Fiction Reviews
The Open Heart
(2025) Catherine Wells, Flame Tree Press,
£16.99 / Can$34.99 / US$26.99, hrdbk, 415pp. ISBN 978-1-835-62255-1
Catherine Wells, née Amy Catherine Robbins, but known to many during her lifetime as ‘Jane’, was not only the wife as well as business manager of, and personal secretary to, the famous H. G. Wells, but also an author in her own right. In addition to the short stories and poems that were posthumously published by her husband, together with his poignant essay on her life and relatively early death, this volume includes her unfinished novella, ‘The Open Heart’.
As the editors note, in their own helpful introduction, this begins with an ‘elaborate framing narrative’ (p. 19) in which a certain J. G. Williams (not his real name) explains that the manuscript, by an unknown female author, was left to him by one Edgar Crawshay, who had committed suicide. The reason for adopting such a literary device is never made clear and the story itself appears, at least initially, to fall under the heading of ‘shipwreck fantasy’: the narrator finds herself washed up on a deserted but ‘enchanted’ island where she discovers a beautiful palace which in turn provides the setting for her extended and somewhat elaborate contemplations on the nature of love and beauty. These are interrupted at one point by reminiscences of her love of science as a young girl, undoubtedly reflecting Catherine’s early studies in biology, which is where she met her future husband. However, as progressive and feminist as the sentiments presented are, it is hard to disagree with H. G.’s own conclusion that there is little here that is not expressed more succinctly within the short stories.
A number of these, indeed, express the desire for fulfilment that again may well mirror Catherine’s own feelings, married as she was to someone who was not only hugely successful and often away from home but who also had affairs, and children, with other women. One of the more memorable, titled ‘A Beautiful House’, is really a queer tale, in the modern sense, in which the love felt by one woman for another is rudely disrupted by masculine intrusion and which ends with the fiery destruction of the house she adores. Here a genre-related element is incorporated through a dream sequence in which shadowy elvish figures tear down the house brick by brick.
The opening story, ‘The Last Fairy’, is more explicitly fantasy, and tells of an elderly fae who decides to go out into the world one last time, causing unintended mayhem. Catherine apparently loved dressing up and putting on shows for friends and family and the editors suggest that this story, co-written with her younger son, would have been perfect for one of their pantomimes.
Much darker by contrast is ‘The Ghost’ in which a sick child experiences a genuinely creepy visitation. Similarly disturbing is ‘The Draught of Oblivion’ in which an obnoxious princess seeks to eliminate a love rival but makes a dreadful miscalculation. In ‘Cyanide’, on the other hand, it’s not clear how calculating the lady of the house has been but in what could easily be the set up for one of today’s ’cosy crime’ dramas, the outcome is equally tragic.
A less than sympathetic portrayal of the British upper-classes is also evident in the concluding short story, ‘Night in the Garden’, in which the ‘mousey’ governess and disabled librarian of a country house find love and happiness, only for it all, again, to end in calamity. By this point, however, I found the passivity of the characters frustrating and despite the rich descriptiveness shared with the others, both the tone and overall conclusion of this piece hardly seem in accord with Wells’ progressive tendencies.
That richness makes this another collection to be dipped into rather than read cover-to-cover. And for all that it is tempting to project into these stories dimensions of Catherine’s own complex relationship with her husband, they should perhaps simply be enjoyed as beautiful, scary and, sometimes, odd little tales in their own right.
Steven French
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