My bit of Paradise: Precious Bane
When I was 16, PBS blew my mind. I was sitting up watching Masterpiece Theater on the local affiliate station, and right in the middle of this period drama they showed a man’s naked ass. PBS was, and apparently had always been, astonishingly cool. Later, my PBS affiliate aired a highly controversial documentary about gay men called Tongues Untied despite great hue and cry (and to this day, my brain insists that it was actually entitled “Tongues United”, which kind of makes its own sense), but until that point, PBS was mainly a parade of dull, wearying shills pimping fundraising coffee mugs, dreary Saturday afternoons of Dr. Who (Who fen, I know you luff heem, but I have always found the theme music unsettling, and also they killed Adric and it freaked me out and I apparently cannot forgive) and period drama that kept its baggy costumed pants on. Oh, and guess what? The ass? It belonged to Clive Motherfuckin’ Owen. I know, right?
Anyway, all that to say that I saw the film adaptation of Precious Bane before I even knew it was a book. The BBC movie was apparently never officially released on video *koff, koff*, and so I can only tell you that I loved it utterly and that Prue Sarn seemed completely real to me, and her brother Gideon (Clive Motherfuckin’ Owen) was fierce and driven and hot. Also, although I didn’t think Kester was much to look at, I adored him anyway, as he deserved, and while the Prue and Gideon from the book look nothing like their BBC counterparts in my mind’s eye (both are more like the moody and evocative charcoal illustrations by Rowland Hilder – in Hilder’s work, Prue’s face is always in shadow or turned away, her body rawboned and rangy, that of a woman who spends her days plowing fields) Kester was very much informed by my impression of him from the film.
What impressed me first about the book was Prue herself. She is a woman of little education but great scope – she learns to read and write in her late teens, and spends her days in arduous labor, finding respite and reflection in the attic, writing in a journal. Prue is not your typical “plain” heroine – she is no perky thing longing to be head cheerleader, worried about a flat chest or boring hair. She is in fact actively disfigured – Prue Sarn has a harelip, and is sore afflicted. Despite that, it is apparent from the first page that a) Prue has lived to be a comfortable old woman and b) she lives with Kester, who we hear of in the first line of the book: “It was at a love-spinning that I saw Kester first.” So, whew, we get that whole “will true love prevail?” thing right out of the way. Of course, how that love comes to pass is the heart of the story, which runs parallel to that of her brother Gideon and his rise and fall due to overreaching ambition, and what follows is absolutely ensnaring narrative, the story of a woman recounting her turbulent youth using the journal she kept as her touchstone, and told in dialect: some of the most immersive and captivating first person I’ve ever come across.
Prue is a surprisingly cheerful woman, given her situation. She works her family farm and endures the stares, the pity and the whispers of small town life in an age where a harelip was a sign of dark dealings with denizens of the underworld. Although she has never been to school, she has a sharp mind, a sense of humor and an all-encompassing love of natural beauty. Mary Webb was a masterful storyteller, but she absolutely shines in the descriptions of the countryside. The fields and lakes around the farm keep Prue sane; every time she thinks she’ll break her heart with envy or rage, she goes to nature for solace. Mary Webb is brilliant at plotting, foreshadowing, at dialogue, and most of all depicting the world Prue lives in:
“That was the best time of year for our lake, when in the still hot noons the water looked so kind, being of a calm pale blue, that you would never think it could drown anybody. All round stood the tall trees, thick-leaved with rich summer green, unstirring, caught in a spell, sending down their coloured shadows into the mere, so that the tree-tops almost met in the middle. From either hand the notes of the small birds that had not yet given up singing, went ringing out across the water, and so quiet it was that though they were only such thin songs as those of willow wrens and robins, you could hear them all across the mere. Even on such a burning day as this, when I pulled the honeysuckle wrathes, there was a sweet, cool air from the water, very heady and full of life.”
Webb certainly doesn’t neglect the senses, and it is her sense of sound that I find especially intriguing:
“There was a frittening about the place, too, and what with folk being afraid to come there after dusk, and the quiet noise of the fish jumping far out in the water, and Gideon’s boat knocking on the steps with little knocks like someone tapping at the door, and the causeway that ran down into the mere as far as you could see, from just outside the garden gate, being lost in the water, it was a very lonesome old place. Many a time, on Sunday evenings, there came over the water a thin sound of bells. We thought they were the bells of the village down under, but I believe now that they were nought but echo bells from our own church. They say that in some places a sound will knock against a wall of trees and come back like a ball.”
Webb’s diction is simple, but vivid and alive, like Prue herself.
That said, Kester is such a sweetheart that you may find him almost too good to be true, but as it happens, I know such a man in real life!, and so you can put away your paintball guns of incredulity and accept Kester for the handsome wrestling, weaving, animal rights activist that he is. At the very least, it’s easy to believe that he has the excellent judgment necessary for recognizing that Prue is a woman of parts. Kester’s good opinion of Prue is held, too, by her brother Gideon. Indeed, as the book deepens and Gideon’s savage pride is broken by harrowing loss, his reliance on Prue’s strength and his regard for her become his most redeeming features.
If you want a depiction of a woman who is genuinely heroic, and yet absolutely credible as a human being, and a book so enthralling you’ll feel like you’re breathing the pure, sweet air of a pre-industrial age, then Precious Bane is the book you’ve been looking for. If at all possible, try to score a copy with the Hilder illustrations; they really bring something.
You have a limited amount of time, so why spend it reading about things that suck or are only kind of okay? Favorite thing EVER is not a review site. We're unrepentant fans, and this is the stuff we love. Hope you like gushing, because we're about to embarrass ourselves.
Sold. So very very sold.
It really is a beutiful book, and I think I’m lucky that I read the book after seeing the movie; they’re so different, I didn’t have to feel like my book was “ruined” by someone else’s vision, you know? Although I remember really digging the movie – although I’ve read the book once a year or so since highscool, so.
I have an overwhelming feeling that I will be watching this soon (in ten-minute youtube increments!)
Oh, you’ll love it. We’ll make it a drinking game: drink when someone says someone’s cursed! Drink if someone is accused of wichcraft! Drink if someone writes a letter! Drink if someone is someone else’s dear! Drink if someone disparges bullbaiting! Seriously, it’ll be a good time.