‘Emma’ amid martinis

Press, 18 February 1989, Page 27

‘Emma’ amid martinis

Faulty Ground. By Gabrielle Donnelly. Gollancz, 1988. 254 pp. $49.95. (Reviewed by Diane Prout) When English academe counters Californian hedonism the results can be seismological. If the earth doesn’t actually get to move, it is because British breeding and reserve forbid the sexual appropriation of one’s cousin’s husband.

Susan Barnes, Professor of English at London University, takes her summer holidays in Los Angeles with her cousin Joanna. Susan’s intentions to write a 15,000-word introduction to Jane Austen’s “Emma” are undermined by the virile presence of Joanna’s amoral film-maker husband.

In spite of physical distractions, Susan applies herself to her literary task and the memory of her married lover, Felix, a spindle-shanked intellectual who affects to despise sunshine, swimming pools, martinis, and margharitas. The Californian life-style has a way of infiltrating ivory towers and

imposing its own social agenda. Professor Susan discovers love in a cold climate is a poor substitute for the hot-house variety of lower latitudes. Gabrielle Donnelly is an Englishborn free-lance journalist now living in California. Her trained ear’ for dialogue produces some witty and revealing cross-cultural encounters.

Beneath the bright facade of good manners there is a good deal of burning and yearning. The obsessive need for continual social interaction masks much jealousy and deceit. The cracks in the veneer of politeness and hospitality open just sufficiently for the reader to glimpse the potential

violence lurking on the Californian fault line. For all its apparent slightness of subject, “Faulty Ground” is as rich in irony as any Jane Austen fan could wish. It is not just coincidence that the heroine is studying “Emma.” The capacity for self-delusion is still very much a universal human weakness.