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Havisham: A Novel, by Ronald Frame
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HAVISHAM IS THE ASTONISHING PRELUDE TO CHARLES DICKENS'S GREAT EXPECTATIONS.
Before she became the immortal and haunting Miss Havisham of Great Expectations, she was Catherine, a young woman with all of her dreams ahead of her. Spry, imperious, she is the daughter of a wealthy brewer. But she is never far from the smell of hops and the arresting letters on the brewhouse wall—HAVISHAM—a reminder of all she owes to the family name and the family business.
Sent by her father to stay with the Chadwycks, Catherine discovers elegant pastimes to remove the taint of her family's new money. But for all her growing sophistication, Catherine is anything but worldly, and when a charismatic stranger pays her attention, everything—her heart, her future, the very Havisham name—is vulnerable.
In Havisham, Ronald Frame unfurls the psychological trauma that made young Catherine into Miss Havisham and cursed her to a life alone, roaming the halls of the mansion in the tatters of the dress she wore for the wedding she was never to have.
A Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of 2013
- Sales Rank: #602624 in eBooks
- Published on: 2013-11-05
- Released on: 2013-11-05
- Format: Kindle eBook
Review
“Catherine's considerable ego is juxtaposed by more attractive qualities: following her father's death she is a tough, capable businesswoman during a period and at place when such a thing was unheard of; she has carnal desires that she acts on. It's an excruciatingly human rendering, flawed and frustrating. The nightmare crone of Great Expectations has been made animate. I don't know if Dickens would have been a fan, but I am.” ―Owen King, The Los Angeles Review of Books
“This literary prequel imagines the life of Catherine Havisham, from privileged childhood to the macabre death scene of Dickens's Great Expectations....Frame's book is a pleasurable read.” ―The New Yorker
“Delicate and closely observed....Frame has a nice feel for the epiphanic shudders of a young woman's heart and a watercolorist's eye for English landscapes....What a lark. What a plunge.” ―Louis Bayard, The Washington Post
“Charles Dickens never revealed Miss Havisham's backstory in Great Expectations, but Ronald Frame fills in the blanks with his illuminating prequel, Havisham. He spins his story slowly, tracing Catherine Havisham's journey from a young, unassuming heiress to the unhinged spinster so familiar to fans of Dickens' novel--tattered wedding dress, decrepit mansion, and all....Frame has brought a clean, modern sensibility to his rendering of the tale...Intensely entrancing plot. B+.” ―Entertainment Weekly
“Before she took to pacing about her cobwebbed London manse in a tattered wedding gown, literature's most famous jilted bride, Miss Havisham, ran the family brewery. Expectations are great for this engaging 'prequel' to Dickens' classic.” ―Good Housekeeping, New Book Picks
“In Havisham, his prequel to Great Expectations, Ronald Frame colorfully imagines the traumas that doomed the tortured Miss Havisham.” ―Elissa Schappell, Vanity Fair's Hot Type
“An excellent example of a present-day writer taking on a classic, Havisham gives the reader food for thought while reviving one of the great characters of Victorian literature.” ―Elisabeth Atwood, Bookpage
“Readers will be eager to discover what led to that fateful wedding day when [Miss Havisham] was abandoned at the altar.” ―Library Journal
“Frame's presentation of the era is substantial but not overdone....An intelligently imagined Dickens prequel.” ―Kirkus Reviews
“Ronald Frame is one of Scotland's finest writers and this new book will confirm his reputation as a writer whom it is simply a delight to read.” ―Alexander McCall Smith, author of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series
“Some 150 years after Dickens first breathed life into her, Miss Havisham remains one of his most memorable characters. Tragedy is the very essence of her life. Yet, as much as we think we know her backstory and all that guided her life of bitterness and sorrow, with Havisham, Ronald Frame eloquently tells her story anew....As one who has long loved Dickens, I never thought I would be describing a book as a 'companion' to one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century. But here I am, doing just that. Havisham is well worth the read.” ―Robert Hicks, author of the New York Times bestselling Widow of the South and A Separate Country
“Havisham is a vivid and moving novel. Ronald Frame's prose is full of visual delights as his elegiac portrait of a lady unfurls in baroque episodes and fragments that flare with fire rubies and bruises in candlelight.” ―Deborah Lawrenson, author of The Lantern
“An elegant revisiting of one of our most revered, and most enigmatic ghosts. Perhaps we all have a streak of Havisham in us--with our great expectations and our dreams of the past.” ―Carole DeSanti, author of The Unruly Passions of Eugenie R.
“Frame makes Dickens' ghostly Miss Havisham a real woman of flesh, blood, pain and guilt. He gives us a hopeful girl, caught between loss and class, and in doing so he makes her demons all the more powerful. A rich, evocative and poignant work.” ―Stella Duffy, author of Theodora
“Havisham is delightful, and all the more so for sending you hungrily back to its source material.” ―Sunday Express (London)
“To flesh out the back-story of one of the great characters in the English novel is an achievement which makes us return to the original with fresh eyes.” ―The Independent (London)
“This re-imagining will delight readers...Frame has a talent for thrilling Victorian melodrama, and he tackles the controversial ending with superb assurance.” ―The Times (London
About the Author
Ronald Frame was born in Glasgow, Scotland, and educated there and at Oxford University. His novel The Lantern Bearers was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, named the Scottish Book of the Year, and cited by the American Library Association. He is also a dramatist and winner of the Samuel Beckett Award. Many of his original radio plays have been broadcast by the BBC. He lives outside Glasgow.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
ONE
* * *
My father draped the public rooms of Satis House in dust sheets. The chandeliers were left in situ, but wrapped in calico bags. The shutters were closed completely across some windows, and part-drawn at others.
My first days were lived out in a hush of respectfully lowered voices as a procession of folk came to offer their condolences.
My eyes became accustomed to the half-light.
* * *
One evening several new candles were set in one of the chandeliers. My mother’s clavecin was uncovered, and someone played it again – notwithstanding that it was out of tune – and that was the point at which the house stopped being a sepulchre and was slowly brought back to life.
* * *
It was the first word I remember seeing.
HAVISHAM.
Painted in green letters on the sooty brick of the brewhouse wall.
Fat letters. Each one had its own character.
Comfortable spreading ‘H’. Angular, proud ‘A’. Welcoming, open ‘V’. The unforthcoming sentinel ‘I’. ‘S’, a show-off, not altogether to be trusted. The squat and briefly indecisive, then reassuring ‘M’.
The name was up there even in the dark. In the morning it was the first thing I would look for from the house windows, to check that the wind hadn’t made off with our identity in the night or the slanting estuary rain washed the brickwork clean.
* * *
Jehosophat Havisham, otherwise known as Joseph Havisham, son of Matthias.
Havisham’s was the largest of several brewers in the town. Over the years we had bought out a number of smaller breweries and their outlets, but my father had preferred to concentrate production in our own (extended) works. He continued his father’s programme of tying in the vending sites, acquiring ownership outright or making loans to the publicans who stocked our beer.
Everyone in North Kent knew who we were. Approaching the town on the London road, the eye was drawn first to the tower of the cathedral and then, some moments later, to the name HAVISHAM so boldly stated on the old brick.
We were to be found on Crow Lane.
The brewery was on one side of the big cobbled yard, and our home on the other.
Satis House was Elizabethan, and took the shape of an E, with later addings-on. The maids would play a game, counting in their heads the rooms they had to clean, and never agreeing on a total: between twenty-five and thirty.
Once the famous Pepys had strolled by, and ventured into the Cherry Garden. There he came upon a doltish shopkeeper and his pretty daughter, and the great man ‘did kiss her’.
My father slept in the King’s Room, which was the chamber provided for Charles II following his sojourn in France, in 1660. The staircase had been made broader to accommodate the Merry Monarch as his manservants manoeuvred him upstairs and down. A second, steeper flight was built behind for the servants.
* * *
I grew up with the rich aroma of hops and the potent fumes from the fermenting rooms in my nostrils, filling my head until I failed to notice. I must have been in a state of perpetual mild intoxication.
I heard, but came not to hear, the din of the place. Casks being rolled across the cobbles, chaff-cutting, bottle-washing, racking, wood being tossed into the kiln fires. Carts rumbled in and out all day long.
The labourers had Herculean muscles. Unloading the sacks of malt and raising them on creaky pulleys; mashing the ground malt; slopping out the containers and vats; drawing into butts; pounding the extraneous yeast; always rolling those barrels from the brewhouse to the storehouse, and loading them on to the drays.
Heat, flames, steam, the dust clouds from the hops, the heady atmosphere of fermentation and money being made.
* * *
I was told by my father that the brewery was a parlous place for a little girl, and I should keep my distance. The hoists, the traps, those carts passing in and out; the horses were chosen for their strength, not their sensitivity, but every now and then one would be overcome with equine despair and make a bid for freedom, endangering itself and anyone in its path.
The brewhouse was only silent at night, and even then I heard the watchmen whistling to keep up their spirits in that gaunt and eerily echoing edifice, and the dogs for want of adventure barking at phantom intruders. The first brew-hands were there by five in the morning, sun-up, and the last left seventeen hours later, a couple of hours short of midnight.
I woke, and fell asleep, to the clopping of shod hooves, the whinnying of overworked carthorses.
* * *
‘It’s a dangerous place, miss,’ my nursemaids would repeat.
My father insisted. ‘Too many hazards for you to go running about.’
But should I ever complain about the noise, or the smell of hops or dropped dung, his response was immediate: this was our livelihood/if it was good enough for my grandfather/you’ll simply have to put up with it, won’t you, missy. So I learned not to comment, and if I was distracted from my lessons or my handiwork or my day-dreaming, I moved across to the garden side of the house. Out of doors, in the garden, the sounds would follow me, but there were flowers and trees to look at, and the wide Medway sky to traverse with my thoughts.
* * *
Sometimes I would see a man or a woman reeling drunk out of a pub, or I’d hear the singing and cursing of regulars deep in their cups.
That, too, was a part of who we Havishams were. But I would be hurried past by whoever was holding my hand, as if they had been issued with orders: the child isn’t to linger thereabouts, d’you understand. So we negotiated those obstacles double-quick, taking to side alleys if need be, to remove ourselves to somewhere more salubrious, while the rollicking voices sounded after us – but not their owners, thankfully grounded in a stupor.
Copyright © 2012 by Ronald Frame
Most helpful customer reviews
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful.
Less is More
By Diana Faillace Von Behren
Prequels create interesting dilemmas: the reader already is well aware of the ending leaving it up to the author to fashion a back story worthy enough to compensate for the psychological idiosyncrasies already associated with the showcased character. The idea works brilliantly well in Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea: A Novel --her portrait of Creole beauty Antoinette provides a vastly different panorama than that of its inspiration, Jane Eyre. In Red Dragon, author Thomas Harris treats the reader to a cameo appearance of one of literature's great villains--the unforgettable Dr. Hannibal Lector (The Silence of the Lambs); the infamous doctor's horrendous childhood is further explored in Hannibal Rising yet, despite Harris' ghoulish imagination in crafting a sufficiently scientific explanation for Lector's cannibalism, the reader relishes knowing less--preferring his/her Hannibal shrouded in the mystery of speculation.
In "Havisham," Ronald Frame crafts a well-written personal history for Miss Havisham of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations' fame. Countless films and television adaptations depict this quintessential Dickens' enigma dressed in her tattered wedding dress--her clothing and her demeanor yellowed with age, stiffened by pride and distorted by her need for vengeance. Her backdrop is the decaying Satis House, where clocks are stopped and a huge moldy tiered cake sits atop a banquet table around which vermin freely scamper. Dickens already supplies the "what," "why," "who" and "where" of her decay and in this regard Frame has little wiggle room in which to work. Sadly with all this information already provided, the "how" becomes superfluous.
Nevertheless, Frame tries hard--employing the technique of using short phrases in his first person narration to suggest his character's sharp observing mind--that keen sense that eventually only acts to spiral inside her with treacherous repercussions after her betrayal and are doggedly utilized to shape the young, innocent Estella. As the story reaches its crescendo of disloyalty, Frame relies on much dialogue and little description--the reader is privy to Havisham's hopeful thoughts and their stark reality as revealed through conversation. Verses from the Aeneid pepper her thoughts recalling more hopeful times that serve to only underline her degradation.
The younger Catherine Havisham as portrayed is not an extremely likeable character. She is friendless--aloof in a village of workers in her status as the daughter of a well-to-do tradesman. Frame's depiction does not suggest that she was overly coddled by her widower father in a Bob Cratchit family-friendly way, but his reserve with regard to his daughter does not seem to be generated by any dislike of her and could be considered understandable due to business and other circumstances brought to light in Frame's narrative. Nonetheless, the senior Havisham does entertain bigger aspirations (great expectations) for his daughter and as a brewer and supplier of spirits does have the capital to buy her some pedigree in the same manner that Pip attains his status in Dickens' masterpiece. With that in mind, the reader can see the parallel that Frame constructs--Pip eventually experiences a betrayal of sorts once the identity of his patronage is revealed; Havisham also is exposed to similar machinations outside of her control but her lofty pride and arrogance and one other factor pushes her firmly down a different path of resolution.
Whether or not the injection of more detail in a story already well known and accepted as part of one of literature's great classics will press potential readers to invest time and effort into understanding Miss Havisham's evil intent depends solely upon the reader's penchant for prequels. From my perspective, the mystery prevails. I want to surround myself in the atmosphere provided by a strange and offbeat character. The fact that Hannibal Lector might eat my liver with fava beans and a nice chianti scares the heck out of me--as intended. I don't need to know why he would choose fava beans or even why he wants to fork my liver. He is what he is--a nightmare. Similarly, knowing the reasons behind Miss Havisham's desire to wander around her decaying home in a bedraggled wedding gown and insinuate her sadness into a new generation does not make a fava bean of difference to me. She is what she is--a creepy atmospheric part of the Dickens' bigger story.
Bottom line? Ronald Frame writes an intellectually sound background story for one of Charles Dickens' oddest personalities. However, the question here isn't whether or not the novel is written well or hits its mark--it could if you have a predilection for such detail. If you do, this novel is definitely recommended. If not, rent the old film Great Expectations (The Criterion Collection) and watch Martita Hunt excel as the old recluse.
Diana Faillace Von Behren
"reneofc"
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful.
My Great Expectations were disappointed
By M.Jacobsen
I love the secondary characters found in the various Dickens' novels, so I was thrilled with the idea of this new story that focuses on the mysterious and creepy Miss Havisham from the classic Great Expectations. Unfortunately, the execution fell somewhat short of my expectations. This might be a natural hazard when writing about a character that has been engrained on our literary consciousness for so very long so I dislike being too negative in my review, but here goes....
My chief complaint is not with the author's characterization of Miss Havisham, but with the slow plotting of the novel itself. Without giving away any spoilers, it should be enough to say that it takes a couple of hundred pages to reach THE point of the novel. The author reaches that point in what I'm relatively certain he meant to be a poetic manner, but these moments of prose were interspresed and it ended up making the entire thing feel quite disjointed. I desperately wanted him to pick a writing style and stick with it.
Now as to his fictional account of Miss Havisham....this is where he gets to choose whatever he likes since he is the author. That said, it was more than a little predictable with the exception of the third portion of the book which overlaps the text of Great Expectations itself with Pip and Estella's story....there is a nice imaginative twist here that makes you wish the author had applied this kind of writing to the entire novel.
Alas, it was a great idea that fell flat for me. Maybe some of you will enjoy it better than I did.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
Background of a broken dream
By D. Williams
HAVISHAM is a novel by Scotsman Ronald Frame offering readers the backstory of one of Charles Dickens’s well-known characters, Catherine Havisham of GREAT EXPECTATIONS. In the Dickens novel, we see a broken woman wandering about in a tattered wedding gown, her wedding cake moldy and sagging, and all the clocks in the house stopped at twenty minutes until nine.
HAVISHAM tells readers what happened previously.
Catherine Havisham is a strong, bright young woman, the daughter of a comfortably-wealthy brewer. Because the Havisham money is newer money, it is not considered as acceptable in that time as “old money” was, and Catherine must live this down. She is sent to live with another family for a time to learn refinement (apparently a “homeschool” version of finishing school), and she meets a suitor. This is the fiancé who sends the message breaking off the relationship twenty minutes before the wedding.
I believe that those who know of GREAT EXPECTATIONS will find HAVISHAM interesting. Granted, we see the fall of a strong woman, but in this case readers must remember the time and place. In early nineteenth century England, a woman’s position in life and her ability to marry well were everything, so being left at the altar would be enough to break even the strongest young woman.
So how do the elements of HAVISHAM measure up? The characters in HAVISHAM all check well against their Dickens counterparts; readers see quite a few friends from GREAT EXPECTAIONS. The style of HAVISHAM is obviously Frame’s own, but works well for a novel such as this. The pacing is exactly right. Telling the novel in first person, from Catherine Havisham’s point of view, is especially effective.
HAVISHAM does a very good job of giving readers a very plausible background into one of Dickens’s most familiar (though at times most pathetic) characters.
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