Not Tonight brings me to the end of my journey through the oeuvre of the forgotten English novelist Kathleen Sully. After 16 other Sullys, most of its ingredients are familiar: a village on the southern coast of England; a woman of uncertain middle age; a robust young mother with an assortment of children by an assortment of fathers; various local characters with either low habits and good characters or high standards and petty ways.
Not Tonight was her twelfth book to be published in the space of eleven years, and it displays more than a few signs of creative fatigue. It’s more like a dinner thrown together on a weeknight from leftovers than a fully-conceived work. There’s as much running around, jumping in and out of bed, and mistaken appearances as a Feydeau farce without the discipline of a dramatic formula. Sully tosses in a fillip of incest to try to spice things up:
Inside the kitchen, large and untidy but surprisingly clean, Nadine pointed to the eldest child and said, “Terry’s his kid.”
“Oh,” said Hazel, innocently, “so he’s your brother?”
“Kind of — we both have the same father.”
“Terry had another mother?”
“I’m his mother,” said Nadine, pleased to get the worst news off her chest.
Sully’s earth-mother character, Nadine, has a heart big enough to embrace all souls and all sins, as long as they’re procreative. She introduces Hazel — the woman of uncertain middle age — to her live-in lover, Paddy:
“Well,” said Hazel, trying to shrug the whole thing off, “I suppose that one of these fine days, I shall be invited to a wedding?”
Nadine shook her head a trifle sadly.
“Or does he object to the children?”
“No, he likes the kids but his wife….”
Hazel stared — mouth open.
“They’re both religious,” said Nadine as if that explained all.
Unfortunately, too little of Nadine’s life-affirming energy conveys back to her creator, and we are left with a mishmash that fills without providing much in the way of nourishment. From what I’ve learned of Kathleen Sully’s life, it could well be that this book was posted off by a writer eager for another check to a publisher eager for something to print. It’s a slipshod, forgettable work. Its one saving grace is the fact that you’d be hard-pressed to find another English novel by a woman published in 1966 that came from as far out on the fringes of society.