Darkness of Slumber by Rosemary Kutak

 

Darkness of Slumber by Rosemary Kutak

published 1944

 

 

This is one of those forgotten books that was very very successful at the time, but has now disappeared almost completely. I owe my copy to my friend John Norris over at Pretty Sinister Books – in his review he mentioned the frequent clothes references. I said ‘you interest me strangely’, and he very kindly sent me the book. (I should say, it has taken me several more years to get round to blogging on it).

It has a great setup, and often goes in directions you are not expecting… Eve Minary, an upmarket young woman, has been in a coma (not quite, but the idea will do) for ten years after an unexplained and traumatic incident in her family. Doctors are going to try out a new drug which means she should wake up – will she be able to say what happened on the fateful night? Her husband has moved on since the tragedy – what will this mean for his second wife? Now here’s an idea we can all get on board with, taking elements from many a domestic suspense thriller. The characters are a lot slower than the rest of us in realizing that someone might not want Eve speaking again…

The book is short and sharp, and seen through the eyes of a couple of different people, including medical staff. It is very much in the psychological mode that became popular in the 40s and 50s – for example the books of Lange Lewis eg this one from 1943, Juliet Dies Twice. It is full of attitudes which would be, shall we say, not acceptable now, and some of the medical and psychological claims are  very strange. It’s hard to know if they were convincing at the time – Eve, a fit young woman, falls prey to ‘dementia brought on by mental conflict’ which puts her into a trance-like state. [Eve is in, of all things THE DISTURBED WARD – not sure if that really existed then, but what a good thing it wouldn’t be called that now.]

Surely, a doctor asks now, there were signs this was coming?  ‘The symptoms of incipient insanity are not always overt – hysteric depression and erratic behaviour come later.’

So the family is forced to consider the past, looking for symptoms, and helpfully telling the readers exactly what went on in her family circle at that time.

It turns out that Eve was very involved in local politics, was working for a controversial political campaign, and there were shades of corruption. (Not what I was expecting in this book)

Eve’s family are quite the crew. Once her condition was thought to be irreversible, her husband, Phil, divorced her and married again. When it is mooted that Eve may recover after all, her brother begins proceedings to nullify that initial  divorce, apparently without reference to her husband, and thus presumably nullify his second marriage: ‘I want to force his hand’. The legal grounds for this are very shaky, but it does tell us a lot about Eve’s weirdo brother, Scott, who cannot understand why Barbara, the second wife, doesn’t simply take herself off to Reno to make this easy for everyone. He really is a piece of work,

The explanation at the end of the book is disappointing – both dull and unguessable. Given the ‘psychological’ promises of the book, I would also have liked more about the future for the characters. There was, I thought, too much from the doctors’ pov and not enough of the family/friend group that Kutak had created carefully and with some detail – that was all just thrown away.

However, John is right – there are great clothes details, in a rather judge-y way. The book starts with upmarket women having their lunch in a nice department store café during a shopping day. Cissie, a friend, neighbour and suspect, is ‘a fullback in a Parisian frock… she loved dashing and expensive clothes.’  Green hat flaring, tiny white figures dancing across the black of her dress… later she appears in a gold dress, black turban, silver fox cape

Cissie is outraged that a woman wears slacks in the lunchtime café of a nice department store: trousers are all right in other circs, but not this one.

The top pic, from NYPL, seemed to have a look of the women having a café lunch, although it actually shows the NY World’s Fair.

Madeleine is Eve’s sister-in-law (and  now Barbara’s of course – assuming she doesn’t immolate herself in divorce). She specializes in brown and neutral clothes: ‘She was all in a beige, excessively smart in a jersey dress and abbreviated headgear – something called a half-hat of the same material. Even her [jewellery] were in a neutral tone.’ The author reproves her for such dull choices, and lambastes her for her overbred femininity, but does also give her a rather sexy-sound black housecoat in rustling taffeta.  Picture from Sophia’s photostream on Flickr. (Too smiley for the miserable Madeleine)

 

Barbara wears a brown suit and a ‘bittersweet blouse’ – this is a reddish-orange colour. This picture – from Clover Vintage tumbler – is much later (1954 and definitely New Look) but I wanted to get the colour combination  - Barbara was obviously meant to contrast strongly with pale Madeleine.

 

Turbans come up, but there is also a ‘little hat with a Beau catcher veil’, which sent me off down the rabbit hole. A beau catcher is a single curl – sometimes called a kiss curl – and in French an accroche-coeur, or heart hook.  But it seems a beau catcher veil is something else, flowing ribbons. As beloved of Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind.

 

Rosemary Kutak only wrote one more book, and not much is known about her. A shame, as she obviously had a talent for domestic suspense.

 Thanks again to John Norris, kind supplier of great clothes references...