Old Filth (Old Filth Trilogy)

Others have done a good job of reviewing "Old Filth." I would like to add several things:For those who relish learning, or learning more, about life in what for most of us are unusual, even exotic, locations and cultures, "Old Filth" is a very good read. For those who enjoy delving into not-so-obvious aspects of history, especially that of the British Empire, this is a very good read. I highly recommend this book to either kind of reader.In addition, however, "Old Filth" is not just any old story. This book, which tells so much about the experiences and inner lives of "Raj Orphans" - a topic I have never before read about - is strangely timely, I think. In this world of fast-increasing globalization, there are more and more "global nomads," many of them children of those who work worldwide for diplomatic, international business, military, religious, NGO, and education enterprises. The question of what to do about the children - to keep uprooting them and moving them from place to place? to send them "home" (wherever home might be) at some point? to send them to whom? at what cost? - is still a very real one for such families. The impacts - positive, negative, short-term, long-lasting, emotional, psychological, social, educational, familial - that international, multi-cultural living has on human beings (especially children) are interesting ones, and are increasingly important for all of us to understand. Look, for instance, at President Barack Obama's childhood history, at what seems to be his self-containment / aloofness / detachment, and at his broad world view. Such issues as these are well laid out in Gardam's book and, even though her novel is set in an era that might appear to be no longer relevant, I suggest that these are, in fact, altogether relevant issues in today's world.I give this book four, rather than five, stars, because there are some difficulties with Gardam's writing, as other reviewers have pointed out. These can be viewed as off-putting, subtly skillful, or a combination of both, but the reader does have to work a bit to stay engaged to the very end. Still, for my money, the effort is well worth the effort.

I am reminded a bit of Virginia Woolf although I am not able to put my finger on why, apart from the delicate revelation of character and the sense that life accrues in a symphony of moments. This book is very readable, unlike Woolf. I could almost go back to the beginning and read it again. It presents the main character’s entire life in a most beautiful series of flashbacks and present scenes. The ordering seems perfect. Plot? Well, it is a rich narrative, and there is theme throughout, I think, that we are shaped in life by something we are forced to carry with us, something we never learn to cast off. It is a beautiful book.

What a marvelously entertaining book! Next time you meet a charmimg, intelligent older person who seems to embody all that is seemingly prosaic, a person of some obvious merit, who having accumulated some wealth and station, but at first glance seems stuffy and unimpassioned, keep your mouth shut, and pay close attention. There are often such wonderful stories of character forged at an early age by the cruelest of circumstances. Old Filth seems to all the world a man who earned his reputation for being a good lawyer, a well respected judge, without breaking a sweat, as though he had more than a fair hand of luck.His peers reflect upon his life as somewhat unimginative, and though he was graceful and handsome, assured and friendly, they seem remember him chiefly as a modest man who never put a foot wrong. And yet, like all lawyers, he was a child once, and what a teeming childhood!I have never read Gardam's work before, but this feels like it is the product of a first rate observer who uses more than a bit of care in her styling and phrasing. It feels like she has spent a good deal of time researching her chronicle of events, and knew her subject intimately.Her descriptions of the Raj empire in Malay were lovely, her rendering of the scarred and often hardened children who were Raj orphans was handled without sentimentality, but with great tenderness nonetheless. The story itself is a page turner. It is impossible not to love Filth, but the writing is a prize too. The structure of the book, and the richness of the prose are so like the jade stones his wife, Betty, had a knack for finding in the Hong Kong markets after the war: Rare. Possessing great character and heft. They aren't easy to find anymore.

Jane Gardam's first novel was published in 1971, and her introduction to the Old Filth trilogy in this reprint is from 2013, when she was already 83. The trilogy is an astonishing achievement for later life – published when she was at least 75, and drawing on the depths of experience of lives lived. The nearest parallel I can think of is Arnold Bennett’s Clayhanger trilogy – the first volume the life of a man, the second volume the radically different account from the perspective of his wife.I found over the week following reading this novel as soon as I got it, that small scenes and comments were going round in my head, scenes that I feel sure Gardam has drawn from the experiences of people she knew, even though she claims Old Filth is just someone she saw once crossing Piccadilly. She explains some of her sources at the end of the book, and says that she is very grateful to friends, dead and alive, who were once Raj orphans. This is a shocking tale of childhood trauma and wartime disaster, masked by professional success and privilege, that in its own way serves as a kind of postscript to empire, written from direct observation.But it was the small things that stuck – Old Filth’s miraculous road trip after his wife dies; the quiet way his old rival moves in next door without his noticing and then accidentally saves his life; his wife’s pearls from her lover; the smell of gangrene on the ship back from Colombo; the way he still dreams in Malay as a grown man; the files of his professional life stored in the basement at his chambers in the Inns of Court, needing to be thrown out; and the small and knowing half Chinese teenager from an English prep school, his bunk mate on a wartime evacuation ship, a multilingual card sharp, who says he can only cook French cuisine, and who probably saves his life too.These are Old Filth’s unwritten memoirs – the memories of a man who everyone else at the Bar thinks is simply professionally successful, a man to whom nothing has happened except case notes and property and engineering disputes, the judge who handed out the final judgement on Hong Kong murderers and who came home when Hong Kong was handed to the Chinese.

Don’t be seduced by the title. It has nothing to do with Ancient Porn. Though of course there is the obligatory sex, though this time a post-war liaison with a Bletchley Park lesbian, befriending an old enemy, and a barren marriage. No, this is about England. Not the stylised version of a green and pleasant land, but of the emotionally stunted orphan refugees of the Raj, of the war, of drafty public schools, of poor food, poor teeth, and a weekly bath, if lucky. Of the Inner Temple. And Malaya. And Hong Kong (hidden in the title, but I won’t ruin it for you.) Of how it was. For a man with a long life, a stammer, and a secret. The writing is spare and delectable. It would have been perfect to read curled up in front of a fire. But even though it is summer, it is still England, and in between a heat wave there are ample opportunities to gratefully put on this old pullover with the holes in the elbows and hunker down.

This is about the Kindle version of this novel. For some reason which I do not understand I found the kindle version of the novel difficult to get into. I have read enough to know it was a book worth persevering with and got the printed hardback out of the Library. I was surprised to find the printed book version so very much easier to read. I have no idea why that was/is, but it was. It's easy to write it off as yet another Upper Middle Class English wail about the demise of Empire etc, but it is about so much more than that. The descriptions of Malaya and Singapore are excellent - clearly the work of a writer very familiar with the surroundings and the effects of tropical humidity. The characterisations are uniformly excellent and the plotlines moving.

Only my second book by this author and I can only echo what others have said, why is Gardam not better known and why are her books not more famous? I definitely want to read the other two volumes of the trilogy now. Don’t be put off by the title, it is an acronym for ‘Failed In London Try HongKong’. It is one of the many nicknames for the title character.This is the life story of a QC who was born in Malaysia, was brought to Wales and England as a child and spent most of his working life in Hong Kong, now retired to the south of England.A very complex and somewhat disturbing account of his early years, followed by the war, the story jumps back and forth between the present old age and the past, which holds a lot of clues to how his life and marriage have panned out, as well as a secret only revealed towards the end of the story.

A book I looked forward to reading and thought about when I wasn’t reading. The main character is an old lawyer which might not sound very appealing but the narrative takes you back through his life and the descriptions of people and situations are both funny and poignant. Jane Gardam has a real eye for detail and uses her characters ‘ language with such perception that she brings to life their thoughts and behaviours- many of which we can recognise in people we might have met. For me it was a comment on our changing society and the journey we all make through life ,as well as a gripping story with many laugh- out- loud moments.