'The Bloater' by Rosemary Tonks
'Yes, I'm ungrateful, impossible to please, inhuman, malicious, and demanding. Good!'—Review #241
I had already made three laps around the highly curated bookstore in Marfa, Texas, but I was still empty handed. I was sweating. Not because of the late-June heat—though it was very hot—but because Donna and I were the only people in the store, and I felt anxious about leaving without buying anything. These super-curated places can be tricky! So much rides on whether you vibe with the curator. But I made another lap. I was determined, like Denzel Washington:
Then, I found ‘The Bloater’ by Rosemary Tonks, a book and an author I had never heard of before. The cover—unsettling and garish, yet also whimsical somehow—drew me in. I mean, look at it!
Here’s the book’s cover:
Min is in a joyless marriage with George, who maintains old manuscripts or something at a British museum. He is barely a presence in thirty-something Min’s life; one time she shut the lights off in a room forgetting he was there. Min works on a team of sound editors and designers who make artistic and theatrical radio programming for British airwaves. (The novel is set in London during the 1960s. Today, Min would probably be making podcasts.) But outside of work, she’s flirty, flighty, moody and melodramatic—a hurricane!—and she’s in a fight to the death against becoming a sexually bereft housewife who’s like:
In this battle, she is always on offense—living life to the hilt, always eager for gossip and action. She hits parties, eats decadent meals with sweatbreads and beer, and contemplates launching love affairs. Diversion also comes from her friends and acquaintances, including a curmudgeonly student/housekeeper named Fritz, a kiss-and-tell coworker named Jenny, a dapper sixty-something bestie named Claudio, Claudio’s cat Plim-Plam, a potential lover named Billy, a frenemy with a dangerous neckline named Raquel and The Bloater. The Bloater has a real name—Carlos Hamburger, apparently—and he’s an opera singer, a pianist, a painter, a somewhat snappy dresser (he has a coat lined with red fur) and a potential love interest for Min. (Given his name and the monicker Min gives him, I think we’re meant to imagine he’s somewhat overweight.) Min is obsessed with him, but her fixation is complex. Have you ever had a crush on someone you’re not physically attracted to yet can’t get out of your mind? Well, Min is going through something like that. Every conversation she has eventually bends toward The Bloater, but she’s often grousing and critical of him. She’s like:
When The Bloater isn’t around, Min hangs out with Claudio and Plim-Plam, mulls kissing Billy and dates vicariously through Jenny. Jenny tells Min she just met a guy who plays guitar. At first, Jenny paid little attention to him, but then he lay down on the floor across her foot and her heart skipped a beat. Later, Guitar (as Jenny calls him) offers to cook her dinner before they go out on a date. She laments to Min that she knows she will probably go hungry, figuring ‘dinner’ is actually what kids today would call a ‘Netflix and chill’ invitation. Min is enrapt by Jenny’s exploits, like:
Min’s fun and frivolity eventually catches up to her when she gets gout in a toe. I’ve never had gout, but I once had a roommate who did. He said, as did Min, that even the slightest breeze across the affected digit feels like:
Gout leaves Min temporarily bedridden, but her friends cheer her up, including the Bloater, who promises to take her to the opera. That event will seal their fate, so I’ll say no more. But I could go on and on about this book. It’s an absolute gem. Tonks’s writing is crisp, evocative and often hilarious. I loved following Min’s drama and chaos; she is such a fun character to get to know and she often had me chuckling aloud. I also enjoyed puzzling over her obsession with The Bloater. Why would she fixate on someone she says she doesn’t like? Was she envious of him, his artistic prowess, his cultured world and, in particular, his freedom of movement, in contrast to her hum-drum job and marriage? I think so. Also, Min’s gout seemed to me to be a fun take on an incurable wound that authors sometimes inflict on a protagonist to emphasize the gravity of their journey. Min’s toe leaves her trapped in bed, symbolizing her capture by her husband, George. But because her ailment is contracted through her rich living, it also shows how her means of escape may also be another trap. We’ve seen these wounds elsewhere. Frodo gets one when he’s stabbed by the Nazgûl, a wound that never fully heals and symbolizes the traumatic burden of carrying the One Ring. Luke Skywalker gets his here:
I’m so glad I stumbled across ‘The Bloater.’ It’s a wonderful book and a joy to read. I’m also thankful that you voted overwhelmingly for me to review it. If you’re looking for a quick and fun read, you must check it out.
An opening excerpt:
“Hullo.”
This is Fritz coming into the darkened hall, and calling out uncertainly. He says that “Hullo” more or less to himself; sometimes, if I’m there, I answer after a long half-minute: “Yes! I’m coming down.” The point is that it’s a quarter past two in the afternoon and I’ve just thrown myself down on the bed with a form of tiredness which is like drunkenness; your head goes on reeling, and there are varied layers of brand-new tiredness inside the massive, overall exhaustion, so that you go on falling through one after another. If you lie there long enough you reach the bottom, the ocean floor. Once deep down there, flat out in the pitch darkness, half buried in your bed and your thoughts … once down there, someone calls out “Hullo” with German-sounding syllables, and you instantly take an extra half-minute of darkness and oblivion, before letting yourself drift up to the surface and calling out, just as you hit the surface, in a voice of authority, with a sparkle in it like Asti Spumante: “All right! I’m coming.”
I know perfectly well he’ll go on standing there if I don’t answer. He likes to register the atmosphere with his head bent a little, listening in case there are surprises in the way of people or objects. Also, he sniffs the house to see what I’ve been up to. If it’s got a dried-up smell, like old twigs, he thinks: “Oh, she’s been working. We’ll have to call an ambulance.” If there’s a whiff of scent—I’ve got a little bottle of light brown scent which only lasts twenty minutes on the skin, but will stay on my coat in the hall for two days—he thinks: “Parties! Just my luck to be a poor student, while others are going out getting sex, life, and heaven knows what.” Very, very occasionally there’s a smell of silicone polish which has been put on by me, in which case he pretends to be hurt: “You want to take my job away? That’s no good. The matter is that you are taking my work.” In any case you can’t please him; everything I do is to him disgraceful, fascinating. He has very strong views about women, they can never win: “They will get hits.” In reality he is kind, long-suffering, just, and good-natured.
My rating:
‘The Bloater’ by Rosemary Tonks was published in 1968 by The Bodley Head and in 2022 by New Directions. $14.83 at Bookshop.org.
What’s next:
Before you go:
ICYMI: Review #240
Read this: You’ve got to read Audrey Wollen’s piece in The New Yorker about Rosemary Tonks. ‘The Writer Who Burned Her Own Books’ is a wildly fascinating portrait of Tonks, who not only abandoned her writing, but also actively tried to destroy it. Wollen discusses ‘The Bloater’ here as well, and her take is much smarter and more precise than mine. You also should read Lucy Scholes’s piece about the book in The Paris Review, ‘Re-Covered: The Bloater by Rosemary Tonks’ for another sharp take.
Do this: Today’s the Brooklyn Book Festival! Let’s go!
See this: I love this Tweet our friend Leslie shared:
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Thanks for reading, and thanks especially to Donna for editing this newsletter!
Until next time,
MPV
The Bloater just shot to the top of my TBR list, I love a messy first person narrator. I just also need to say that Carlos Hamburger may be one of the greatest character names I've ever heard and sounds like something out of I Think You Should Leave.
Thanks for another interesting review and book! Not sure I will pick it up. Enjoy the book festival!!