 First edition | |
| Author | Paul Scott |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press |
Publication date | 1977 |
| Pages | 258 pp (paperback) |
| ISBN | 9780226743493 |
| Preceded by | A Division of the Spoils (1974) |
Staying On is a novel by Paul Scott which was published by University of Chicago Press in 1977. It was the recipient of the 1977 Booker prize. [1]
Paul Scott started writing his novel which was concluded and published in 1977. The book was the winner of the 1977 Booker prize, although the writer was suffering from cancer; and may be limited to six months living. Paul was unable to attend the prize ceremony.
According to the British Newspaper The Guardian , "Scott probably didn't know he was dying when he wrote "Staying On", and it does little good to speculate on whether intimations of mortality influenced him." [2]
Staying On focuses on Tusker and Lucy Smalley, who were briefly mentioned in the latter two books of the Raj Quartet , The Towers of Silence and A Division of the Spoils . They were the last British couple who lived in the small hill town of Pankot (after the Indian independence).
Tusker was a colonel, a high rank in the British Indian Army. On his retirement, he had entered "the world of commerce" as a 'box wallah', and the couple had moved elsewhere in India. However, they had returned to Pankot to take up residence in the Lodge, an annexe to Smith's Hotel. This, formerly the town's principal hotel, was now symbolically overshadowed by the brash new Shiraz Hotel, erected by a consortium of Indian businessmen from the nearby city of Ranpur.
Life was treated as expat in Pankot, principally by listening to Lucy's ponderings, for it is she who is the loquacious one, in contrast to Tusker's pathological reticence. He talks in clipped verbless telegraphese, often limiting his utterances to a single "Ha!". He has been purposeless since being obliged to retire, and it is left to Lucy to make sense of the world herself. It is a sad story of frustration that she recounts to herself. She remembers how the young Captain Smalley came back to London on leave in 1930, visited his bank, where she, a vicar's daughter, worked, and tentatively asked her out. She was swept off her feet by the thought of marrying an army officer and dreamt of a glamorous wedding with his fellow officers making an arch with their swords, but life turned out very differently. His job was dull administration, and his early attentiveness in bed rapidly waned. He prohibited her from fulfilling herself by taking part in amateur dramatics. Not only this, but she ranked fairly low in the social pecking order among the white women in Pankot and suffered numerous indignities. A symbol of this retrospection is that their preferred conveyance is the Tonga, a horse-drawn carriage in which they choose to sit facing backward, "looking back at what we're leaving behind".
It falls to Lucy to navigate a path between her husband's obstinacy and obtuseness and the increasingly pressing demands of India's slow transition to modernity. The question of who pays the gardener, for example, requires the skilful management of human relationships. She also tries to maintain some continuity in her life, through correspondence with her old acquaintances (characters in the Raj Quartet), such as Sarah Layton (now Sarah Perron), who have moved back to England. It is through a letter from Sarah Perron that romantic fans of the Raj Quartet learn that she did indeed meet Guy again, and they are living happily ever after with their two children, Lance and Jane.
It is clear she blames Tusker for insisting on 'staying on'—at one point they could have retired comfortably to England, but he has been reckless ("nothing goes quicker than hundred rupee notes"), and now she has no idea if they could afford it. She entreats him to tell her how she would stand financially if he were to die. At long last, he writes her a letter, setting out their finances and also remarking that she had been "a good woman" to him. But he also tells her not to ask him about it, as he is incapable of discussing it face to face: "If you do I'll only say something that will hurt you". Nevertheless, she treasures this, the only love letter she has ever received.
Meanwhile, we see the new India that is replacing the British Raj, symbolised by Mrs Lila Bhoolabhoy, the temperamental and overweight owner of Smith's Hotel, and her much put upon husband and hotel manager, who is Tusker's drinking companion. The richly humorous context includes the engagement of servants, the railway service, poached eggs, hairdressing and the church organ. There is an intimate relationship between the Smalleys' servant Ibrahim and Mrs Bhoolabhoy's maid Minnie.
Mrs Bhoolabhoy's greed induces her to trade her ownership of the now shabby Smith's hotel for a share in the competing consortium. She instructs Mr Bhoolabhoy to issue the Smalleys with a notice to quit the Lodge.
On receipt of this letter, Tusker flies into an impotent rage and drops dead of a heart attack. Lucy is downcast and puts on a brave face as she prepares for the funeral and a solitary life. But, at last, she would potentially be free to return to England, perhaps able to scrape by on her £1,500 a year. She is a survivor, because she can adapt, as is shown by the fact that, on the day of Tusker's death, she was about to break a previously upheld taboo and welcome her hairdresser, Susy, who is of mixed race, to dinner. In her imagination, she asks Tusker one last thing – to take her with him, for if she had been a good woman, as he wrote, why has he gone home without her?
Staying On was internationally accepted and was received with positive reviews, having won the Booker Prize in 1977. It is often regarded as a delightful conclusion to Scott's Raj Quartet series, offering a unique and engrossing portrait of the end of an empire and a forty-year love affair. [3]
The novel is set in the small hill town of Pankot, India, and follows Tusker and Lucy Smalley, a British couple who chose to remain in India after independence. Their story is one of adjustment to a new life post-Empire, and has been praised as "a confront to the realities of a changing society and their own relationship." Critics have praised the book for its deep character study and its exploration of themes such as loyalty, love, and the legacy of colonialism.
In 1980, the book was turned into a television film of same title produced by Granada TV and starrs Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson. [4] The book was the main influence of the television series The Jewel in the Crown (TV series) and a book of same name . It was based on Paul Scott's Raj Quartet.
Sense and Sensibility is the first novel by the English author Jane Austen, published in 1811. It was published anonymously; By A Lady appears on the title page where the author's name might have been. It tells the story of the Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Marianne as they come of age. They have an older half-brother, John, and a younger sister, Margaret.
A Passage to India is a 1924 novel by English author E. M. Forster set against the backdrop of the British Raj and the Indian independence movement in the 1920s. It was selected as one of the 100 great works of 20th century English literature by the Modern Library and won the 1924 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. Time magazine included the novel in its "All Time 100 Novels" list. The novel is based on Forster's experiences in India, deriving the title from Walt Whitman's 1870 poem "Passage to India" in Leaves of Grass.
Annie Besant was a British socialist, theosophist, freemason, women's rights and Home Rule activist, educationist, and campaigner for Indian nationalism. She was an ardent supporter of both Irish and Indian self-rule. She became the first female president of the Indian National Congress in 1917.
The Jewel in the Crown is a 1984 British television serial about the final days of the British Raj in India during and after World War II, based on British author Paul Scott's Raj Quartet novels. Granada Television produced the series for the ITV network.
Paul Mark Scott was an English novelist best known for his tetralogy The Raj Quartet. In the last years of his life, his novel Staying On won the Booker Prize (1977). The series of books was dramatised by Granada Television during the 1980s and won Scott the public and critical acclaim that he had not received during his lifetime.
Hotel du Lac is a 1984 novel by English writer Anita Brookner. It centres on Edith Hope, a romance novelist who is staying in a hotel on the shores of Lake Geneva. There she meets other English visitors, including Mrs Pusey, Mrs Pusey's daughter Jennifer, and an attractive middle-aged man, Mr Neville.
Guy Mannering; or, The Astrologer is the second of the Waverley novels by Walter Scott, published anonymously in 1815. According to an introduction that Scott wrote in 1829, he had originally intended to write a story of the supernatural, but changed his mind soon after starting. The book was a huge success, the first edition selling out on the first day of publication.
The Raj Quartet is a four-volume novel sequence, written by Paul Scott, about the concluding years of the British Raj in India. The series was written during the period 1965–75. The Times called it "one of the most important landmarks of post-war fiction."
Murder, She said is a 1961 comedy/murder mystery film directed by George Pollock, based on the 1957 novel 4.50 from Paddington by Agatha Christie. The production stars Margaret Rutherford as Miss Marple, along with Arthur Kennedy, Muriel Pavlow, James Robertson Justice, and Stringer Davis.
The Day of the Scorpion is a 1968 novel by Paul Scott, the second in his Raj Quartet. It is set in India during World War II as the influence of the British erodes. The novel focuses on old Raj family, the Laytons, the aftermath of the Mayapore incident focused on in The Jewel in the Crown, the Indian politician Mohammed Ali Kasim, and events in the princely state of Mirat.
The Hotel New Hampshire is a 1984 comedy-drama film written and directed by Tony Richardson based on John Irving's 1981 novel of the same name. A co-production from the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States, it stars Jodie Foster, Beau Bridges, Rob Lowe, Nastassja Kinski, also featuring Wilford Brimley, Amanda Plummer, Matthew Modine, and Seth Green in his film debut. The film follows the Berry family that weathers all sorts of disasters and keeps going in spite of it all.
The Jewel in the Crown is a 1966 novel by Paul Scott that begins his Raj Quartet. The four-volume novel sequence of the Quartet is set during the final days of the British Raj in India during the Second World War. The novel is written in the form of interviews and reports of conversations or research and other portions are in the form of letters or diary entries. The novel focuses on the triangle of an English woman, an Indian man, and a British police superintendent, setting up the events of subsequent novels in the series. It is considered Scott's "major work." The title itself, which is also an expression for something most valuable, refers to the fact that India was considered to be the most valuable possession of the British Empire. The plot has direct similarities to the novel A Passage to India by E.M. Forster published in 1924.
The Towers of Silence is the 1971 novel by Paul Scott that continues his Raj Quartet. It gets its title from the Parsi Towers of Silence where the bodies of the dead are left to be picked clean by vultures. The novel is set in the British Raj of 1940s India. It follows on from the storyline in The Day of the Scorpion.
A Division of the Spoils is the 1975 novel by Paul Scott. It is the fourth and final book of his Raj Quartet. The novel is set in the British Raj. It follows on from the storyline in The Jewel in the Crown, The Day of the Scorpion, and The Towers of Silence. Many of the events are retellings from different points of view of events that happened in the previous novels.
Irene Shubik was a British television producer and story editor, known for her contribution to the development of the single play in British television drama. Beginning her career in television at ABC Weekend TV, she worked on Armchair Theatre as a story editor, where she devised the science fiction anthology series Out of this World.
Lucy Barker is a fictional character that appears in some versions of the story Sweeney Todd. Lucy is the wife of barber Benjamin Barker, who is unjustly imprisoned by Judge Turpin, who wants Lucy for himself. After Turpin sexually abuses her, Lucy attempts suicide with poison, but survives and goes insane. Years later, Benjamin Barker, now calling himself "Sweeney Todd", returns to London and his neighbor, Mrs. Lovett tells Todd about Lucy poisoning herself, but leaves out that Lucy lived. He later finds Lucy as a beggar woman; not recognizing her, he slits her throat, before killing Mrs. Lovett.
Mirra Alfassa, known to her followers as The Mother or La Mère, was a French-Indian spiritual guru, occultist and yoga teacher, and a collaborator of Sri Aurobindo, who considered her to be of equal yogic stature to him and called her by the name "The Mother". She founded the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and established the town of Auroville; she was influential on the subject of Integral Yoga.
The Sheltering Sky is a 1990 drama film directed by Bernardo Bertolucci starring Debra Winger and John Malkovich. The film is based on the 1949 novel of the same name by Paul Bowles about a couple who journey to North Africa in the hopes of rekindling their marriage but soon fall prey to the dangers that surround them. The story culminates with the man falling severely ill in a very remote area of the Sahara desert, from where the events turn catastrophic.
Cocktail Hour is a 1933 American pre-Code romantic drama film produced and distributed by Columbia Pictures and starring Bebe Daniels. This film was directed by Victor Schertzinger.
