You can’t understand Ivy Compton-Burnett without understanding her love for her partner, Margaret Jourdain.
“Anyone who picks up a Compton-Burnett finds it very hard not to put it down.”
Ivy Compton-Burnett to Elizabeth Sprigge
Compton-Burnett, capable of making any reader’s brain ache in 100 words or less, died on this day in 1969. Legendarily dour, and one of my favorite writers, she was as uncompromising in her work as in her personal life. She knew her characters so well—their quandaries, quarrels, and especially their conversations—that she saw no point in slowing down to explain them to the rest of us.
She once told Jourdain, “I do not see why exposition and description are a necessary part of a novel.” This explains why, in some strange way, you don’t read Compton-Burnett’s novels so much as they happen to you. It’s a bit like being thrown into a bottomless lake and left to fend for yourself in the dark. Foreign, potentially sinister objects might brush against your skin, while, overhead, emotionally crippled people say devastating things to each other. (Some of you might call that ‘the holidays.’)
Cranky Lesbian is a disgruntled homosexual with too much time on her hands. Click for film reviews or to follow on Instagram.