize and was adapted as a film directed by Stephen Frears and starring John Malkovich in 1996. As well as her novels, she has published three more short story collections, a non-fiction work on the life of St. Francis and a series of three children’s books about cats called Anton and Cecil (2013-16). Mrs. Gulliver is her eleventh novel; her first since 2014’s The Ghost of the Mary Celeste.
This was an ARC from Serpent’s Tail via Netgalley.
Thoughts, etc.
Mrs Gulliver is set in the 1950s, on the fictional Verona Island, which seems to be off the coast of the US, in the Carribbean. Here, prostitution is legal, and Lila Gulliver (not her real name) runs one of the island’s more reputable establishments. She cares for her ‘girls’, and they live an ostensibly convivial and communal life in her ‘house’ in the centre of town, albeit one in the shadow of both local criminal gang warfare and the ever-present threat to its girls’ safety from its male clientele. The novel begins with Mrs Gulliver being introduced to the Bercy sisters, destitute following the death of their formerly prosperous (but latterly penniless) uncle. The younger sister, Carità, is both beautiful and, intriguingly to Gulliver and her ‘majordomo’ Brutus, blind. She is taken on board, with Mrs Gulliver evidently feeling a special responsibility for her welfare.
I was initially intrigued by Mrs Gulliver. It starts well, with an intriguing concept and throws us straight into the arrival of Carità at the house. It jumps very rapidly into unnervingly graphic territory, with Carità’s ‘trial’ encounter with Brutus. In this sense, with an almost immediate dive into fairly shocking territory, it reminded me of Property, which I thought was excellent. The story of Carità’s early days in the brothel is compellingly told, with a vivid picture built of the day-to-day carousing at Gulliver’s house and of Carità’s rapid adaptation to her new life. Its women are universally interesting, intelligent characters, with many of the employees marking time (and making money) while studying and/or aiming for greater things. A conversation between Carità and one of the other girls, a student, about Marx, shows her savvy intellect at an early stage.
Lurking ominously in the background of these early pages are the island’s men. The best of them are solid, reliable, uninspiring and unlikely to cause active harm to the book’s women. The worst (a seeming majority) are violent, unpredictable, and accustomed to using women in whatever way they see fit. Ian Drohan, the son of the richest family in town, arrives as the sullen, apparently socially inept friend of a particularly loathsome young frequentor of the brothel. He is immediately captivated by Carità, and the pair immediately passionately connect. What Carità sees in the seeming oddball with a saviour complex isn’t immediately apparent, but becomes so in due course. The pair elope and are married by a surprisingly obliging family priest, in a move that everyone assumes will anger Ian’s parents, notably the powerful judge Mike Drohan. Soon after, Ian is caught up in a gang-related conflict and mortally wounds the son of another local gang big dog. He escapes to what he hopes will be a ‘purer’ life in a fishing community, taking Carità with him. Mike arrives at Gulliver’s house and the two form their own passionate bond. Subsequently the novel takes some rather over-the-top twists and turns, most of which are too spoiler-ish to recount here.
It’s in these later sections, though, that the novel lost my interest somewhat Whilst always readable and for the most part gripping, its initially promising concepts (and there are quite a few) seem to lose steam as the book progresses, and races its way to a rather unsatisfactory conclusion. Both Lila Gulliver and Carità are genuinely intriguing characters, and while they have their successes and (especially for the latter) moments of triumph, their eventual fates feel somewhat less triumphant. While both end the book in apparently better places than where they began, neither has a fate that befits quite how fiercely independent and strong they’re initially introduced as. Aspects of the second half of the book feel overly melodramatic and schlocky, taking the Shakespearean source material (there’s a loose Romeo and Juliet inspiration signposted throughout) for a bit of a fun ride, but one that doesn’t always deliver.
Elsewhere some of the more interestingly feminist themes of the book were a little too thinly explored. The concept of the island’s legalised prostitution isn’t really overtly interrogated. There are hints that it’s not an entirely satisfactory arrangement: while Gulliver’s brothel puts on an outwardly good show and manages to take reasonably good care of its girls, irruptions of male violence are rarely far away and not always able to be caught; and elsewhere on the island there are brothels offering much less regulated environments and even offering underage employees. I guess it’s potentially suggesting that there is no perfect way of regulating away the ills of men, but it doesn’t go very far in its discussion of the subject.
It’s a little more interesting in exploring potential routes to power for women, with Carità’s journey undoubtedly the most interesting one to follow, even if it ends in a slightly unsatisfactory place. Mrs Gulliver is led to question as several points whether she has exploited Carità, a fact that she’s unable to refute, but there are definitely more complex dynamics at play. Carità is ultimately able to exploit both the patriarchal system that underpins the brothels (and of which Gulliver is an acquiescent tool); and the church’s own marriage sacrament; to get what she wants (that is, the college education and comfortable existence she feels she has been denied). Considering just how much Carità has manipulated the novel’s events to her own ends is probably the most fun aspect of the novel’s latter half, and we’re definitely left in no doubt that she is far from the child-like and ‘weak’ character that she is initially introduced as.
Score
7.5
An intriguing book with a great premise that begins strongly, proceeds in a way that’s always interesting and keeps the attention, but ends on a bit of a flat note. There are some great characters and interesting thought-starters, though, and it’s definitely a worthwhile read overall.
Next up
TBD!
