Cold Spring Harbour (1986)
182pp, Fiction
Notes
2020-03-09
Richard Yates’ Cold Spring Harbour isn’t up there with The Easter Parade of Revolutionary Road but it’s good enough. Mainly interesting to me in terms of its setting; civilian life during wartime. In that respect it makes an interesting point of comaprison to Patrick Hamiltion’s Slaves of Solitude (which I really love). Both novels deal with those left ouside the war (the second) and both novels have a strong line in excrutiating mealtime chat but where Hamiltion, for all his tendency to melodrama, has plenty of time for his characters Yates is kind of perfunctory in the treatment of his. The inhabitants of the old Long Island town often felt to me more like pieces to be moved around in the service of his point than actual people to care about or empathise. Both books also deal with what these days we’d probably call toxic masculinity, its effect on both men and women. However unlike Hamilton’s warm portrayal of Enid Roach in Slaves… and unlike Yates’ own The Easter Parade which deals with similar themes here he doesn’t appear to have a great deal of empathy for the women of Cold Spring Harbour which for me made the slim volume feel a bit unlevened.