Letter to St Benedicta

Letter to Sister Benedicta / Rose Tremain

London: Vintage, 1999, c1978.

175 p.

Another book featuring a nun, but this time it only incidentally does so. 

Ruby Constad takes to writing unsent letters to Sister Benedicta, a nun who was kind to her at convent school in India when she was young, now that her life is at a crisis point. Her domineering husband Leon has had a stroke and is hovering between life and death at hospital; she is estranged from her son and daughter, who've done terrible things themselves. 

She writes to understand herself, her past in colonial India, her suffocating marriage and general lack of love in life all around. It is bleak and depressing, but also searingly honest about life in England at this point. Many of the novels in the 70s have this dark and realist focus; this one also takes in colonialism as a concept both societal and individual. Very of its age, though a bit dated for a reader now. 

Through this relatively short book, Ruby relates the facts of her life and examines why she might be feeling what she is in response to her husband's illness and children's desertion. Neither Leon nor the children come off well at all; Ruby's own parents and grandmother are also quite dreadful. It's a life of weariness and meanness overall. The memory of the warmth and colours of India, and the one spark of kindness from Sister Benedicta, sustain Ruby. 

In the end, as Leon dies, and Ruby sees a new life for herself in returning to India, the reader is left to wonder if she is trying to recapture a lost era and will only find more disappointment at the end of her journey. I hope not -- but the hopelessness of the narrative doesn't leave a lot of room for belief that what Ruby recalls is actually truth. If in this discovery Ruby can become less passive and mired in nostalgia, then perhaps she does have a chance to grasp a new future for herself. I'd love to see that sequel!