It’s An Old Country by J.B. Priestley ~ 1967. This edition: Heinemann, 1967. Hardcover. 247 pages.
My rating: 2.5/10
I’m a sincere J.B. Priestley fan, so this rating and following review pain me greatly. I’ll try to get it over with quickly, so I can put the book away (far away) and not have to look at it and be reminded of my disappointment.
It’s 1960-something, and 35-year-old economic historian Tom Adamson has just buried his mother in a Sydney, Australia graveyard. Tom is by birth English, having come to Australia as a toddler with his embittered mother and wee sister when his actor-artist father suddenly abandoned his family back in the old country.
Raised to scorn his absent parent, Tom has had a disquieting experience when, in her last days of illness, his mother hints that there was some sort of mystery as to why Dad cut all ties, and a deeper reason behind it all.
So Tom takes leave from his job as a Colonial Economic History professor at the local university, flies to England, and proceeds to seek his father, whom he feels is still alive (he’d know if it weren’t so, our author assures us, Tom being apparently blessed with some sort of superior filial intuition) and perhaps yearning for his long-lost son.
Tom falls in with a ne’er-do-well cousin, who in the intervals of between hitting Tom up for substantial “loans” of cash actually proves fairly useful in providing introductions to people who can give snippets of information regarding Tom’s elusive father. We meet a vast array of potentially intriguing characters – a seedy private enquiry agent, a senile noblewoman, an elegant European jetsetter (with whom Tom has an ultimately unsatisfying sexual escapade), various actors, artists, writers, pub-owners, ex-lovers of the father, ex-employers of the father, fellow workers of the father’s numerous jobs – an immense cast of secondary characters, and each one as sketchily portrayed and forgettable as the last.
I’ll tell you what Tom discovers, to save you from plodding through this thing for yourself. (Consider this your spoiler alert, though that very term implies something suspenseful or exciting, which is far from what occurs in the book.)
Turns out that Dad’s letters home were suppressed by a jealous lover – he’d really meant to return to his wife at some point but said lover maneuvered weak-willed Dad in a different direction. After failing at reaching success as either an actor or a painter, Dad enlisted in the army, fought in the 2nd World War, came out to a dismal civilian life, passed dud cheques, served time in jail, changed his name, and worked at a series of progressively less rewarding jobs until Tom finds him slaving away as an underpaid waiter in a South Devon hotel.
There is an underwhelming reunion, notable for its über-masculine soberness. Tom promises to set Dad up with an annuity and a new life in London, with the intimation that one of Dad’s old girlfriends who still carries a torch for the ineffectual but generally decent old guy will step in to provide female companionship.
Tom himself has found a love interest in a 25-year-old book editress, and the two find they share a sniffy dislike of the way English society is sliding into chaos – beatnicks versus the old guard – and decide that the happiest future shared career will be in working for the U.N. In a more developed part of the world of course: “(D)oes it have to be Ghana or Cambodia or Ecuador?…Couldn’t we make it Austria or Thailand or Mexico, my darling?”
The end.
It’s an Old Country fails to live up to expectation on every front. The plot is boring. The characters are strictly cardboard – even our “hero” Tom fails to come across as multi-dimensional in any way, shape or form. The dialogue is stilted. The style throughout reads like a first draft, a mere roughed-out outline without any living detail.
Even Priestley’s “big idea” – a reliable trope with this author is his inclusion of an intellectual motif to each book – is vague and understated. In this novel, the gist seems to be that the youth of the day are sloppy and unambitious, a bunch of guitar-playing beatnicks, but perhaps that’s to be expected after the way the elder generation has mucked up the world with its wars and class divisions, and that the old guard is overdue for toppling. The “old country” – England, and also its colonial partner Australia – is fixed in its downward spiral – time for a forward-thinking man (that would be our Tom) to abandon ship. Hurray for tradition, it’s been swell but it’s over, see you later.
There are tiny glimpses here and there of the author’s true potential – micro-episodes and lonely glistening, gliding phrases – but so few and far between that they merely serve to remind the reader of how much better this book should be.
One could charitably excuse the absolute flatness of this dull, dull novel by maintaining that after over forty years of plugging out work after work after work the author was scraping the bottom of the barrel, getting old and tired. How then to explain the excellence of the book before this one, the quite stellar Lost Empires, published in 1965? Two years shouldn’t make that much difference. We know the man still has it in him, so where is it here?
It’s an Old Country is a hack piece, trading on the author’s good name, an underwritten, too sparse yet plodding novel that should never have made it to print.
In my opinion.
Over and out.
Leaves & Pages 
2.5/10. Is that your lowest ever? (Can’t recall if The Last Canadian won that distinction.)
Too bad. Starts off with a worthwhile, though popular, premise.
Hmm. Perhaps it was an early first draft that sat in the publisher’s office for 50 years… oh wait, that’s been done already.
(Um, “editress”? Did he actually use such an egregious word?)
I do believe The Last Canadian received a 3. (The plot was stronger. Meow!)
Yes, the premise of Old Country is promising – I was fully prepared for some shocking/interesting reason why the father went AWOL, but it turned out that he was merely an ineffectual type who just sort of wandered off. And the writing overall in this book was very poor. For anyone, but especially for someone as accomplished as Priestley. It was a definite plod. I started it already on the author’s side, eager to be drawn in to the story. No go.
I can’t remember if the term “editress” was from Priestley, or merely my own interpretation. The woman in question seems quite happy to drop her profession and take on the role of full-time domestic support and mother-of-his-children to the hero, so perhaps it is appropriate in this case…
Thanks, I do read Priestley but I’ll definitely give this one a miss.
I have no problem with ‘ess’ words, in fact I feel that it is an insult to use ‘actor’ instead of actress. I’ll have no truck with the inference that being female is inferior. Long live the ‘ix’ words too, such as proprietrix,
I honestly don’t think you’ll miss much if you give this one the cold shoulder. Better to re-read one of the A-list books for your Priestley fix. 🙂
I too rather like the “ess” words – though I (as a woman) also have no issue with being called (for example) a fisherman (versus the politically correct now in Canada fisher – which completely bemuses me – isn’t a fisher a large member of the weasel family?) 😉 Many of the “man” words are figurative, referring to “mankind” versus those of the male gender. But there is an elegance to the feminized terms used to specify gender in some professions and callings: actress, hostess, waitress (versus server or even wait person – both of these terms have increasingly popped up lately), and of course goddess. (And while we’re thinking of that, how about Diana the Huntress – much more lilting and descriptive than Diana the Hunter, don’t you think?)
On the other hand, some “ess” words are not as wonderful. Poetess also to me seems to be a sneering, belittling sort of word; I prefer poet no matter what the gender. Ditto author (versus authoress, which I came across recently in a vintage novel), and – yes! – editress – editor is preferable across the board.
And any-gender “master” is fine, too – think master of trades, master gardener, master chef – now gender neutral though originally based on the masculine form. (I won’t start a discussion on the implications and many meanings of “mistress”!)
Not one of JBP’s more notable or memorable efforts by the sound of it. Surprising (in a way) given the excellence of “Lost Empires” but unsurprising (in another way) given JBP’s age & the very different publishing world that had come into existence by 1967, ie. the world we have now where an author’s name/reputation is deemed to be far more important than the quality of their work. JBP was a successful (if slipping in popularity) “star author” by 1967 whose books were published & sold on the strength of his name alone & he was probably viewed as someone whose work didn’t require too much editing – a major mistake as this book clearly proves.
The pity is that all the elements of a potentially great novel are here judging by your excellent plot summary, one that might have been as brilliant as the aforementioned “Lost Empires” & earlier classics like “Angel Pavement” had it been set in the 1930s rather than the “swinging” 1960s. JBP was in his 73rd year when this book was published & very few 73 year olds are capable, even today, of writing about contemporary society without sounding patronizing, disapproving, curmudgeonly or all three. Some can, certainly, but they’re few & far between & unlikely to be published even if they do have their finger placed firmly upon the contemporary pulse. Ours is a youth-obsessed culture – & had been for a long time by 1967 – & JBP was a victim of that obsession along with so many of his equally gifted if less famous contemporaries like Barbara Pym & Dorothy Whipple. Pym was fortunate in that she had every English person’s favourite contemporary poet Philip Larkin to champion her cause. Whipple did not & was obliged to write children’s books during the final phase of her career.
I’ll definitely read “It’s An Old Country” some day if I can find a copy – as you know, JBP & his work are an ongoing fascination of mine – but I certainly won’t be in any great hurry to seek one out.
Thanks for posting another excellent & refreshingly honest JBP review. Enjoyable & thought-provoking stuff as always.
I think the issue with uneven quality in Priestley’s books goes back to the beginning. Have you read his first novel, Adam in Moonshine (1927)? Or Three Men in New Suits (1945)? I found those to be rather flat as well, though to be honest not quite as tiresome as Old Country. Well, maybe Three Men comes close…I pulled it from the shelf yesterday thinking I would re-read it, but gave it up after several pages. Some other time, perhaps.
I do think, now that I’ve read a large number of his books, from the most popular to the most obscure, that Priestley’s strongest works are his memoirs, and his personal-life-influenced fictions. Lost Empires, Bright Day, the essay collections, Margin Released et al.
I totally agree. JBP was always an uneven writer, right from the beginning of what became his long and notable career. His best work was always that which was drawn directly from his own life & his own particular humanist philosophy, be it fiction or non-fiction. His plays are similarly uneven but, as you say elsewhere, when he’s good, he’s very good indeed.
Well, he must have been having an off day. I love the way you always manage to be really entertaining even when the books aren’t up to much.
Priestley is (for me at least) one of those A-list/D-list writers. When he is good he is very, very good – but he did put out a fair number of utter duds as well. So disappointing, when one knows he can do much better! As you can see, I felt rather savage after this particular let-down. 😉