The Constant Nymph

See my full review at The Emerald City Book Review. I found this novel a fascinating window into a time when the world had been shaken by one war but was not yet foreseeing the next, when social and artistic certainties were being questioned in all sorts of ways. The main characters belong to a Bohemian artistic circle centered around an expatriate English composer living in the Alps, and the first part of the book introduces us to his extremely unconventional menage, including a brood of children by various wives and mistresses. The “nymph” of the title is one of these, Teresa (known as Tessa), a waif type who suffers from a silent passion for another, younger composer, Lewis Dodd, who loves her as well but doesn't yet realize she is his perfect mate (she's only fourteen!).

When her father dies, Tessa's comfortably unkempt and eccentric world is invaded by the forces of conventionality and good breeding in the form of her cousin Florence, who comes to rescue the children and take them away to be properly educated. When she takes Lewis as well, though, the trouble begins. Back in England, the children can't be forced into the mold of proper society, and Lewis starts to feel the prison bars closing in too. A startling denouement left me with the feeling that Kennedy didn't quite know how to finish off the situation she had gotten her characters into. I could have wished for a more complex conclusion to a work that started off in such a promising way.

Just before things unraveled so unsatisfyingly, there were interesting intimations that the struggle between Tessa and Florence reflected a larger, almost mythic battle. Stories have always been woven about how the conflict between the forces of nature and spontaneity, life-giving but formless, and the civilizing, domesticating impulse that is meant to tame and channel those forces in a positive way, but which threatens to harden into a deadening mania for control. The Constant Nymph shows how the tales of nymphs and enraged goddess-wives live on in our own times, as those ancient forces still slumber within us all. How do we deal with them in the modern world? It's an interesting question, but one that Kennedy didn't quite answer.