The Visitor--Maeve Brennan

Having now completed the very short novel, indeed novella, The Visitor, I am quite eager to read everything else written by this author.  It is with some relief that I can report that much is still in print. I will probably seek out the books of short stories one by one.  In the afterword to the novel, the editor suggests that The Visitor is an excellent place to start for an introduction to the themes of Maeve Brennan's fiction.  To this, I cannot speak, but it certainly is an excellent introduction to a writer of enormous power.

The Visitor is the story of a young woman who returns "home" to her Grandmother's house after the death of her mother in Paris.  She returns with the intent to stay, however:

from The Visitor
Maeve Brennan

"Grandma, what did you mean just now, 'only for a visit'? I was really hoping to stay here for good."

Mrs. King turned to her.

"No, Anastasia. That's out of the question. You kept the flat there, didn't you?"

"Yes. I was in a hurry to get away. I thought I'd go back later and clear things up."

"I'm afraid you've been counting too much on me. You mustn't do that. I have no home to offer you. This is a changed house here now, I see no one whatever."

She smiled with anger.

"I stopped seeing them after she ran off, when I found them asking question of Katharine in the hall outside. I go out to mass, that's all.  When I got your telegram, I hadn't the heart to stop you. You need a change. It's natural that you should want to pay a visit here. But more than that, no. It might have been different, maybe, if you'd been with me when he died. But you weren't here."

It is helpful to note that this is a relatively cordial moment in the book.  Mrs. King rarely smiles in anything other than anger or irritation and Anastasia spends much of the story hoping for a thaw.

But dialogue is not Ms. Brennan's sole strength as a writer:

from The Visit
Maeve Brennan

The mass proceded slowly as though to the time of a swinging pendulum. Altar boys, tall and short, genuflected and passed each other back and forth across the altar. The priest's arms opened and shut, and his head bowed down. He blessed the people without looking at them, his eyes far over their heads. The people rustled and moved on their knees. They listend to the organ and the choir. They were alert for distraction. The people were a ruffled lake, surging gently, and the altar in their midst an island, with one live movement on it.

*****

She paused, thinking dreamily back. All the years in Paris seemed to be gathered and enclosed in one word, and she could not remember the word, although she sat thinking familiarly of it.

*****

"Everything was more slowly paced then," said Anastasia. "No radio, no telephone, no cars--"

She stopped. She was astonished at the dullness of what she was saying.

The book is superbly controlled, quiet, intense, and a little mysterious. The transformation Anastasia undergoes in a very short time entirely convincing and heartbreaking. The novel is bleak--as bleak as the people-scapes of Muriel Spark, but lacking some of the savagery.  Indeed, Ms. Brennan allows the savagery present in some people to speak entirely for itself, and she does so superbly.

*****Highly Recommended