Originally published on my blog here in November 2004.There have been many novels written about the way in which the settled life of a British village can be transformed by the introduction of new ideas by cosmopolitan visitors. It might be thought that the advent of modern communications and media, particularly the TV soap opera, would have made this an obsolete concept, one that would be restricted to literature with a historical setting, but Mr Golightly's Holiday demonstrates that a successful contemporary novel can still use the theme.The village in question is a fictional place on the edge of Dartmoor, and the cosmopolitan visitor is the title character (though he is in some ways less sophisticated than the villagers). He is a middle-aged businessman who books a holiday cottage for several months to take some time away from the company he runs and to think about bringing a successful novel he wrote some years ago up to date, maybe by turning it into the basis for a soap opera. This is where his own lack of sophistication comes in; he needs educating about how a soap opera works by a teenager he befriends. However, he certainly challenges the villagers' assumptions about how they run their lives, which is the point of the scenario.The reviews quoted on the back of Mr Golightly's Holiday generally seem keen to compare it to Cold Comfort Farm. To my mind, there are two many differences between the two novels to make this a useful comparison for a prospective reader (though, from a marketing point of view, it is easy to see why the publishers would quote comparisons to one of the best loved English novels of the twentieth century). The village here is not as strange and over the top as the farm at Cold Comfort, for one thing, and Mr Golightly is nothing like as forthright in his attempts at reform as Flora Poste. These two factors combine to produce a much gentler novel, rather than the madcap satire of Gibbons. I would say that a closer relation is Mervyn Peake's Mr Pye, even if that is a far less well known novel.This brings me to a major point of similarity between Mr Golightly's Holiday and Mr Pye, the part that religious ideas play in both novels. (This is another important difference between them and Cold Comfort Farm, where the only important religious theme is the description of the Quivering Brethren, ridiculing the more extreme non-conformist sects.) That there will be Christian ideas appearing in the novel is clear early on, when a woman walking her dog on Dartmoor suddenly hears a voice from a burning gorse bush - an incident that rams home just how bizarre Moses' similar experience recorded in Exodus must have seemed when he recounted it to his acquaintances. This particular event is to my mind the most interesting of the ideas in the novel, and even though it could form the basis of an entire plot in itself, it is not made as much of as some of the other Biblical ideas.There are two Bible-derived ideas which form an important part of the novel. One of these is kept as a well-prepared surprise to the end; it is, unfortunately rather hackneyed and limp (sufficiently so that it forms the setup to several well known jokes). The other is constant reference to the story of Job - Mr Golightly receives a series of anonymous emails quoting one of the most famous pieces of poetry in the Old Testament, from the end of the book when Job confronts God to try to find out why he has been through so much suffering. This, too, is potentially interesting (since after all Job is one of the hardest hitting books in the Bible), but it is also not handled very well. The Biblical Job is an attack on facile reasoning about suffering in which an innocent man looses his family, his property and his health in what seems to be a very nasty and malicious prank on the part of God. Like the burning bush, this is a missed opportunity in a novel which could never be described as hard-hitting. (Robert Heinlein's science fiction retelling of the Biblical story, a novel itself named Job, is far more provocative.)Though there are missed opportunities, and though Vickers has a distinct tendency to play safe when she has a choice to make, there is still much to enjoy about Mr Golightly's Holiday. It is well enough written, particularly in terms of characterisation, but if it had been more daring it could have been one of the best novels of 2003. Interesting, but could have been better.
Rating: 3.5* of fiveI fell in love with Salley Vickers when I read "Miss Garnet's Angel" ten or so years ago. It's set in Venice, a city I simply adore. It's a beautifully imagined moment in a solitary person's life, one where limitless possibilities open up inside her.Then came "Instances of the Number 3", a very very odd book that captivated me despite my discomfort with the subject of a widow's growing fascination with her husband's transsexual mistress. These are books of courage and beauty.Now this. I wasn't at all sure why, but I was drawn to Mr. Golightly as an exemplar of the kind of quiet, reserved, polite man of late middle age that I am. (Stop laughing.) Normally I give fiction about such men a wide berth because their lives are presented as so arid and meaningless...yet this is Salley Vickers, after all, and one can trust her to find an angle not instantly obvious, can't one?Uhhh...I guess so...after all, Golightly's loss of his son is presented as the central event in his life, one that caused his entire world to rearrange and reorient itself. I know from losing my own son that this is the way many, if not most, of us respond to loss and grief for our dead children. But the writer in me was itchy. What was Vickers playing at? Where was the element of unexpectedness that her previous books delivered?I'm glad I was patient. She delivered. It wasn't exactly what I was expecting, but it wasn't anything other than solidly conceived and executed fiction plotting. So much tidier than life.I quibble with some of the authorial choices made, I sigh frustratedly over some infelicities of editing ("hoard" when "horde" is meant, oof), and I don't at all know what I really think about her central premise as tied together at the end...I think Golightly gets off rather too easily, but then again I'm a mean old cuss...but it's Salley Vickers, so you can take it from me that it's very much worth a read and will reward you for spending your time with its gentle, flawed, angry, hurt, practical, loving characters. It's like making a village-ful of friends in a few hours, and getting to leave before they get tedious.Say...I think I just explained British cozy fiction!
What do You think about Mr Golightly's Holiday (2005)?
When I read the reviews, and the authors of those reviews, on tne inside pages of this book, I thought I was in for an unmissable treat. But I must have missed the point somewhere along the line. I found the characterisation of an English village and its life, and the characters themselves interesting but something of a caricature. The religious theme, which emerged as the novel progressed, remained a puzzling one for me, despite having been raised solidly CofE (lapsed now). I didn't exactly plough through it, but I wasn't sorry when I got to the - somewhat curious - end.
—Margaret
Book Review by Carinya Mr Golightly's Holiday by Salley VickersWhat a surprise this book is. I read it, enjoying every page of descriptive, sometimes poetic prose tinged with typically English irony. Then I read certain chapters again to gauge the extent to which I was willing to unpeal the layers of parable so cleverly interwoven in the village gossip and local adventure.I loved this author's way with words, her summation of the more serious subjects confronting ordinary people and her adept endings. The village setting into which Mr Golightly so easily integrates has the usual share of characters, the unkept truant boy, the female vicar whose husband would try the patience of a saint (which she isn't) and the lonely woman next door (Ellen) who constantly proves how much courage and strength she possesses.This is a wonderful read for anyone who loves words, emotions, stories retold, sadness, romance, humour and a dash of spirituality.
—Carinya Kappler
At the end of 6 chapters esteemed author Sally Vickers is still setting the scene. While the setting and subject matter are only mildly interesting so far, the author seems to be compensating a bit with an overactive vocabulary. In most cases I don't mind a little ostentatious display, however here I am just finding myself waiting for the story to back up such 'verbage'. Bring it on.....I'll keep reading.......Well, here I am just shy of the center of the book, and while the story has finally picked up a bit I just don't want to finish. Too little, too late my friend.
—Belinda
