Brideshead Revisited (2) - on the description of marital and extra-marital sex

There are some interesting descriptions of sex in Brideshead. Waugh avoids any explicit reference to gay sex, but he is slightly more comfortable with marital affairs, taking a quick peek into the bedroom. When Charles returns from his two-year long trip to South America, his reaction to meeting his wife could not be more off-hand if he tried. "There was also a daughter now, she remarked" (218) - noted in the same tone as if she had had the spare bedroom redecorated. When they are at last alone, the scene is described thus:
"She talked in this way while she undressed, with an effort to appear at ease,; then she sat at the dressing table, ran a comb through her hair, and with her bare back towards me, looking at herself in the glass, said "Shall I put my face to bed?"
It was a familiar phrase, one that I did not like; she meant, should she remove her make-up, cover herself with grease, and put her hair in a net.
"No" I said, "not at once".
Then she knew what was wanted. She had neat, hygienic ways for that too, but there were both relief and triumph in her smile of welcome; later we parted and lay in our twin beds a yard or two distant, smoking".
Waugh packs a huge amount of information in this brief scene of clinical, hygienic marital sex. When his wife offers herself - obliquely, but quite clearly - to her returning husband after two years apart, she can't even look at him. She seems to disgust him somewhat - "cover herself with grease"- and his acceptance of her offer is equally half hearted - "not at once". her relief and triumph derives from his acceptance of her offer. It is later implied that she has been unfaithful in his absence, and that he is aware of this - her relief derives from a mistaken belief that her infidelity has gone unreported, or is forgiven. This is a marriage where little needs to be said - later, when Charles decides to go to see Julia, his mistress, rather than his newly arrived daughter, signalling effectively the end of the marriage, all she says is "I wish it hadn't got to happen quite this way" (256)

Sex with his mistress on the other hand is more tempestuous, with the storm raging on the Atlantic acting as a usual metaphor:
"As we made our halting, laborious way forward...we were alternately jostled together, then strained, nearly sundered, arms and fingers interlocked as I held the rail and Julia clung to me, thrust together again, drawn apart, then in a plunge deeper than the rest, I found myself flung across her, pressing her against the rail, warding myself off her with the arms that held her prisoner on either side" (248)
This plunging and swooping goes on for some time. When the actual, non-metaphorical sex happens a little later, the language Waugh uses is quite extraordinary:
"Julia led me below. It was no time of the sweets of luxury; they would come, in their season, with the swallow and the lime flowers. Now in the rough water there was a formality to be observed, no more. It was as though a deed of conveyance of her narrow loins had been drawn and sealed. I was making my first entry as the freeholder of a property I would enjoy and develop at leisure". (248)
So not only is this first sexual exchange portrayed in legalistic, commercial terms, but more precisely as a transaction relating to property. Julia eventually inherits Brideshead House, and if they had married Charles would have shared in this inheritance. (Incidentally I wonder if the reference to the "swallow" an accidental punning reference to oral sex? If that's not too far for you, then this surely is: the mention of lime flowers could be an oblique reference to the fact that lime trees are hermaphroditic, with both male and female parts, suggesting Charles's tastes are not solely confined to women, as by now we are almost certainly aware.

Portraying sex in novels in the first half of the twentieth century was a challenge - writers were pushing at the boundaries of what public taste and censors would allow, and of course sometimes - Lady Chatterley, Ulysses, The Well of Loneliness, etc - crossing the line. Waugh seems to me to be ambivalent in his references to heterosexual sex - it is treated almost as a necessary evil, but is far from comfortable compared to his treatment of the relationships between men.

Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

Why do I write this blog? Thinking about it there are four principal reasons, with one bonus justification.

1.    To keep a record of what I read. Simple as that – just to look back and see what I have read over 12-24 months is interesting, as my appetite for classic fiction wanes and is replaced by recent history, for example.

2.    To keep a note of what happens in the novels I read. I appreciate that probably sounds a bit daft at first, but if you think about it, how many times have you picked up a book and wondered whether you had read it or not? Writing down what happens helps fixed the main events of a story in my memory. Of course, re-reading books and rediscovering them can be great fun, but I find it frustrating not being able to remember what happens in a book even though I know I have read it.

3.    To make me a careful reader. This follows on very much from the above – if I know I am going to have to write something about a novel, I will read it more carefully than otherwise. I will even make marginal notes and highlight sections if I am being really conscientious. When I do this of course it means I am more likely to remember the detail of the book, but writing it down reinforces this.

4.    To have something interesting and original to say about the novel/book.

(The bonus reason is that I occasionally use this blog to write about something other than my reading. It’s harmless, and gives me somewhere to work out my thoughts, or maybe just show off a bit, even if just to myself.)

So when I finished Evelyn Waugh’s 1946 novel “Brideshead Revisited” and found I didn’t really have anything new or insightful to say about the novel, I was disappointed. Looking back on the list above however, I realised there are nevertheless plenty of reasons to blog about the novel, even if it won’t be as amusing or clever as I would have hoped – it still ticks three of the four boxes.

“Brideshead Revisited” is narrated by Charles Ryder, an upper middle class officer who is billeted in the grounds of an English country house at an indeterminate point in the second world war. He is startled to realise he knows the house well, having visited as a guest many times. The body of the novel is a series of reminiscences starting with Charles’s time at Oxford in the early 20’s, when he meets Sebastian Flyte, the younger son of the Brideshead family. The fact he is a younger son, and therefore unlikely to inherit the family title or house, is significant – he dedicates himself to a life of excess, ending as an alcoholic wreck. The surname Flyte is also telling – Sebastian is quintessentially flighty, a decadent aesthete interested in only what pleases him. The bond between Ryder and Flyte is strong and instantaneous, and their lives run in parallel until Sebastian’s alcoholism finally pulls them apart.

The sexual nature of their friendship is fairly explicit – bearing in mind that gay relationships were illegal in the UK before 1968, and only decriminalised in very specific circumstances thereafter. They have an openly gay friend – Antoine Blanche – who is accepted by them without judgment or any hint of censure. Waugh is as clear as possible on this point, dropping multiple hints. To give one example, Charles’s cousin, Jasper, visits him early on during his time at Oxford, and warns him “Beware of the Anglo-Catholics – they’re all sodomites” (28). The Flyte’s are one of England’s leading aristocratic Catholic families.

They grow apart, and Charles becomes an artist. He eventually marries, although his relationship with his wife is distant, and he has no interest in his children. He goes on an expedition into the South American jungle, and is away for two years – when he meets his wife after this absence their lack of affectionate is palpable. On the stormy Atlantic crossing home he begins an affair with Sebastian’s sister, Julia, but she ultimately rejects him in favour of her Catholic faith. In a book-ending chapter back at Brideshead, Ryder reveals he too has embraced Catholicism.

This is a complex novel with many themes. The loss of Edwardian England, preserved in part in Brideshead and Oxford, but torn apart by the devastation of the Great War. Waugh’s 1959 introduction to the novel talks about it being about the imminent loss of the great English country house, but that seems a minor theme to a 21^st century reader. Catholicism, the Second World War, love, homosexuality – it makes it seem a worthy novel, and eventually it is, but the early scenes in Oxford in particular are extraordinarily evocative:

“Oxford, in those days, was still a city of aquatint. In her spacious and quiet streets men walked and spoke as they had done in Newman's day; her autumnal mists, her grey springtime, and the rare glory of her summer days - such as that day - when the chestnut was in flower and the bells rang out high and clear over her gables and cupolas, exhaled the soft airs of centuries of youth. It was this cloistral hush which gave our laughter its resonance, and carried it still, joyously, over the intervening clamour.”

Martin Amis – the Information

Martin Amis wrote the “at pains to be offensive” “Lionel Asbo”. So why on earth would I read “The Information”? My excuses are, to be honest, slim. I originally read this novel when it was first published, in 1995. I had been impressed by the griminess of “London Fields”, and thought Amis was a writer worth persisting with. Amis was paid an astonishing £500,000 advance for this novel, which may also have had a part to play in my original purchase decision. Coming across it on my bookshelves two decades later, I could remember nothing about it, even when prompted by the blurb. So I restarted, and once going refused to give up, even though the whole exercise was in some respects a long, drawn out insult.

The premise of the novel is simple. An unsuccessful contemporary writer, Richard Tull, has a friend, Gwyn Barry, who has by some inexplicable stroke of fortune become a highly successful novelist. Both men are intensely unpleasant individuals, two sides of the same coin, with only book sales differentiating them. While Tull’s books are unreadably, painfully bad, Barry’s are bland and inoffensive, yet sell by the million. Readers, it is implied, are all idiots, writing books is pointless, all modern books are rubbish, and the publishing industry is full of crooks, thieves and scoundrels.

In response to the failure of his literary career, Tull plans a complex and rambling scheme to punish Barry for his success. This scheme never quite comes to fruition, and fizzles out when at each turn Barry has yet another outrageous stroke of luck to avert the threat of the day. As this happens so often, there is little or no interest in whether the next threat will pan out – we know it won’t.

This is another deeply misogynistic book. There are no even partly convincing female characters – they are simply wives and girlfriends, defined by their relationships with the male protagonists. They are sexually used by the men without having any visible or presented say in the matter – for example at one point Barry has sex with his research assistant, does her the gracious favour of coming quickly so as not to inconvenience her overly, and then moves to his wife’s bed to brag about it. Amis is not celebrating this behaviour of course – my point is that the women are passive in their acceptance of this abuse. Real women wouldn’t stand for this behaviour for a second.

I am not going to go on at any more length about the failures of this book – I have spent too long on this already. If you enjoy Amis you might like this, but there are many less incestuous, less disappearing up its own self referential fundament, less simply unpleasant books about the London literary scene out there.

But. The thing is, despite all this, Amis can write. At its best his writing is something to savour. Take this:

“He awoke at six, as usual. He needed no alarm clock. He was already comprehensively alarmed.”

Or this

“Cities at night, I feel, contain men who cry in their sleep and then say Nothing. It's nothing. Just sad dreams. Or something like that...Swing low in your weep ship, with your tear scans and sob probes, and you would mark them. Women--and they can be wives, lovers, gaunt muses, fat nurses, obsessions, devourers, exes, nemeses--will wake and turn to these men and ask, with female need-to-know, "What is it?" And the men will say, "Nothing. No it isn't anything really. Just sad dreams.”

 “there in the night their bed had the towelly smell of marriage.”

There is something on every page that is interesting, not just in the use of language, imagery, etc., but in the author’s ear for how people speak and think. One example of this is his fascination with idiom. One character consistently makes mistakes with her idiom, and a whole section of what passes for a plot revolves around her confusion between the phrase “Gwyn can’t write for toffee” with what she meant to say, which was that he wouldn’t write for peanuts – different foodstuff, utterly different meaning.

“Demi’s linguistic quirk is essentially and definingly female. It just is. Drawing in breath to denounce this proposition, women will often come out with something like “Up you” or “Ballshit”. For I am referring to Demi’s use of the conflated or mangled catchphrase – Demi’s speech bargains: she wanted two for the price of one. The result was expressive, and you usually knew what she meant given the context… So Demi said “vicious snowball” and “quicksand wit” and up gum street”; she said “worried stiff” and “beyond contempt” (though not beneath belief”); she said “on its death legs” and “hubbub of activity” and “what’s with it with her” (257)….” And so on at length.

Another example is the way he captures a character’s fractured internal monologue, in this case thinking about an article being written about him:

“Although Barry was no. A keen. While no jock or gym rat, Barry responded to the heightened life of fierce competition. He loved games and sports….with his old sparring. …As a novelist Tull was no. Unfavoured by the muses, Tull was nevertheless.” (404)

Finally, is it just me or is it hard to forget that Martin is his father’s son? Sometimes you can hear the grumpy old man being channelled, especially here where the reference to the waking up still drunk scene in “Lucky Jim” must surely be deliberate:

“Looking the mirror now, on the morning of his fortieth birthday, Richard felt that no one deserved the face he had. No one in the history of the planet. There was nothing on the planet it was that bad to do. What happened? What have you done, man? His hair, scattered over his crown in assorted folds and clumps, looked as though it had just concluded a course of prolonged (and futile) chemotherapy. Then the eyes, each of them perched on its little blood-rimmed beergut…..His teeth were all chipped pottery and pre-war jet-glue.” (46)

Kingsley pretty much gave up bothering to try to write convincing female characters, or indeed anyone other than grumpy old men – is Martin heading that way?

 

Trench Warfare 1914-1918 – The Live and Live System– Tony Ashworth

I do read some interesting books don’t I? This is one of the Pan Military History series, originally published in 1980 (that date is important by the way, and I will come back to it) and was a bit dry to be honest. It’s more of a reference book than a page-turner. Which was a pity, because the author has identified something really interesting about military conflict, and the First World War in particular, and that is the tendency of combatants to impose some control on their environment, even in the midst of the bloodiest, nastiest conflict imaginable, by refusing to kill their enemies. Ashworth calls this the live and let live system, whereby troops in the trenches would come to informal understandings with those facing them that they would leave one another alone in certain circumstances, at particular times, days, and for particular purposes. This understanding found its most vivid expression in the extraordinary Christmas truces of 1914, when trench warfare was still a relatively new experience, and when the bloody battles of Ypres, Passchendaele, the Somme etc. had entrenched (if you will forgive the pun) bitterness against the enemy.

For me, this was a bit of a light bulb moment. I knew of course that soldiers in the trenches were not constantly fighting, and that there was evidence from other conflicts, touched on at the end of this book, that a surprisingly large proportion of soldiers would avoid killing one another when they could. But the nature of trench warfare, when troops were in close proximity – certainly in hearing range in many cases – to their enemy for long periods of time – meant that they would slowly begin to recognise their opponents as people rather than abstract entities. Once that happen – these are people that eat, sing, hate the rain, etc., like us – then killing them becomes harder. Peace kept breaking out despite all the efforts of the war machine to stop it. In 1917 there were extensive mutinies in the French army across the whole of their front – mutinies which the Germans opposing them at the time were blithely unaware of. As the author points out, this was no doubt because these fronts were largely applying the live and let live principle at the time – if you don’t attack me I won’t attack you.

The context of the war is important here, and it is something Ashworth doesn’t really mention. The belief that a continental war was coming had been around for decades, fuelling spending on the Royal Navy for example, but in many scenarios the Germans, with our shared Royal family, were on the same side as the UK. France was to many our traditional enemy; we had never fought the Germans in a war, whereas we had hardly stopped fighting the French over centuries. So there was no inherent hostility towards the Germans. The media tried to stoke it up of course, and atrocity stories played a part, but the evidence presented in this book suggests that many soldiers in the trenches were quite happy to consider not killing Germans if the reciprocal could be ensured. When higher commands ordered activity, Ashworth argues and demonstrates that firing to miss was common-place.

I have mentioned one omission from this study, the context of the war, but there are a couple of other factors which are not given any focus. I think the conflict in the trenches was – to an extent – seasonal. The weather dictated the extent and nature of the conflict, and this is supported by the casualty figures I have seen elsewhere. Ashworth identifies many different features which meant “live and let live” was more or less likely to occur, but doesn’t mention these practical considerations of weather and season. A minor point I suppose.

I also mentioned earlier that this book was published in 1980, 35 years ago. The relevance of this is that the author was able to interview and correspond with survivors on the Great War, an opportunity that would not exist today. I wonder if he realised at the time how precious this opportunity was. Diaries, letters and journal can tell us a lot, but I don’t think they could ever be a substitute for the oral history of survivors.

Haruki Murakami – Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Translated from the Japanese by Alfred Birnbaum

In my notes on “The Shadow of the Wind” I was harsh, some might say brutally so, towards the translator. So I wanted to open this review by tipping my hat to Alfred Birnbaum. This must have been a fantastically difficult novel to translate. I’ll come to why later but I wanted to start by saying this was one of the strangest books I have read in a very long time. It is set in Japan, and that is one of the very few definite things I can say about it. It is constructed of two parallel storylines, and while it is reasonably clear they are connected early on – otherwise they wouldn’t be in the same book would they? – it takes a long time for the connection to become apparent. Murakami slowly reveals the links – thinking about a novel he has just read about a prisoner, the narrator in one storyline meditates on “the image of a world within walls. I could picture it, with no effort at all. A very high wall, a very large gate. Dead quiet. Me inside. “ (164) Which is a description of the setting of the parallel narrative. The conclusion suggested here is that the second story is a dream of the narrator of the first story. I resisted the temptation of this interpretation for a long time, (although it turned out to be right), because while fantastical, dreamlike things happen in story B, story A is almost as bizarre.

Story A follows a data analyst with special powers. The author spends a lot of time trying to explain the nature of these powers and the circumstances in which they were acquired, but the effort was wasted on me. Gibberish is gibberish whether written at length or not. Here’s an example

“Whatever we do t’your cognitive circuits, we must never sever that channel. The reason bein’ that your surface consciousness – your first circuit – developed on nurture from your subconscious – that is, from your second circuit. That channel’s the roots of your tree. Without it your brain wouldn’t function. But the question here is that with the electrical discharge from the meltdown of Junction B, the channel’s been dealt an abnormal shock. And your brain’s so surprised, it’s started up emergency adjustment procedures. “ (283)

(As an aside, why the scientist speaking here has this strange accent is one of the many things that went over my head). The narrator has a magnetic attraction to women, who cast aside their clothes and implore him to sleep with them at every opportunity, which is irritating. The nearest style this all approximates to is magical realism. Supernatural things such as unicorns, and subterranean, murloc-like beasts called INKlings appear, and sound can be turned on and off. This is not a naturalistic world, although it is recognisable.

On the other hand, Story B is more dream-like, and follows a similar character (yes, the same person, as we find out sooner or later) who goes to a walled city, has his shadow surgically removed (although it survives the procedure) and spends his time “dream-reading” – trying to interpret mystically readings generated by skulls in a library. As you do.

Eventually the narrative settles down, and a storyline emerges. Despite myself, towards the end of the novel I found myself caring for the romance between the narrator and his librarian girlfriend, a love so compelling that it can cross the boundary between the narratives.

There are so many unusual things about this novel that it is hard to select one, but if forced I would point to the chapters where the author suddenly begins a crude pastiche of American noir detective novels (Chandler, Hammett, etc) – at one point a character stores an object at a baggage check counter, then posts the claim ticket to himself – precisely what Marlowe does in “Farewell my Lovely” (I think).The characters (at this point) all crack wise, even when being smacked around, facing death with smart alec comments, and talking about “spilling the beans”, “rubbing people out”, and “getting sweet”.

This was such a mash-up of genres that I was left utterly bewildered. Which is probably a first. Murakami is hugely popular, and his new novels (this dates back to1985, and includes references to the Police and Duran Duran) are something of an event. If this is representative of his work, I might wait a while before trying another.

I mentioned earlier the credit due to the translator. The different styles of Idiom used are handled well, as is the challenge to make the nonsensical technical explanations, have a veneer of sense. Murakami’s prose can be dense – here’s an example of the translation challenge:

 “This is very important...because to believe something, whatever it might be, is the doing of the mind. Do you follow me? When you say you believe, you allow the possibility of disappointment. And from disappointment or betrayal, there may come despair. Such is the way of the mind”. (351).

Indeed, and as is well know, fear can turn to hate, etc.

“I did a quick once-over with the shaver, splashed water on my face, combed my hair. My puss was puffy like cheap cheesecake.” (128/9). A good simile, although the last time anyone used the term “puss” to mean face was around 1945.

Authors often anticipate critical reactions to their work, and include them as a way of fending them off. Murakami does just this towards the end of this novel, when he has a character say “The Wizard of Oz had to be more plausible” (341) If plausibility is what you want this is probably the wrong place to start.

 

The Path to the Spiders’ nest – Italo Calvino

Another Eton mess. Sorry, cheap joke. This short novel by Calvino, his first, was written in 1946, almost immediately after the end of the Italian partisan war. It follows a young (adolescent?) boy, Pin, who gets involved almost by accident in the partisan campaign. Pin is wise beyond his years in some respects, an orphan (we presume, although this is not confirmed) brought up by his prostitute sister, but innocent and naïve in other ways, always searching for companionship and love. This edition of the novel includes an introduction, written later in the 1960’s, in which Calvino apologises for the story’s failings, including its “neo-realism”, and its sentimental ending.

Most of the action of the novel is shown through Pin’s eyes. He has a limited understanding of what he sees, and it is the gap between his relative innocence and the world going on with its business around him, that offers some the amusement of the novel. Don't get me wrong - this is not a novel of compic misunderstandings. While Pin is an innocent abroad, trying to survive among short-fused partisans living in the hills above the unnamed city, he is also very “street-wise”. At the same time he is also short-sighted – he steals a German soldier’s gun without giving any consideration to the likely consequences, for himself or his sister.

Although Pin carries most of the narrative focus of the novel, there is one chapter where the point of view switches to one of the partisan fighters - this chapter, and the switch in particular, jars and disrupts the overall flow of the narrative, simply to give a brief lecture on the politics of resistance. The novel also includes some heavy handed symbolism. A pet hawk has its neck wrung, which I wrongly thought might foretell Pin’s eventual demise. The hawk is a more flexible metaphor for innocence and liberty, killed in the bloody war it gets caught up in (you can see why I thought this might have meant Pin, who also carries a lot of symbolic weight on his young shoulders.) 

The introduction to the novel is in some ways more interesting than the novel itself. Calvino directly addresses the reader, and is very frank about the novel’s genesis and its weaknesses. He avoids the obvious explanation/excuse – he was a young writer just setting out to learnt his craft – and gives a series of false starts, interrupting himself and restarting each time with “This was my first novel...” Through this iterative process he comes to an acceptance that this novel is a very minor part of Italy’s literature of the war. He points out some interesting parallels – for example with Treasure Island. Treasure Island is a very simple children’s novel, with memorable but two-dimensional characters (with, arguably, the exception of the charismatic but evil Long John Silver) and has a young boy as its narrator, caught up in an adventure out of his control. So is this novel also a children’s story? And does that explain why it appears on the Eton list? Probably. Roald Dahl’s autobiographical “Boy” is often taught in state schools for the same reason – tell a child a tale about another child having adventures, and it will capture their attention in a way that other stories by the same author may not. This is one of the secrets behind the success of Harry Potter of course. It confirms my suspicion that the Eton list is not an aspirational piece of showing off, but more in the way of a light, unadventurous summer reading list that a bright 16 year old could probably run through in a couple of months.

And as for this novel? Well it won’t occupy you for long, and its weaknesses are capably pointed out by the author himself (although I would recommend you read the preface after the novel). It is an interesting tale of the partisan war in Italy, but other than that it is little more than a curiosity.

The Shadow of the Wind (2) – a note about some translation issues.

Occasionally when reading this novel I came across a few phrases that jarred, and sounded unnatural. I appreciate that translating is a very difficult process, capturing not just the sense of the original but the poetry, the complexity, and the idiomatic phrasing. I also recognise that any awkwardness of phrasing could be deliberate, to emphasis an aspect of a character’s nature for example. Having said all that, there were a few usages that felt just wrong.

Some examples:

“he had augured that in her lifetime she would behold the death of everything she loved.” (268)

To use “augur” as an active verb meaning to forecast, rather than to simply signify a future event, may not technically be incorrect, but it feels archaic.

“Look here, Merceditas, because I know you’re a good person (though a bit narrow minded and as ignorant as a brick)” (Fermin) page 159,

Translating idiom is fantastically difficult, I appreciate, but “ignorant as a brick” is not an expression I recognise, and the internet hasn’t been able to provide me with any examples. OK, this is Fermin speaking, and his language is colourful, but not deliberately awkward surely?

“The downpour slithered like melted wax” (314).

Slithered is another very active verb – snakes and worms slither. It implies sideways movement, at pace - but melted wax may move sideways, but always slowly.

“What blessed innocence, Daniel, You’d even believe in the tooth fairy. All right, just to give you an example: the tall tale about Miguel Moliner that Nuria Monfort landed on you. I think the wench told you more whoppers than the editorial page of L’Osseratore Romano.” (231)

Just how wooden is this? “Landed on you”? You don’t land a tall tale on someone. And “more whoppers than the editorial page of L’Osseratore Romana” is never going to catch on!

“if he could lie better, he wouldn’t be teaching algebra and Latin; he’d be in the bishopric by now, growing fat in an office like a cardinal’s and plunging soft sponge cakes in his coffee.” (Fermin) (231).

I’ve two issues with this sentence. Firstly, wouldn’t “growing fat in a cardinal’s office” be better? I appreciate “in a cardinal’s office” is different to “an office like a cardinal’s”, but the distinction is slight, and the sentence as written is ugly and confusing – on a first read I thought there was a missing word after “cardinal’s” (hat?). The other issue is with the verb choice. Plunging is not something one does with soft sponge cakes. It is a violent, vigourous movement; surely the right choice would be “dunking”. Now obviously I haven’t read the original Spanish, and there could possibly be a reason why the author wanted us to imagine this priest aggressively shoving his soft sponge cakes into his coffee, but I doubt it.

What does all this add up to? Is this just a massive exercise in pedantry? If these were the only examples, perhaps, but there was a woodenness through the novel that was hard to escape. I sometimes rather fancifully pictured the characters talking as if in a badly dubbed movie. It made the disappointing experience of reading the novel just that little bit worse.