Old Filth

Old Filth by Jane Gardam

https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R3GZXDI3DHGFR6?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp

This is a surprisingly good book. I purchased it thinking that the story would be based on the legal activities of a British lawyer in Hong Kong. I expected legal action, perhaps something like Rumpole of the Bailey.

It's nothing like that. This book is a character study of Sir Edward Feathers, an “orphan of the Raj.” The book is structured around alternating paragraphs. One series is set after Sir Edward, the eponymous “Old Filth” has retired from his active legal life. The other series follows Sir Edward from his birth through his education and, ultimately, the opportunity that takes him to Hong Kong. [“Old Filth” is not an insult; it stands for “Failed in London - Try Hong Kong.”]

We don't directly get any part of the Hong Kong story, although there are callbacks to that period. Presumably, the Hong Kong episodes are found in volume 2.

This book was fascinating for me because of the historic setting. English bureaucrats spent their time away from England, but they wanted their children to be English. So, they developed a habit of fostering their children with English families at an early age - in Old Filth's case, when he was around five. They would then be taken through the English school system and, presumably, in their twenties they would return to imperial service. During this time, they were effectively orphans, rarely seeing their parents. Author Jane Gardams makes the point that Rudyard Kipling was an orphan of the Raj and wrote his memoirs of that experience in “Baah, Baah, Black Sheep.” Naturally, I picked up that text for a read.

I also liked that the part of the story that featured the Blitz and Edward's trip to Singapore, which was ended by the Japanese invasion of Singapore (and the threat to Colombo, Sri Lanka.) (I question the timing of the two events, which were separated by a year and a half, but seem to be within the same year in the book.)

At the other end of his life, Sir Edward is a crotchety retired lawyer living with his wife. When his wife dies, he seeks to tie up the loose ends of his life, including his nominal cousins, and an old Hong Kong rival who improbably moves in next to his rural English retirement estate. There is a lot of pathos and introspection in the story of a man declining into old age.

The writing was good. I found Old Filth to be endearing.