THIS is the first novel by a woman who eventually died of an overdose of drink and drugs the cumulative result of depression caused by her unsuccessful attempts to have it or her second novel published. So says the introduction by George H. Gilpin and Hermione de Almeida, which includes hints and tints of Avis's life, telling us that the novel is really a roman a clef featuring thinly disguised Really Famous Men like Philip Larkin and our own senior poet, Richard Murphy.
All this makes me suspicious. There are too many instances already of people having an interest in a woman's literary output simply because her life was entwined with that of a more famous man, was thrillingly awful, or was ended by her own hand. Too often we are encouraged to read fiction by a woman as a key to her own adventures, supposed or real. What about the many novels by men which are inspired by the same? The fact is, most novels tend to express distinctive echoes of their authors' lives.
The title of the novel, together with its sad companion subtitle, Mostly Coffee, is the real key to this accomplished story of poor little rich girl Mary Gallen, who lurches from one painful affair to another, making believe a daringly promiscuous persona behind which her heart is broken again and again. Far from the scenes of steamy passion that the novel's title evokes, the only lasting sexual detail we witness is a chafed chin in the aftermath of an illicit tryst whereas we are given endless descriptions of cups, mugs and even pints of coffee consumed when hapless lovers or husbands absent themselves, often to pursue the superior charms of boys.
Mary's paralysing lack of purpose is matched by an increasingly brittle tone of self mocking fatalism. At the beginning of the novel she is eighteen, boarding in a hostel run by nuns, sent there by her Irish mother and Swiss father who live in far off Argentina. She is, at this early stage, "too demanding as yet to appreciate the finesse of the formal mask".
The cold evasions of her various men lead her to build up a self protective mask (complete with affected statements about herself, such as "I'm a defrocked goddess"), but her defences are still puny compared to those of her lovers. Of Dermot McNeill she says. "His tightrope was a high one, way above hers, all steel, professional steel McNeill, the most cruel and most loved of Mary's men, callously ends their relationship in a cafe with the phrase "That's the lot." Avis describes with superb precision Mary's subsequently numb unravelling, the mask cast of, where she compares herself with a bird that has been "plucked and trussed".
Mary, has several miscarriages, which further erode her strength and confidence. Meantime, while she is studying in a French hostel a section of the novel brilliantly and atmospherically described by Avis scenes of self induced miscarriages and back street abortions are commonplace among the impoverished women students.
There is an unremitting Jean Rhys style bleakness about Mary's rootless wanderings, and her hurtful affairs and two marriages that start as haphazardly as they finish. Her belief that her life can only be defined by a relationship with a man, and that she would never be quite able for a job, is mirrored by the lives of her two friends, Theo (a medical student who gets married instead of going into practice) and Abigail, an artist who marries an ageing European count rather than realise her talents.
Playing the Harlot was turned down by Faber because the editor in question, Charles Monteith, left that the structure was weak and it slandered his friends. That it was not published is a shame it is a well written novel showing with uncomfortable honesty the double standards endured by so called privileged young women of the day valued by men largely for their money or their capacity to comfort and cajole, they had little opportunity to achieve recognition for their education and intellectual capacity. The men had careers, published books, and freely indulged in extra marital affairs, while the women wasted their brains at home and were criticised if they strayed from the marriage bed. As Mary remarks "Men If they do draw the line at anything, you can be pretty sure they've crossed it already, and just don't care to be followed."
Avis exhibits a fine capacity for characterisation, an acute ear for dialogue, and, above all, a welcome amount of dry, uncompromising wit. There is an irresistible pen portrait of Mary's housekeeper, Paracleta, from Belfast also amusing are Mary's euphemistic letters home to her father, usually looking for money to fund the hare brained notions of her husbands.
Now that the novel has been published, many years after Avis could enjoy the satisfaction of seeing her work in print, it seems unfortunate that the hype surrounding the publication is all about which of Avis's real life loves correspond to Mary's fictional ones, a focus intensified by the introduction. I would prefer to stay in ignorance and read the book as a self contained novel, which is what Avis intended, and, more importantly, achieved.