| Title | : | Staying On (The Raj Quartet, #5) |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0099443198 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780099443193 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 256 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1977 |
| Awards | : | Booker Prize (1977) |
Both funny and deeply moving, Staying On is a unique, engrossing portrait of the end of an empire and of a forty-year love affair.
Staying On (The Raj Quartet, #5) Reviews
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Are there characters that you wish you could save when you're reading a book you like? You might not relate to them in any way. They might be the oppressors of your ancestors. But these characters are so lost, you wish you could do something to give them some hope. Like send a bottle of gin to the Smalleys.
“Life is a helluva thing. You can see trouble coming and you can't do a damn thing to prevent it coming. You just got to sit and watch and wait.”― V.S.Naipaul, Miguel Street.
The rapidly declining lives of the two main characters in Staying On is pretty much the encapsulation of the above quote by Naipaul.
Reading this novel was like getting scraped by needles across dormant wounds. Not literally of course. But the plight of Tusker and Lily Smalley, a British army couple who decide to stay back in India after the country gained independence, got me thinking about some of the things that have happened to me and also the elderly in my family. The ageing British couple find themselves at odds with a changing India. Their landlady is a monster. Dreary servant politics are tough to handle. Money is slowly running out. The Smalley's are addicted to gin. The increasingly senile Tusker is hard on Lily who has nowhere to go to.
The British destroyed India. Tusker Smalley was a colonel in the British army. Yet, I found myself sympathizing with him and his wife, even though I am an Indian. There is something terrible about the decline and fall of people (especially a couple) who were once privileged and seemed to be infallible. The continuation of their privileges are never assured. I am sure we have all seen this happen to other people and maybe even experienced this ourselves. They way we react to them displays some of our sadistic impulses born out of latent fears.
Staying On is a devastating novel about old age and people who are washed up in a place from which they can never seem to leave. I never got around to reading another novel by Paul Scott after this, even though I was affected by this novel like few others. Maybe Staying On hit a little too close to home. -
Not officially part of the Raj Quartet, this book took place 25 years after the ending of the last book, A Division of the Spoils. Now 1972, The Smalleys have "stayed on" in India after independence, for several different reasons. We do learn a little of what happened to some of the characters in the previous books, other things are left to our imagination.
This book won the Booker Prize, and is more the story of a 42 year old marriage between Tucker and Lucy Smalley. Much shorter than any of the Quartet books, and by degrees, much funnier and sadder than those books as well, it was a good farewell to India and the British presence there. -
I saw this as a movie - probably about 30 years ago. I have no recall of the plot - as per the movie - but the images were profound - an old couple in their idyllic English rose garden at the foot of the Himalayas. I enjoyed reading the book. The narration begins with the Muslim manservant - who provides a comic overall of the state of the Smalley's relationship - Tusker and Lucy. They have been married for forty-plus years, and have spent most of their married life, moving around India. Tusker was in the army and then is de-commissioned in 1947 with the British withdrawal, but he is only 46 then, and spends the next 25 years struggling to find work. He finds himself falling out with the successful business people of the New India.
The latter half of the story is told from Lucy's perspective whereby her every thought is concerned with their precarious living - in a rented bungalow which is owned by the unscrupulous Mrs Bhoolaboy - next door; owner of what was once the only luxury hotel in the hill station of Pankot.
There are some very tender moments as we follow Lucy's life - her gentleness and perspective of English lady retired belies an accurate and sympathetic perception of other people's lives and their hardships - in the new state.
I enjoyed this - it wanders a little at the beginning where I think the author enjoyed getting his claws into the obnoxious character of Mrs B and her relationship with her retiring husband Mr B.
I will probably re-read this - it captures an era gone - and although there is nostalgia the book deals thoroughly with the practical and financial aspects of the individual lives. The widows pension fund for example, Lucy's background as a an efficient secretary - skills she cannot use as an army-wife. The emergence of a new hierarchy within the resident peoples in Pankot - and how the Smalley's have clearly been shunted unceremoniously to the side-lines and forgotten by the powers that brought them to India in the first place. -
I presumed, incorrectly, that this book would be about individuals who had come to love India and for this reason didn't want to return to Britain when India was given independence. I mistakenly guessed that India and Indians had become dear to them, a place and a people they couldn’t bear to part with, and so they simply couldn't leave. Once I realized my error, I had to readjust all that I had expected to draw from the book.
This book is about individuals who are British through and through. They look through a lens of superiority that is intermeshed with all their world views. This was in no way unusual for the expat community in India before and after independence and even into the 1970s, when this book takes place. The book focuses upon an elderly couple; she, is approaching 70 and he is soon to be 71. He is ill. Both are dotty, which isn't to say they lack intellectual lucidity. I very much appreciated how these two figures were drawn. As we age don't our personality traits become exaggerated? I think so. It is more this that makes the elderly appear dotty rather than an inability to think clearly. I didn't particularly like either the man or his wife, but both felt credible. Oh my, he is so grumpy and she, she has found her own solution to dealing with him. Their relationship became what drew me to the book, completely different from what I had planned but interesting in its own way. Why they stayed I will not reveal. The book does also look at the situation of those English who in their souls remained English, but chose not to return to Britain.
I didn't appreciate how the Indians or Eurasians characters were depicted. They are two-dimensional and not complimentarily drawn - either weaklings or money-fixated extremes. I can instead recommend
Bhowani Junction if you are looking for a book about Eurasians and Indians at the time of independence.
There is humor, but it is mean humor, albeit a critique of social mores. There is quite a bit of sex, and it is crudely drawn. Here again I think we were meant to laugh, but I wasn't laughing.
The book starts with the information that Tucker dies. That is the husband of the couple mentioned above. Then we backtrack a week or two to see what has preceded his death. There are long tracts where earlier events of their lives are revealed as reminiscences. The problem here is that we are told rather than shown; in these sections there are no dialogs, we get one point of view and the details become excessive. Excessive because too many people are touched upon, people who have no real bearing upon the story and will not become an integral part of the story which lies ahead.
I have carefully specified what displeased me, but please do not disregard what I did appreciate. I will repeat it again. The book captures well the relationship between a husband and wife after many, many years of marriage. It shows the predicament of those Brits who remained in a land that never became their home.
The audiobook is narrated by Paul Shelley. Overall, sure, it was fine; I understood what was being said. However, portions are read too fast. The intonation used for Indians and Eurasians exaggerates their simple-mindedness drawn by the author's words.
Staying On is a stand-alone. You do not have to read the entire Raj Quartet first. I gave
The Jewel in the Crown, the first in the series, 3 stars. -
I'm still working my way through the list of Booker winners, and this one is the best I have read for some time. It is a poignant, tragicomic portrait of an ageing couple of British colonial functionaries effectively stranded in an old Indian hill station after "staying on" at independence. It mixes vibrant descriptions and comic set pieces with reflections on the legacy of the Raj and the nature of independent India.
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Staying On is Paul Scott’s follow-up to the Raj Quartet. Tusker and Lucy Smalley have elected to stay behind after the British Raj is disassembled and Scott picks up their story in 1972, when they are living in the lodge of the Smith hotel, without any other British citizens around them. They have a loyal servant, Ibrahim, who treats them much as they were treated when they were members of the Raj, and is probably the main reason they can still navigate life in India.
I would say this is a study of a marriage as much as anything else. As they look back on their lives and the choices they have made, we are allowed to glimpse not only what life has become, but what it once was for Tusker and Lucy, and to see how the order of things has flipped on its head and yet remained the same in so many ways.
...because when I look back on it, when I sit back and concentrate on it, I feel that India brought out all my worst qualities. I don't mean this India, though Heaven help me I sometimes don't see a great deal of difference between theirs and the one in which I was memsahib, but our India, British India, which kept me in my place, bottled up and bottled in, and brainwashed me into believing that nothing was more important than to do everything my place required me to do to be a perfectly complementary image of Tusker and his position.
Married for 40 years, and having spent most of that in India, their decision to remain and not return to England was made mainly for financial reasons. Now they find themselves older, nearing the end, and the situation for them is all too real and desolate.
She would be alone. She would be alone in Pankot. She would be alone in a foreign country. There would be no one of her own kind, her own colour, no close friend by whom to be comforted or on whom she could rely for help and guidance. The question whether she would be virtually destitute was one that frightened her so much that even her subconscious mind had been keeping that fear buried deep.
After reading the Raj Quartet and seeing how the Raj ruled and crumbled, it is sad to see the aftermath for those who remained. Both the English and the Indian population had to make serious adjustments, and as is often the case, the older generation on both sides met those changes with trepidation. -
I really enjoyed this 1970s-era Man Booker Prize winner. It's a small story, but one that has been written to perfectly capture the time, the place and the circumstances of Tusker and Lucy Smalley; here an elderly couple, but previously younger minor characters in
Paul Scott's Raj Quartet novels.
Staying On is like a sequel to the Quartet, but it stands very happily on its own. And it's really quite funny, but with some sad, tender moments.
We meet the Smalleys when they have already been married and living in India for 40+ years, having 'stayed on' after India's independence. This in itself is a cause of tension between the couple, so when Lucy demands a statement of her position, were Tusker to die before her, he takes the opportunity to try to explain:
"Suddenly the powers that be say, Right, Smalley, we’re not wanted here any more, we’ve all got to bugger off, too bad you’re not ten years younger or ten years older. I thought about this a lot at the time and it seemed to me I’d invested in India, not money which I’ve never had, not talent (Ha!) which I’ve only had a limited amount of, nothing India needed or needs or has been one jot the better for, but was all I had to invest in anything. Me."
So to stay was essentially the least bad of two bad options, and consequently the Smalleys have grown old and irritable in a place where they don't really belong. Throughout the story we learn about their relationship, and what their life is like living in The Lodge, an annexe of the now-faded Smith's Hotel in Pankot, a fictional hillstation in Gujurat.
I haven't read the Raj Quartet, but if this is any indication of what the other novels are like, I shall enjoy reading them at some point. -
This was a good ending to the Raj Quartet. But be warned. The ending is very sad.
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I haven’t read anything else by this author. I decided to start with this book because it’s a lot shorter than the Raj Quartet and I wanted to know whether I liked the author’s writing style before I tackled his other books. Also, this one won the Booker Prize. Booker Prize winners usually aren’t this much fun.
The English couple Tusker and Lily Smalley have been married for a long time. They decided to stay on in India after Tusker retired. They rent a home from Mr. and Mrs Bhoolabhoy (a very odd couple) and their living situation is becoming increasingly precarious. There is also a mix of eccentric servants, doctors and other inhabitants of this small town. The book handles the serious themes of growing old, physical infirmities, financial insecurities and the fear of loss of a loved one, but it still manages to be absolutely hilarious. There are some brilliant rants by Lily that would get a standing ovation on any stage. Touching and witty - I liked this book very much. -
A poignant, sad and in places funny novel. Tusker and Lucy Smalley have stayed on in India after 1947 when India became independent. They were to poor to return to England and so stayed on in India surviving on Tuskers army pension.
The story chronicles their life after Tusker has a massive stroke after receiving a letter from the owner of the hotel they live. Lucy reminisces her life, the courtship by Tusker of her in England, her time in India and the hierarchical caste system the British had amongst themselves and how Lucy was at the bottom of that system.
Ibrahim their only servant who tolerates the grumpy Tusker with his opinionated views. The comical manager of the hotel Mr Bhoolabhoy and his greedy, overweight, overbearing and nasty wife. The story tells of episodes in their lives and the days leading up to Tuskers death. How Lucy was a general dog’s body for the other military wives, her background as a vicars daughter and their life in Pankot an imaginary city in India.
An enjoyable read with the author capturing the changes in India for those that stayed on after the fall of the raj. -
S...O… in India after the Raj are Col Tusker Smalley and his wife Lucy. Their circumstances are straightened after 40 years of marriage. The likes of the Smalleys are the backbone of the British Empire; they are professional “also rans”. But this lack of ambition is perfected to an art form. (They are aptly named: Lucy's maiden name is Little). It is contrasted with the vulgar, thrusting ambitions of the Indian nouveu riche who pick up the mantle left by the Imperial rulers, aping many of the British ways but failing somewhat in the modesty stakes. They patronise differently.
The Smalleys have under-achieved and are too poor to return to Blighty, even if they wished to. Here in India they are also outsiders, poor post Imperial 'gentry'. They observe closely and are observed in return. This extends to the relationship between Lucy and Tusker – resentment and guilt quietly framed by that eternally British trait, the stiff upper lip. Something has to break…
There is much to admire in this book but love? No. Wonderful witty observation – humour alternating with pathos. An example of Paul Scott's post Imperial best, with apologies for the length, caught my eye and lives on in my memory:
“There really wasn't a single aspect of the nice civilised things in India that didn't reflect something of British influence. Colonel Menektara had impeccable English manners, as did his wife who was in many ways as big a bitch as Mildred Layton had been, but this comforted Lucy since it indicated continuity of civilised behaviour, and as the wife of a retired colonel herself she was in a position to give delicately and as good as she delicately got which meant that she and Coocoo Menektara understood one another perfectly”.
The new Indian army was a credit to the old. The men never failed to get to their feet at the club if you paused to say good evening. With such an army and with such a prime minister as Nehru's daughter at the helm one need never fear a dictatorship of generals, such as they'd been forced to have in Pakistan.”
I felt I should have liked Staying On more than I did: but all that rambling internalisation rather took the edge off things for me -
This novel operates at a lot of different levels. It is multi-layered, rich. The current plot is intricate and woven together with a back story that has the feel of someone looking back, reflecting, digesting. Tusker and Lucy are a couple in the final stages in life with all of the baggage and ruts that can come with a long marriage. But there is love there, somewhere, some type. There is also love of place, India, but is it love of British India, before the Raj, or of current day India or some mixture of the two? Does Lucy miss the British India that she seemingly so hated, the restrictions it placed on her? Has she taken on these cultural norms as her own? Tusker, the administrative genius, ultimately caught not paying attention to the details, which is just one of many signals that life is coming to an end. Lucy is still open to the possibilities that life presents. A most curious couple that grew up in one world but must deal daily in a world that operates by very different rules.
This was my first by Paul Scott. I enjoyed it thoroughly. I admire Paul Scott’s talent, which seems to go far beyond just telling a good story. It is a quiet story, which I like. Some will feel not a lot happens, but much of what happens is subtle. -
This book is a supplement to the Raj Quartet and is a winner of the Booker-Mann prize for obvious reasons. It concerns a rather minor couple, Lucy and Tusker Smalley, from the Quartet who have "stayed on" in India as they can no longer seem to identify with England and the consider India their home. It begins with Tusker's death and becomes a flashback of their life prior to this tragedy.
Most of the friends of their generation are dead or back in England and they are basically along except for their devoted servants. The tables have turned as they are now "guests" rather that "rulers" and although Lucy seems to be able to cope, Tusker cannot.
This is an extremely poignant little book which is much different in style from the Quartet and the ending will bring a tear to your eye. -
Tusker and Lucy Smalley were throwaway characters in later volumes of the Paul Scott’s Raj Quartet and probably many who loved the series would not be satisfied to switch their attention from the epic nature of that tour de force to the more domestic—if not necessarily quiet—atmosphere of Staying On. All I can say to that is, this little drama still has much to commend it.
For starters, we come to know and understand Tusker and Lucy, (especially Lucy) their personalities, relationships with each other, and those who have since returned ‘home’, died, as well those in their current life. We gain their perspective on life in the Raj and realize once again what a unique experience it was for every single individual who lived under it.
We meet their fascinating neighbors—all Indians—beginning with their landlords the Bhoolabhoys, fat, selfish, greedy Lily Bhoolabhoy, the owner of the hotel where they live and her (3rd) husband, kind, gentle, abused Billy Boy, the ‘Management’. Then there is wise Ibrahim, their butler—although he does not carry this title, he does everything and more for them—and little Joseph, the mali, gardener. There is also the ‘character’ of India and how it has changed since the days of the Raj to the present, the early 1960s.
Lucy and Tusker, of course, are no longer young. In fact, Tusker is approaching his 71st birthday and not in good health. Lucy is 4 years younger. They are childless and except for the occasional visitor, the only Europeans in the area. They seem to be without close relatives facing old age and death.
It is a ‘drama’ both humorous and bittersweet, told through present day events and flashbacks. And if all that isn’t enough, we are given a few choice tidbits of information about beloved characters from the Quartet, (Sarah and Guy) what happened to them when they returned to England. Not a lot, but enough to satisfy my curiosity.
All in all, a very satisfying read. Recommended. It can also be read independently from the Quartet. -
To explain this book, I’m going to quote something I heard in a movie review (on Pop Culture Happy Hour) for a work completely unconnected with this one: your parents’ marriage does not settle into simplicity. That observation was made regarding the movie “45 Years,” which is about an aging couple, but it’s just as fitting for this book, which is also about an aging couple. Tusker and Lucy Smalley were minor characters in
The Raj Quartet, but unlike most Brits, they stayed on in India after Independence. The book is set some twenty-five years later in the 1970’s. Tusker and Lucy are in their seventies, too. After four decades of life together, they’ve built up all kinds of resentments for little foibles and big mistakes, but it turns out that sticking together despite all that is the real stuff of love.
If you’ve read the Raj Quartet, then you already know that author Paul Scott is a literary giant on par with Dickens and Dostoevsky, even though he’s not as celebrated as either. This book contains everything that made the Quartet so great: a variety of distinct and well-drawn characters, complex intersecting plot lines, historical tidbits about life in India, and a touch of irreverent humor. But since the book is only a little over 200 pages, all of that is condensed, so that the book is a microcosm of everything that’s great about Paul Scott. It’s a good way to get a taste of his work without reading the voluminous Quartet, but if you don’t read the Quartet, you’ve missed out one of the world’s greatest works of literature. -
Funny, touching, sad. Very nice additional story in the setting of the
The Raj Quartet. -
This was a re-read for me of a book I read quite a few years ago now because it is a sequel to Paul Scott’s The Raj Quartet series of novels that I really loved when I read them. The Raj Quartet was televised as The Jewel in the Crown in 1984, introducing a number of actors who subsequently went on to great things, such as Tim Piggott-Smith, Geraldine James and Art Malik. Staying On was also adapted for television in 1980, starring the wonderful Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson.
Goodreads tells me I gave Staying On three stars when I read it for the first time and I have to say my feeling towards it this time is pretty similar. This is despite the fact that it was awarded the Booker Prize (as it was known at the time) in 1978 by a panel of judges chaired by Philip Larkin, no less.
The most successful character for me was Lucy Smalley who felt the most fully-rounded creation and engaged my sympathy more than the other characters. It helps, no doubt, that the reader is party to more of Lucy’s thoughts and feelings than of the other characters. In contrast, Tusker remains rather a remote, tragic figure.
Tusker’s declining health and concerns about her financial position should the worst happen prompt Lucy to reminisce about her girlhood, her first meetings with Tusker, their courtship, eventual marriage and move to India. She recalls movingly her struggles to adjust to the strict social hierarchy of the British in India, and the petty rules and humiliations meted out to her by other wives.
Lucy is an engaging character because it’s clear she thinks of others whereas Tusker seems only to think of himself. As Lucy observes, ‘He hears. He listens. But doesn’t let on. And he rejects and obfuscates. He rejects anything he hears which it doesn’t suit him to hear.’ I found it sad that Lucy and Tusker seemed to have stopped being able to communicate, to understand each other and appreciate their respective needs. It’s not until very late in the book that we get an insight into Tusker’s feelings for Lucy, feelings he is sadly unable to express directly to her. Her reaction to what she learns is very moving.
I felt that many of the secondary characters – like the awful Mrs. Bhoolabhoy – bordered on caricature. However, most problematic for me was the handling of racial difference. For instance, in the following quotation – and I apologise in advance if any of the terms cause offence – Lucy recalls that, ‘one of the earliest lessons she had learned in India was of the need to steer clear, socially, of people of mixed blood and she had quickly been taught how to detect the taint, the touch of the tar-brush in those white enough to be emboldened to pass themselves off as pukka-born.’ I appreciate that what is being depicted were different times (although the book is only set in 1972) but that word ‘taint’ brought me up short when I read it.
I also felt uncomfortable about what seemed like stereotyping of the different races, especially as I didn’t get a clear sense that I was being encouraged by the author to challenge such generalisations. Lucy recalls, ‘She’d been told that the Eurasians (Anglo-Indians as they were then called) were very loyal to the British; that without them there would have been no reliable middle-class of clerks and subordinate officials. [….] they formed an effective and in-depth defence against the strange native tendency to bribery and corruption which, coupled with that other native tendency to indolence, could have made the Indian empire even more difficult to run than it already was.’
What Staying On does well is evoke the end of an era. Tusker and Lucy represent the last remnants of a different kind of society, social order and way of life. As Lucy confides in a letter to a friend, they are now literally the last of the British permanent residents ‘on station’ in Pankot. Their situation has become precarious both financially and practically as plans for development of Smith’s Hotel threaten The Lodge which is their home. As Tusker observes, “I still think we were right to stay on, though I don’t think of it any longer as staying on, but just as hanging on”. -
A solid novel, though entirely forgotten in the four decades since it won the Booker Prize. Funnily enough, it was the third Raj novel in five years to win the prize, the earlier ones being Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's "Heat and Dust" and JG Farrell's "The Siege of Krishnapur". In terms of longevity, I suppose Farrell's novel has proved to be the most enduring of the three, although of course Scott himself wrote that famous quartet which to this day stands as the ultimate literary monument to the Raj.
Anyway, as a portrait of the blinding English mediocrities that once ruled over a sixth of the world's population, "Staying On" is unlikely to be surpassed. Paul Scott has enough ironic distance to see through the ridiculous presumption of the entire enterprise. As has been stated many times over (most recently by Shashi Tharoor in "An Era of Darkness"), apart from access to better guns, there was precious little else to justify British claims of superiority, unless we are talking about their highly evolved traits of greed, cruelty and racial privilege.
The year is 1972, the place a hill station in North India. Tusker Smalley is a retired colonel and a complete non-entity, as is his wife Lucy, a clueless secretary-turned-colonial-bride. And yet by dint of their white skin, by their affiliation to the English tribe, they get away with a comfortable existence miles above that of the average Indian, and definitely better than what they could have managed in old Blighty, where soggy weather and genteel poverty would have largely defined the rest of their inconsequential lives, as indeed it did for the majority that returned in 1947 to the cramped terraces of austerity England. That I guess was another of the countless injustices of the colonial enterprise, that the wastrels and idiots of the white nations could go over to the lands of the darkies and lord it over them by racial default, though possessing no special virtue or ability, indeed quite often the opposite. It reminds me of Dubai today and its coterie of braying English often betrayed by their coarse accents; not for nothing is there an acronym in the City: FILTH, meaning "Failed in London, Try Hong Kong." Swap out HK for Dubai or colonial Calcutta or Bombay, and you reach much the same conclusion.
So that's what people like Tusker and Lucy Smalley did for two centuries. Having failed within the confines of their cold and crowded island, they went off to the other end of the planet to have another go at it, except that in this particular case, Indian independence leaves the Smalleys high and dry, stranded in an alien civilization for nigh on 25 years, until death comes to claim Tusker one spring morning in 1972. Lucy's flashbacks span more than half of the twentieth century, from Edwardian English shires to tropical princely kingdoms; her character is by far the richest and most rounded-out, and yet her monologues only serve to reinforce the utter banality of their lives. However, it is often out of the most ordinary lives that the most interesting fiction is made, and that is partly the case here. Couple of major complaints: some of the Indian characters (Mrs Bhoolabhoy, e.g.) are little more than grotesque cartoons, and Scott's choice to insert "Goodness Gracious Me"-style English into the mouths of the Indian characters, even when they are talking amongst themselves(!), borders on the racist. It really made me go "WTF!"
Apart from that I found the couple of references to the Bangladeshi independence war rather intriguing; this book is set in its immediate aftermath when the glow of victory was still apparent among the Indian military classes. Even Sheikh Mujib gets a namecheck... -
A Wry Sequel
In calling Staying On a sequel, I am not referring primarily to Paul Scott's celebrated
Raj Quartet; this little postlude is softer in tone, and although sharing some characters, it stands entirely on its own. But it is a sequel to several centuries of British life in India, and to two of those lives in particular: Col. Tusker Smalley and his wife Lucy. The novel opens with Tusker's death in 1972, 25 years after India gained independence. Remaining after others have left, he and Lucy have settled in the small hill town of Pankot. They live now in the annexe to the old-style Smith's Hotel, which is itself overshadowed by the snazzier Shiraz next door; the old British ways are not the only ones dying out. [Scott's post-colonial world is not so different from that of a more recent Booker Prize winner,
The Inheritance of Loss, by Kiran Desai.]
Scott's unlikely representative of the new order is the odiously comic Mrs. Bhoolabhoy, a vastly overweight and capricious empress who has purchased Smith's and married its former manager, enslaving him as her factotum and occasional sexual partner. Her driving ambition is to play with the big boys, and nothing or nobody will stand in her way. Poor Mr. Bhoolabhoy is one of a number of Indians whose lives were shaped by an almost-feudal relationship with the British Raj; in a sense, they have also been left stranded. He is also churchwarden for the Anglican church, whose services have been reduced to one per month. When a new priest arrives, a dark-skinned High Anglican from Southern India, Bhoolabhoy feels that everything has fallen apart. But the newcomer has great charisma and quickly revitalizes the little community; it is a small but welcome assurance that a successful grafting of the old and the new may still be possible.
The core of the book, however, is Lucy's story. The action jumps back three months before Tusker's death to the time of his first attack. During this short period, whether through Lucy's petty skirmishes with her husband, or her explanations to correspondents both real and imaginary, we are taken back to a vanished age, the colonial India of books from EM Forster's
A Passage to India through Scott's own Raj Quartet. Lucy's memories, though long, are not always happy; this is a world of strict hierarchy and petty snobbery, dominated by bored memsahibs who patronize Lucy as only a poor clergyman's daughter. Tusker's career has suffered as a result, exacerbated by the combination of limited talent and stubborn pride. Fueled by regrets, their relationship has become a continual squabble that teeters on the far side of comedy. But at the very end, Tusker writes Lucy a letter apologizing for his inadequacies; it is the loveliest thing she has ever had from him, and a moving end to this wry tragicomedy of a book. -
6th book read in 2018.
Number 483 out of 666 on my all time book list.
Interesting look at something I never knew about. Character interactions are great, but inner dialog because a bore. -
Staying On by Paul Scott
If not marvelous, at least a very good read
After a trip to Central America, in the company of Holliwell and his buddies from A Flag for sunrise, by the fabulous Robert Stone, here I am, taking another ride, into post imperial India, with Lilly, Tusker and a few more charming characters.
Staying On does not have an exciting plot to keep me hooked, and at times, I did wonder why I am reading this.
But the author is an excellent writer and kept this reader going in spite of his idiosyncrasies, laziness, and a penchant for pleasurable reads.
On the face of it, this novel looks like the opposite of pleasurable, with a shot at being downright depressing.
You learn of the death of Tusker early on and the fact that those Staying On in the title are a couple of old English people.
What fun can one have with that?
If I were to tell it, none at all.
But you have the superb Paul Scott writing the story, and it is exhilarating, if not all the time-impossible and probably annoying, it would be in many chapters.
Even obnoxious, cruel, and loathsome people like” Ownership” alias Mrs. Lila Bhoolabhoy turns out to be hilarious, in spite and because of her airs, imperial attitude, “mountain of Flesh”, greediness and rudeness.
On the other hand, the main personages are not altogether likeable, and Tusker can be unpleasant enough to make one, if not indifferent to his death, at least less compassionate.
“Memsahib”, that is Mrs. Lilly Smalley herself is not exactly what I want in the heroines that I read about.
Again, Luce is the opposite of the type of person that I like to meet in person and in fiction, but that only goes to prove the mastery of the author
Where I would normally abandon the book, he makes me read on…Staying On
The plot is nearly nonexistent, and yet the themes of love, fidelity, the British in India, and more are treated with humour and insight
The characters are not very attractive. In fact, they seem to dislike each other, even when they are also passionate for one another - like Mr. Bhoolabhoy and his Lila
We start off with a death
The atmosphere is exotique and intriguing, and whenever there are sad recollections and feelings of remorse and regret, we still turn around and enjoy a laugh with Ibrahim, say.
Ibrahim is the servant of the English couple who Stayed On, and he is perhaps the most pleasant of the personages.
A Muslim who does not drink, he has to put up with grave and comical situations, like the one where the memsahib wants him to get into the bazaar and buy lots of goods for a special evening and the sahib is of a very different opinion
Ibrahim can cope with all of these, but not all at the same time
- A soldier would know that the Last Order counts
I can not walk the dog, take a tonga, and buy the food all at once
- You are fired!
Apart from the comedy of various scenes, there is a serious subtext, with the important issue of the British, their departure, the legacy left in India, success or failure of individuals and the whole nation, race relations, the caste and more.
At times, I felt like this was not what I liked, and in normal circumstances, I would not go through similar subjects and characters.
In fact, whenever I decided to go through it quickly, come to the end and be done with it, I found that I slowed down to see what Lila does to her husband, what Tusker is up to, Ibrahim, Bhoolabhoy and the rest.
If not an absolute favourite, this book has entertained and rewarded me for…Staying On. -
I've known about Staying On for a long time. I'd had it recommended to me more than once. The copy I've finally read and finished today was given to me. I'm grateful for everyone's insistence and for the gift because now I, too, have discovered what a warm, touching, yet powerful novel it is.
Following India's independence, Tusker, a colonel in the British army, retired. He and his wife, Lucy, decided to stay in India rather than return to England. Their decision--his, really--was largely economic. Besides feeling that he was too old to start over again in England, they also knew that their small pension would go farther in India. They felt more at home there, too. Over the years, as Indian society moved away from British influences, Tusker and Lucy began to feel less comfortable. In the present of the novel they struggle with not having enough money, and they struggle with feelings of alienation as they've realized they don't really have a place in the new, emerging India, either. They're tolerated rather than accepted. Now they feel that they were left behind more than having stayed on. Lucy, particularly, feels stranded, a feeling evoked most poignantly by her remembering being at a party without a ride back to their quarters.
It's a funny novel, too. The byplay between the dreamy Lucy and the crotchety Tusker can be hilarious at times. The perspectives of the servants toward their employers will make you smile. The farcical relationship of Lila and Frank Bhoolabhoy, landlords, is contrasted with the ultimately tender marriage of the Smalleys. And is also seen against Frank's solicitous relationship with his local church.
This is a relatively small novel which becomes enormous. We're made aware of various societal issues within the rapidly developing India, as well as how history and religion has impacted them. Every character is a product of what's gone before and what they encounter every day. But most importantly we're made aware of the true meaning of staying on. Scott's last point and last word in this beautiful novel is home. -
Staying On won the Booker Prize but I just don't get why it got the prize instead of any of the books within the The Raj Quartet. it is basically an addendum to that amazing piece of literature. still, a nice addendum.
-
I ran out of books to read while on holiday in Goa and this was one of the few english titles on a shelf of books left behind by previous guests. Had no expectation whatsoever and I loved it. Slight but well-written, the two main characters superbly voiced, no gimmicks or twists. Can't think of anyone I know who would choose to read a rambling uneventful tale about an old couple who decide to "stay on" in India post-Empire however if you have spare time on your hands it is an affectionate portrait of a colonial mindset suddenly out of sorts with the modern world and highly memorable. Has some of that wry sadness to be found in Alan Bennett's Talking Heads tv series and in Grey Gardens, the Maysles Brothers documentary. Also reminds me of the Molly Dineen documentary about Hilary Hook returning to England in 1987, 'Home from the Hill'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Fro....
Perhaps if I'd read the novel with higher expectations (eg having read the same author's Raj Quartet or known that this had won the Booker Prize) I might not have enjoyed it so very much. -
Setting: Pankot, India; 1972.
25 years after Partition, former army colonel Tusker Smalley and his wife, Lucy, are the only white people in the Indian hill-town of Pankot, living in a lodge in the grounds of the less popular hotel in the town. The book describes their relatively simple lives and their interactions with their servants, Ibrahim and Minnie, and with the hotel owners, Mr and Mrs Bhoolabhoy, along with other members of the community.
There are some great stories of the couple's previous life in the run-up to Partition, some of which expose the resentments felt by Lucy and Tusker for their current situation and with each other. The book starts with Tusker dying of a massive heart attack but then winds back to narrate the build-up to this momentous event in Lucy's life.
I didn't read The Jewel in the Crown by the same author but still found this book eminently readable and the story, simple as it was, really engrossing. This was because the author's characters were totally believable and drew my concern and empathy as they negotiated their mundane, yet interesting, lives - 8.5/10. -
They list this book here as part of the Raj Quartet, but I think that is an error. You do not have to have read any of the Raj Quartet to enjoy this stand-alone book.
This is the second time I read this. It must be at least 30 years since I first did, and I received a shock when I realized how superb it is. A good deal of it had me laughing, but it is
much more than amusing. Some of this is because I am now even older than Lucy (I am 78) and I understand aging and trying to hold on. It is the story of a marriage, of being the last British couple in a smallish town in India, travails and hilarious happenings with servants, of the town they knew and loved changing greatly, about Indian friends that are Christian, Muslim and Hindu and too much to write here. I am very stingy with 5 stars, but I cannot resist. -
The book gets better and better as it progresses slowly through a week in the life of the two main characters. The characters present various analogies with a bankrupt and weakened Raj. What didn't surprise me was the respect locals still had for their once masters 30 odd years after the Independence. Even now most people of Indian subcontinent speak favorably of the British Raj. I think the main reason is their superior sense of justice. Even if the British were also elitist but their implementation of justice was a lot more even than their predecessors as well as successors.
