maybe it's just the pandemic talking, but I just could not get into this story about bitchy rich beautiful people with no apparent inner lives and all the time, money, and privilege in the world. None of the characters really seemed like characters, and I had no understanding at all why Judith was so fascinated by the cousins. I wanted to like it so much, especially because there were definitely some interesting parts to it -- Judith's attraction to both men and women, for example, and the really nonchalant attitude toward same-sex love (at least in the beginning). And the prose was very beautiful. But I just couldn't listen to them being upset over nothing anymore, so I couldn't finish it.

i love an early 20th century novel that deals with infatuation and romantic disappointments, particularly if at least one of those failed romances is a lesbian one!

While reading ‘Dusty Answer’, it is remarkable how well Lehmann seems to prefigure contemporary #depression humour. Most major characters profess some kind of suicidal impulse (‘Heavenly, heavenly annihilation’), while Judith herself goes around thinking things like ‘one did not commit suicide in other people’s houses: that was the ultimate error of taste’ and ‘Oh, to slip into the water and become something minute and non-sentient, a sort of fresh water amoeba’. This comedy relies on Lehmann’s rendering of the experience of mental illness in ways uncannily familiar (to my experiences at least).

There are also moments where Judith’s overt awareness of her construction of her own memories into a narrative (particularly in her explication of the already symbolically heavy-handed recurrence of a rabbit’s death) is so ridiculous that I can only take it as comedic. Further, ‘Dusty Answer’ often reads like a satire of the Gothic: there’s the house beset by memories, the use of night as a site of revelation (which Judith again draws explicit attention to), the madness (aforementioned), the destabilisation (mockery) of institutions like Cambridge and the Church, even the incest.

This last also forms part of a troublingly fascistic streak through some of Judith’s thoughts, as her romantic entanglements centre on the genetically insular Fyfe family, who, not incidentally, are repeatedly described as tall and pale. Judith herself is conspicuously obsessed by beauty and physical prowess, and explicitly finds deviation from this, especially in the character of the disabled, ugly lesbian Mabel, absolutely repulsive. While Judith herself is sympathetically portrayed as bisexual, Mabel’s rejection of men precludes her from reproduction in ways that make her useless to an Aryan ethnostate. Likewise, Julian is portrayed as acceptable to Judith, because he manages to 'overcome' his asthma in order to play tennis with Judith. Through this lens, Lehmann’s seemingly constant listing of British flora becomes sinister. While Judith is not directly challenged on her views, the degree to which we are clearly meant to read Judith as unreliable and self-serious, makes it unlikely that Lehmann (a writer with Jewish heritage who would go on to be an antifascist advocate) could have gone further in her critique without breaking the immersion of Judith’s viewpoint, upon which ‘Dusty Answer’ is totally reliant. Further, the implication of British/European literature and culture being rooted in the same elements that would give rise, in their worst iteration, to Nazism is compelling.

Despite its surface simplicity, Lehmann’s writing skilfully operates on seemingly divergent registers and 'Dusty Answer' reveals itself to be amenable to various readings.

4.5/5

Once I got into this, it was delicious and so juicy and emotional and vivid but not in a cheap trashy way but genuinely good! Much more readable than 'The Weather in the Streets', where I could tell Lehmann was trying to be more "literary". But this still does have some interesting and experimental "literary" elements, like the fragmented timeline and the shifting intimacy of the narrative voice, with the occasional and disarming second person narration.

Could have done with less of the hetero romance; did she really have to go through every single one of the Fyfe brothers?? In fact I didn't really care about the Fyfe family even though they're supposed to be the most important part of the book. I think it should have just stuck to the thing with Roddy.

I first heard about 'Dusty Answer' as an early (1927?) subtextually lesbian book. It is quite explicit (though not physically) but I can see why it was so shocking (and popular!) at the time. Overall the relationship between Judith and Jennifer is shown to be deep and emotionally impactful and traumatic and definitely not just a friendship. Interestingly the plot treats Jennifer similarly to how it treats Judith's other failed lovers who are men. Throughout the novel many little and big things are poignantly left unfinished and yet coldly closed off at the same time.

Cambridge in this book (specifically Girton, the first women's college) is hilarious to me! It's a sort of boarding school of gossiping girls completely cut off from the men (in whose case the homoeroticism is even more explicit) and academia doesn't dominate. I'm pretty sure Lehmann actually went to Girton at this time, and Oxford is similar in Evelyn Waugh's novels, so this portrait could be quite accurate.

I can't wait to read more Lehmann books. I have my eye on Invitation to the Waltz and The Echoing Grove...

Bits reminded me of my loves Brideshead Revisited & The Great Gatsby & The Secret History but the narrator is more level with her longed for objects of desire: her family is well of, she's clever & pretty & has smart clothes & when she is heartbroken she gets to escape to France & have a love affair yet it isn't good enough for her still.

This book is muddled because everyone longs for someone who isn't around & they lead people on who love them. No one is ever good enough. Everyone is rotten in this book.

The prose is beautiful though & parts I adored. Reading more Lehmann soon.