Axl Oswaldo's Reviews > Vera

2.5 stars

This one is a little difficult for me to review, since this story has been hard to get through. No, not because its narrative is tricky or confused, but because its content is quite real, sad and unfair. Let me explain this further.

According to Wikipedia, Vera is partially based on Elizabeth von Arnim's second marriage to Frank Russell, a relative of the philosopher Bertrand Russell. Apparently, this disastrous marriage was the reason for the author to write a novel such as Vera, whose story shows us the behavior of a dangerous and narcissistic husband, and an inexperienced, young wife. Besides, some people say this novel anticipates Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca (just for the record, this review was written in Spanish) - I slightly agree with that statement, since they have only a few things in common: a dead first wife, a house, and a lunatic husband plus a naïve wife.

There are some aspects which could have made Vera an absolutely great story: its narrative is easy to read, in fact, there is a point in the middle of the book at which it's impossible to stop reading – it becomes basically like a page-turner; there are no many characters, which is good because you can be focused just on the main argument with these characters, instead of being distracted by subplots. In addition, Vera is considered a psychological novel, which means the thoughts and feelings of the two main characters, Lucy and Wemyss, are the essence of the story, its strong characteristic.

It's fair to say that I didn't enjoy this novel as I was supposed to; actually, I should say I felt many emotions throughout my reading such as hate, disgust, anger, sometimes sadness, and even fear, each of which was obviously directed towards the antagonist, Wemyss. You could say, perhaps that was the purpose of the author, to make an analysis of the life of a woman, whose life falls into the power of a foolish, eccentric and crazy husband. Maybe, the author just wanted to reflect her own experience, what she had lived in these pages, and that's all. Well, she made it, but she also forgot she was writing a novel, and not an analysis of the life in a problematic marriage. Unfortunately, here is where my problem with this book began.

The story itself is good, but its characters are basically the same at the beginning, in the middle and at the end of the book. There are no nuances, or a very well developed personality. For instance, Wemyss' behavior is so predictable, since you know how he behaved the first time when he met Lucy; maybe Lucy didn’t know anything, but you as a reader always know what's going to happen next. Lucy's behavior is the same situation here, basically there are no changes – I might say that my reading had finished and I didn’t know who Lucy is, I still don’t know her and, furthermore, it’s difficult to empathize with the character; they never gave me further information about her or the other guy, it was something like "I'm Wemyss and I'm super evil", and "I'm Lucy and I'm so innocent". That bothered me a little bit.

On the other hand, the first chapters of the novel were boring and slow, the middle was very good, but the ending: I think THIS is definitely one of the most disappointing endings I've read this year so far; I can't talk about the ending in the way I'd like to do it because of spoilers, but when I finished, my first thought was "my edition isn’t unabridged" or "a mouse could have eaten the last pages of this" (if I had read this one in a physical edition, of course). From my point of view, the ending was unfinished, it felt like if you were awaiting the second part, but unfortunately there's no second part, there's nothing more except an underwhelming ending.

I made a mistake though, and I need to tell you this, not only because I don't want you to make the same mistake, but also because I'm looking for a way to justify my disappointment in this novel (maybe not, but you get my point).
My blunder was not that terrible: while I was reading this book, I couldn’t help but compare it to Rebecca, the most important book by Daphne du Maurier.
The fact that I loved reading Rebecca quite a bit, and I wasn’t enjoying Vera in the first place, well, it’s clear that the experience was not very successful. Thus, the most similitudes I tried to find between them, the most disappointed I was; therefore my advice is simple: please DON’T contrast the former with the latter – it’s not the same story, they don’t have almost anything in common, and both Rebecca and Vera have different and good elements, each of which can make each story captivating, even though it’s crystal-clear that I loved one book much more than the other one (needless to say the titles).

In conclusion, I recommend reading Vera as though it was a portrait or a study of a disastrous marriage, and not as if it was a complete novel itself. Don't get me wrong, I’m not saying Vera is a bad book at all, but it’s not likely that great novel I’d expected to find. However, it's important to point out that the real message in Vera is so powerful, you as a witness are able to feel many parts of the story – hopefully no one of you is living a similar marriage or relationship to Lucy's case; otherwise, I hope you can find an answer, solace, or even a friend in such a book.
Lastly, I don’t want to rule out the possibility of reading other novels by Arnim in the distant future; perhaps this time it could be a better reading experience – we’ll see.

“Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay...”