Pages: 309
Original date of publication: 1941
My copy: 2010
How I acquired my copy: Persephone shop, September 2011
Persephone is famous for publishing out-of-print,
lesser-known classics, but there’s a sub-theme to their list as well: they
reprint a number of Jewish authors (Marghanita Laski, Amy Levy, for example). Farewell
Leicester Square is the only one of Betty Miller’s novels that touches on the
Jewish experience in England. This story focuses on a man named Alec
Berman, who manages to rise to fame in the film industry (the opening scene of
the novel is centered on the premiere of one of his films, Farewell Leicester
Square) and marry a non-Jew.
From the way I saw the book described, I though that this
was going to be a straightforward and pretty typical story. But Betty Miller
turns it around a bit, by making the anti-Semite Alec himself. He’s so aware of
his background as a Jew and not wanting people to mention it that he almost
becomes a bit self-hating of his Jewishness He even tries to stamp out his
childhood in Brighton in order to become more English and is denigrating of his
brother’s wife and children. It’s because of this awareness, which pervades the
whole tone of the book, which eventually brings about Alec’s downfall. The
relationship between Alec and his wife Catherine is tough to read; it’s not
clear if there really was a lot of love between them, or if each of them loves
what the other represents. I think they both jump into the relationship without
considering the implications.
The plot and pacing of the novel are, as the introduction to
the novel, set out a bit like a film, with flashbacks and the like to indicate
the passage of time (it’s not done so well, however; there are huge gaps that
made me want to know what happened in between Alec’s apprenticeship and the
film premiere). It’s an incredibly brave novel for Betty Miller to have
written, especially at that time period.
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