The King of a Rainy Country

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The King of a Rainy Country

by
Brigid Brophy

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

Title:	The King of a Rainy Country
Author:	Brigid Brophy
Genre:	Novel
Written:	1956
Length:	259 pages
Availability:	The King of a Rainy Country - US
	The King of a Rainy Country - UK
	The King of a Rainy Country - Canada

	from: Bookshop.org (US)

The 2025 McNally Editions edition has a Foreword by Stacey D'Erasmo
The 2012 The Coelacanth Press edition has an Afterword by Jennifer Hodgson

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Our Assessment:

B+ : loose, frothy fun

See our review for fuller assessment.

Review Summaries
Source	Rating	Date	Reviewer
The NY Times Book Rev.	.	10/3/1957	Ben Crisler
Sunday Times	.	16/9/1956	John Metcalf
The Times	.	20/9/1956	.
The Times	.	29/12/2012	Kate Saunders

From the Reviews:

"It is perhaps fortunate that Miss Brophy's characters are not to be taken too seriously. Their negligibility leaves one free to concentrate on their creator's fetching prose style, with its bright surfaces of observation, its keen satirical edges, its intricate and precise renderings of vulgar dialogue." - Ben Crisler, The New York Times Book Review

"The King of a Rainy Country suffers from its tripartite nature. (...) Miss Brophy writes with increasing power as the book develops. Once she gets her construction right she'll be (...) a most interesting writer to watch." - John Metcalf, Sunday Times

"The King of a Rainy Country is well written indeed, though Miss Brophy, who is still very young, is more interested in the oddity of her neighbours than in their underlying humanity. (...) As a story, this is shapeless. But the asides, and the minor characters, are magnificently funny (.....) Though she has not quite achieved a good novel, Miss Brophy writes a good prose." - The Times

"Brophy writes with great wit about the uncertainty of youth. It’s sharp, funny and clever, and as fresh as new paint." - Kate Saunders, The Times

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

The King of a Rainy Country is narrated by Susan, just nineteen when she moves in with Neale at the start of the novel. She mentions that: "I had fallen in love with Neale two years before at a coffee party", but their relationship remains one more of close friendship. Even living together, the overlap is limited, as Neale works nights, washing up at a restaurant.
Along with moving, Susan also gets a job. She had explained to the employment agency:

"Fundamentally," I said, "my interests are literary -- or at least concerned with the arts. I'd like a job, if possible, on the literary side."

       They can oblige, to some extent, and she takes a job with a used-bookseller who conveniently lives across from her new home. Her employer calls himself Finkelheim, but it's an assumed name, changed to make him appear Jewish (as he had been advised: "That way nobody will expect any easy terms from you. You won't get asked any favours.' It seemed pretty sensible to me. What I didn't reckon on was the real Jews would ask the favours"). His operation is somewhat shady as well, as he also sells (then-still-illegal) pornographic books.
       It's while leafing through one of these books, The Lady Revealed, that Susan finds a schoolmate she was once obsessed by, Cynthia Bewly, revealed -- and the story become something of a quest-tale, as Susan and Neale try to hunt down Cynthia. (The King of a Rainy Country is, in fact, a more comprehensively-questing tale, with Susan observing to Neale, near the conclusion, that: "We were searching long before I told you about her" -- indeed, that: "I was searching even before I knew her at school. In fact, that's why I came to know her".)
       The King of a Rainy Country is presented in three parts. The first is set in London, Susan describing her London-life -- with flashbacks to her relationship with Cynthia -- and then her (semi-comic, but also determined) quest to find her old schoolmate. They finally get on her trail just as Susan's employer does a runner, half a step ahead of the police, when they learn that Cynthia is expected -- also under a changed name -- in Venice at an international get-together for the film-world. Neale is happy enough to chuck his job as well, as they decide to follow-up on this, and try to seek Cynthia out in Venice. Neale and Susan conveniently easily land a gig as last-minute fill-ins, accompanying a group of American tourists through Italy, which will see them wind up in Venice.
       The second part follows their adventures abroad, as Susan and Neale make their way to Venice. There, their quest meets with success -- they actually find Cynthia. The third part then has them see and spend time with Cynthia, as well a Helena Buchan, an opera singer (already glimpsed on a cinema-poster in London, playing in Tosca, that Susan and Neale pass by), and also the man accompanying her, Philip Caswell. Neale swoons over Helena -- "She's immortal" -- but it is Susan that winds up closer to her, including traveling with her when Helena goes to Padua to have her photograph taken, a longer excursion.
       Dialogue-heavy, The King of a Rainy Country moves lightly and loosely, with Brophy -- like her characters -- happy enough to take things as they come, inventing whatever bits of plot are convenient to keep thing moving along. It makes for some abrupt shifts and twists, both minor and major, especially in its conclusion, but the charm of the novel -- and there is a great deal of it -- is in the detail. And for all how free-wheeling characters and plot seem, there is also some careful construction here -- as suggested, for example, by the early poster-glimpse of Helena, or also Neale's quoting of Baudelaire. (The title is from Baudelaire as well; when Neale quotes it early on (in French), he includes the words that follow: "Riche mais impuissant ..." (translated, e.g., by Richard Howard as: "rich but helpless"; much later, Neale quotes him again ("J'ai plus de souvenirs que si j'avais mille ans" (which Howard renders: 'Souvenirs ? More than if I had lived a thousand years !') to Helena, who (to Neale's apparent surprise) recognizes the author.)
       The dialogue, and the quick backs-and-forths are excellent -- as in the scene on their Italy-trip, at the end of a long evening where Susan has been hit on and kissed by two of the American tourists:

     As we walked home, Neale said: "Do you still want to sleep with me ?"
     I hesitated. "Neale, in the general sense, yes. You know I do. But specifically, for tonight, I feel a bit sickened of the whole subject."
     "Very well." He moved away from me on the pavement.
     "Neale ! I'm sorry ! I mean yes."
     "No, the moment's passed."
     As we lay in our separate beds, side by side in the dark, watching the neon, I asked him: "Did you mean the moment had passed ?"
     "Who can say ?" Later he added: "Perhaps it was only a moment."

The scene mirrors their relationship in general -- and it's also this kind of quick succession of ever-shifting moments (and lusts) among the many other characters that propel the narrative so well. Though seemingly skimming so much on the surface, the story does have greater depths -- just mirroring, in the telling, capricious, uncertain, and largely carefree youth.
The presentation is almost deceptively frothy, and one might wish that Brophy let her narrator linger and explore more than she does, but for all its many little detours and asides -- especially traveling across Italy -- and its fill of odd bits and turns, The King of a Rainy Country is consistently enjoyable, and a solid and even poignant work.

- M.A.Orthofer, 16 April 2025

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Links:

The King of a Rainy Country:

McNally Editions publicity page
The Coelacanth Press publicity page
Brigid Brophy: In Praise of the Mad Bomber of English Literature by Jennifer Hodgson

Reviews:

Brigid Brophy:

Obituary in The Independent
Brigid Brophy at Curtis Brown

Other books by Brigid Brophy under review:

Other books of interest under review:

See Index of Contemporary British fiction at the complete review

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About the Author:

Brigid Brophy (1929-1995) wrote numerous acclaimed novels and works of non-fiction, and was instrumental in establishing the Public Lending Right.

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