Paul Torday (1946–2013)

'The Legacy Of Hartlepool Hall' gave me more to think about than I'd expected. It rose above simple satire, declined to take sides in the class war and delivered instead a very human picture of what a legacy from previous generations can do to those born into wealth that is steadily declining. It is hard for me to summon empathy for the struggles of a middle-aged man born into wealth, who has never done anything with his life, not even gained an understanding of the sources and limits of his wealth.

Ed Hartlepool is too bland a man to be dislikable and too lazy a man to garner much sympathy but Paul Torday succeeds in making him a man who is free of malice and greed and who may, eventually, build a life for himself over which he exerts some agency.

I enjoyed the quiet humour of the book exposes absurdities without poking fun at everyone I admired the way it calmly lays out the lives of the rich and those who feed on them, like a butterfly pinned to a board.

The book has some darker moments. One of the main characters goes through a trauma that I initially thought stole her sanity from her. Later, it seemed to me that the trauma revealed who she really was and what she wanted.

I had wondered if this was going to be a sort of comic thriller, with Ed discovering his business acumen and coming up with a plan to make everything better. Paul Torday had something else in mind.

Although it uses gentle humour throughout the book, 'The Legacy Of Hartlepool Hall' sets out to deliver a reflection on inherited wealth and the unsustainable expectations and duties that the current generation faces.

Ed's struggle to deal with the accumulated debts of the Hartlepool estate shows how, in the course of the last three generations, his family has actively declined to acquire the skills and work ethic that generated the fortune in the first place. The Hall that was built as a vanity project providing concrete evidence of what the family had achieved has become an atavistic burden that binds the family so tightly to the past that they are unable to build a future. 

The book also looks at how the expectation of inherited wealth tests the character of the people receiving it. Ed finally comes to the realisation that he might enjoy the freedom that comes from letting go of Inost) of his wealth and living a (financially secure, work-free) middle-class life. One of his friends, who is also waiting to inherit wealth is effectively enslaved by the wait and eventually cracks under the stain.

This is a gentle, well-observed book populated with characters that I recognised and believed in, that, in a low key often humorous way, questions the benefits of transmitting substantial weakth across generations.… (more)

Michael and Elizabeth Gascoigne Elizabeth are both in their thirties and have been married for ten years, a marriage largely devoid of passion, the story is told in both their first persons. "It was what my mother used to call a ‘workable’ marriage.”

Michael is an orphan, and owner by inheritance of the Scottish Highlands estate Ben Carroun. He doesn’t need to work and spends much of his time down in London at his gentlemen’s club Groucher in Mayfair. The club is the beginning and end of his social life, rounds of golf, card games and petty internal squabbling's. Michael's personality reflects his existence. Dull and predictable.

Elizabeth works as a property for a woman’s magazine, a job she does to spend some time away from Michael rather than a need for extra income.

However, after a few days away staying in one of Michael's fellow club member's country house in Ireland, Michael’s personality starts to change. Elizabeth discovers an unopened packet of strange medication, Serendipozan, in the bathroom cabinet. Elizabeth starts asking questions and discovers that in her husband’s past he was known, as a child, as “Mental Mickey”. After the death of his parents Michael was diagnosed with schizophrenia and spent a year in a secure unit before, thanks to some “chemical engineering” was considered safe to release him.

Elizabeth's initial worries are tempered by her relief at finding that the lifeless man she thought she had married has been transformed into the passionate Mikey. He is becoming increasingly unpredictable, elusive, assertive, not to mention loving and amorous. But it soon becomes obvious to the reader that the only possible outcome to this story is a violent one.

The book is written from a first person point of view with roughly alternating chapters by Michael and Elizabeth. I found this very effective and the story really drew me in. Torday is such an intelligent writer and I found his depiction of a severe mental health problem absolutely riveting.

However, I found the end of the novel rather disappointing as it seemed to lapse into a negative stereotype of the condition. Michael’s earlier account, his struggles to find a sense of self , his coming back to life as the anti-psychotics leave his system is wonderfully depicted. However, Elizabeth’s description of looking into his eyes and “trying to understand how much of what was behind them was still human” was really disappointing in its negativity. The fact that the novel finishes with Elizabeth only underlined this for me. My own son has been living with the condition with over a decade relatively normally so perhaps tempered my opinion.… (more)