The Sioux

"Now, you wouldn’t know this from how it was written down, but she pronounced it Irene-y. Very old-school.Irene Handl [1901–1987] was still around when I was growing up. She played the grandmother on Metal Mickey , a kids’ TV show about a family that had a robot as just another member of the family. She also played Peter Sellers’s wife in some of the Ealing comedies, and she was Tony Hancock’s landlady in The Rebel (1961). She was an absolutely fantastic actor. To give you a sense of the kind of person we’re dealing with: she was filming something towards the end of her career, and the director took her to one side to talk about a scene, and she said, ‘I’m not sure quite what I’m doing?’ and he explained that she was doing her lines in front of a green screen. He said to her, ‘Don’t worry, you’re going to do this, and then after we’ve finished, I’m going to put all this stuff in with computer technology.’ And she went, ‘You’re confusing me, dear.’ He went, ‘Oh, um, maybe I could put it a bit more simply?’ ‘No, no,’ she said, ‘you’re confusing me with someone who gives a shit. Just tell me the lines, I’ll do the lines, and then I’ll go.’ I had no idea that she’d written novels. I don’t even know how I found out about this one, it’s just one of those things I plucked from the ether. But they’re relatively easy to get hold of, most of these books – that’s the thing about forgotten books these days, for all the negative things about Amazon, Marketplace has made it so much easier to get hold of books that you couldn’t otherwise. There are two: The Sioux and then a sequel called The Gold Tip Pfitz er (1973). The Sioux is about this eccentric family of French origin who live in New Orleans. The mother is awfully protective of the son, and it could be mildly incestuous, you’re never quite sure, and everyone is dysfunctional, and they’re all extremely rich, and it’s very dark and very funny. Daphne du Maurier raved about it when it was published, as did Noël Coward. I think the second book has a quote from Peter Sellers on it. It was a remarkable reception. Somewhere online, there is a review of it, in the New York Times or another New York newspaper, and it raves about it. There was a publisher about six or seven years ago, when I first started talking about The Sioux online, who said, ‘Oh, we were looking at republishing it,’ but that publisher doesn’t exist anymore. Yes, often the reason a book like this is not resurrected is because it would only sell a couple of hundred copies, or a thousand copies, and that’s not enough for a publisher to invest all the money in what they would need to do. That’s one of the reasons why I co-founded the Abandoned Bookshop: we were trying to find ways of making forgotten books available without having to spend thousands of pounds and persuade lots of retailers they needed to stock it. But for a book to have those sorts of people publicly praising it is amazing. It’s not to everyone’s taste, true – it’s very odd, but hugely enjoyable. Eccentric is the word. It’s that sort of multi-generational novel, set in a rich family. If you went completely down the commercial side, you could rewrite it as a soap opera, but it’s not intended that way, it’s written in quite a literary style. Handl has an interesting, odd voice. It’s disconcerting, actually. It feels like a 1960s take on a classic – almost as if someone has taken the morals and loose sensibilities of the ’60s and applied them to something that was written in 1910. It’s mannered, and every character is despicable and horrible; it’s like the Forsyte Saga but everyone is vile and able to talk about sex and relationships in a way that people couldn’t when the Forsyte Saga was written. It’s really peculiar, an acquired taste. Part of you thinks, ‘Is the mum sleeping with her son? She might be, I’m not sure,’ and it makes you feel mildly uncomfortable. It’s presented as odd. Actually, thinking about it again now – and this is going to sound awful, but I don’t mean the incestuous bit, just the overall dysfunctional, weird, rich family – you could probably replace everyone’s surname with Trump. It would make sense. Rich, dysfunctional families are always great value. “ This is going to sound awful, but you could probably replace every character’s surname with Trump – rich, dysfunctional families are always great value” I’ve got old paperback copies now and I’ve lent them to people. Half the people have come back to say, ‘I don’t know what to say to you, this is just bonkers.’ The other half have said: ‘I loved it, it’s amazing.’ I think if you were familiar with Irene Handl, you’d probably ‘get it’ better. There’s just something about her, she’s one of those classic British eccentrics, and The Sioux is a classic, eccentric novel. I think the reaction we’ll probably get is – because there are loads of people who will recognise her name – ‘I had no idea she’d written a novel!’"