A dark and funny novelist and a dryly devastating columnist, and under her married name Anna Haycraft a creator of cookbooks, Alice Thomas Ellis is a sadly too little known writer. She died in 2005 but her novels remain in print. “The Summer House Trilogy” was made into a movie starring Jeanne Moreau, Joan Plowright, and Julie Walters. The first quote is taken from a column in her book A Cat Among the Pigeons and I can’t remember where I got the second.
I.
Luckily there are no small children around at the moment, so if I have to tell the cat that “the moment has come to be brave” (as the executioner used to remark to the condemned man as he wound up the guillotine), I will not have to confront a row of reproachful faces and brimming eyes.
I found that the only films I had to forbid my children to watch (except, of course, for nearly all the latest ones — but that was on different grounds) were those involving animals, since something sad always happened, and children who can contemplate the death of Sydney Carton with equanimity cannot sleep for sorrow because Lassie had a thorn in her paw.
II.
There is no reciprocity. Men love women. Women love children. Children love hamsters. Hamsters don't love anyone; it is quite hopeless.
Next: Todd Gitlin on American complexities
I haven't read A Cat Among Pigeons --- and I thought I'd read everything by her!
I can't remember either where the second quotation comes from, but it's always cracked me up.