Ann Lord at 65 waits for death. As she's being watched by her adult children who recall her remote cool personality and her far greater interest in things than people, her consciousness shifts between her present passivity and a flashbacked past of fragmented if vivid memories. US writer Susan Minot became famous in 1986 on the publication of Monkeys, a lively and touching novella-length Yankee variation of Woolf's To The Lighthouse. Evening is a graceful novel of immense sophistication, skill and a subtle rage. Once divorced, twice-widowed, and the mother of five, one of whom died at 11, Lord faces death and finally makes sense of a life which ended years before with a brutal romance. As a girl, she had attended a weekend wedding party. There she met a mysterious man who wooed her with a terrifying urgency, only to return to his pregnant girlfriend. His fling ruined her and her subsequent life is lived at a distance from everyone. Betrayed by early feelings, Lord decided to live without them. Minot sustains a detached, unsentimental attitude towards the dying woman, who emerges as unappealing yet ultimately vulnerable, rendering Evening, a fascinating examination of emotional power shifts and the elusive, unpredictable force of memory, all the more compelling.
"He was a popular hero more than a comic. He was cheeky because he was a genius. All genius is a cheek. You get away with your nodding little vision and the world holds its breath or applauds. Max took your breath away altogether and we applauded . . . He went on telling them from the blue book, wearing his smashing clothes, looking better than anyone else, and smelling of sea air, the open doors of public houses and whelks. He talked endlessly and with a fluency which made me spin . . . above all he talked about girls. Unwilling girls, give her a shilling and she'll be willing girls, Annie and Fanny, girls who hadn't found out, girls on their honeymoon, fan dancers minus their fans, pregnant girls and barmaids the stork put the wind up every six weeks. You always felt with Maxie that he didn't go much on birth control but if anything went wrong the girls would be pretty good-tempered about it. As for their mothers, he could always give them a little welcome present too. In the same way, the Wife was complaisant, just another cheerful barmaid at home reading the News of the World till Max felt like coming back for `coffee and games'. Except that Max could always do without the coffee."
John Osborne on the great Max Miller, from Damn You, England
