The winner of numerous literary awards for her novels, and shortlisted for several more, Jane Gardam has a great affinity with the short story too, sparked off by reading Joyce's Dubliners when she was a girl.
These stories were published between 1977 and 2007, the first five of those years being a particularly fertile period for her fine, exquisitely written work. (They also feel so contemporary that the occasional reminders of their 1970s setting can call for a bit of mental readjustment.) Middle-aged by the time the first of these was published, Gardam was already a mature observer of humanity and a writer who had honed her skills to an enviable degree.
Spouses and partners are absent for a significant number of these stories - often separated, abroad or tied up at work - or else the protagonist has never made a close relationship work. These are men and women who have had to get used to working things out for themselves, and must draw on their inner resources to get by.
Gardam is confident in a range of settings. The excellent The Sidmouth Letters, in which the former student of an overbearing academic is roped into his scheme of buying up Jane Austen's love letters, couldn't be more different from tales about the Little Mermaid's sister who thinks she can do better than her older sibling, an old lady working out a complex scheme to acquire lilies for her church's Easter service or a tramp breaking into a house so he can enjoy a bath.
However, she's particularly good with the English middle class, and nowhere more deliciously than in The Tribute, when former memsahibs now living in the Home Counties meet up to pay tribute to the woman who nannied their children, completely lacking the self-awareness to realise how snobbish, patronising and demeaning they've been.
The Tribute is done for comic effect, but her critique of the suburban middle classes can be desperately sad too. In Rode By All With Pride, it's not a long-serving nanny being mourned but a teenage girl who took her own life, her parents oblivious to the pressure they were putting on her to excel.
Now 87, Gardam says she's given up writing, but this book shows an author of great skill and penetrating vision who could write about almost identical people in almost identical situations and still find the subtleties that would result in two entirely different stories.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article