Book Review: "The World in the Evening" by Christopher Isherwood

I read quite a bit of Christopher Isherwood last year and noticed that I had really taken a liking to his work. I'll be trying my best to finish off his novels this year and hopefully, we can have a bit of a ranking article on all of them together. One thing I like about Christopher Isherwood's novels is that they never feel afraid, or like they are withholding information for the sake of being polite. Isherwood tries to say everything he needs to within this atmosphere of dark glamour and this is definitely true for his books Goodbye to Berlin, Mr Norris Changes Trains and The Memorial. When it comes to this book entitled The World in the Evening, we can definitely see that aspect of his writing being reborn.

Stephen Monk's second marriage to a woman called Jane is in absolute shambles. He realises at a Hollywood party that there is nothing left of it and goes into a deep depressive state in which he tries to get to sleep by drinking whisky, but can't bring himself to actually drink any. He keeps mentioning and thinking about a woman called Elizabeth - his first wife - who had written a brilliant book called The World in the Evening. Stephen then realises that he must retrace his steps from a Quaker town where he lives near his aunt all the way back to before the war. What he finds out about himself comes to make him realise why, in the first place, his second marriage fell apart.

As we know, many of Christopher Isherwood's novels are extensions of his own autobiographies, and yet how far this one is true for him remains elusive. Some people have called it a novel, but others who draw parallels between the novel's topics, the settings and the way in which Christopher Isherwood's own life went during these turbulent historical times. Both seem to be verging on what could be correct.

The character of Stephen Monk seems to be a lot like Isherwood himself. A tormented artist type of human, he seeks for there to be purpose and meaning to his life and Isherwood's own frankness about the turmoil of human relations that is explored in other texts can be seen yet again here. He gives us a character who is deeply upset about their own position that goes hunting their past in order to find the answers. The answers are almost always ones that the people of his own time do not want to hear out of fear of being branded immoral. I feel like this book definitely plays to Isherwood's strengths in terms of who the main character is and where he has been, the post-war PTSD is very realistic and the deep listlessness of Stephen Monk whilst he is processing the breakdown of his second marriage is wonderfully written.

To conclude, I think that this is definitely one of Christopher Isherwood's stronger novels in the fact that the main character is so realistic. If you ask me, I do think that this character is based on aspects of Isherwood's own person purely for the fact that there is a deep requirement to be understood, a want to investigate the root of the issue and a cast of characters that seem so well designed that I do not fully understand how they couldn't be based on real people. The ending to the book wraps the whole thing up with a sense of closure, but not so much that we are out of the loop of what may happen next in the story of Stephen Monk.