Staying On by Paul Scott

The 1978 edition of this novel, which I discovered on the bookshelf of a charity shop, is a missed opportunity in cover art design.  On a grey background, the author’s name in brown, the title in red and ‘Winner of The Booker Prize’ in black are displayed in decreasing type size.  For some reason, to me it looked like a mediocre war novel and was rather off-putting.  And this was a design once it had won The Booker Prize, what would have been inflicted upon a less successful book?!  Or maybe since it had won the prize, the publishers thought they didn’t have to bother making it look in the least appealing? 

I feel that a definite advantage of how traditional publishing is having to hold its own against the e-book upsurge, is the extra effort that sometimes now goes into the production of the book.  Time (and money) is now spent on choosing the paper, the font, the cover etc. to enhance the book reading experience.  It all enhances the tactile experience of reading which as a diehard book fan I savour and appreciate.  Not so in 1978, although thankfully, within this underwhelming and rather repellent cover, is disguised an engaging and touching story.

On the journey through the Booker winners, this is yet another focused on the collapse of the British Empire and its consequences.  This time in India once more and as the title implies, the story is centred on an elderly colonial couple who have decided to ‘stay on’ after Indian Independence.  The first sentence reveals that Mr. Smalley dies while his wife is at the hairdresser.  And following this very matter of fact statement, to which one responds with slight indifference in the beginning, the novel goes on to fill in the particulars leading up to this event, resulting in a much more emotional conclusion by the end of the book.  The nature of storytelling is interesting, that although as the reader we already know what happens in the end, Scott still manages to weave an immersive tale through their past history and the various people they have encountered in their lives. 

The resulting novel, although its tone is irreverent and straightforward, succeeds in being heart-warming and touching in a nuanced and subtle way.  And although you travel full-circle in plot, you feel you have a transformed view of things by the end, and glad to have spent time in the company of the story, which fulfils the criteria of art rather nicely!