Staying On by Paul Scott has won The 1977 Booker Prize, when it was competing against another author that I admire, Barbara Pym, it is also included on the list of 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read, in the State of Nation section, while on The Greatest Books of All Time site it is ranked only 2938th, nevertheless, it is a novel that I enjoyed now, the second time when I read it, albeit I was not overwhelmed the first time – now for the plug: you find more than five thousand reviews of books from the aforementioned site and others, along with notes on films from The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made and other lists on my blog and YouTube channel https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html

 

Staying On by Paul Scott has won The 1977 Booker Prize, when it was competing against another author that I admire, Barbara Pym, it is also included on the list of 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read, in the State of Nation section, while on The Greatest Books of All Time site it is ranked only 2938^th, nevertheless, it is a novel that I enjoyed now, the second time when I read it, albeit I was not overwhelmed the first time – now for the plug: you find more than five thousand reviews of books from the aforementioned site and others, along with notes on films from The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made and other lists on my blog and YouTube channel https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html

 

 

10 out of 10

 

Staying On has been a joy to read for the second time, though I wonder what has happened the first time, when the exhilaration has been missing, with age, I must feel more compassion for Colonel Tusker Smalley in particular, since we learn about his death from the first lines, and then readers sympathize more with his wife, Lucy

This novel deserves The Booker, even if it has been in competition with Quartet in Autumn https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/07/quartet-in-autumn-by-barbara-pym-was.html by another favorite author of mine, Barbara Pym, Staying On is both tragic and amusing on almost every page, it is a book that I may read again

 

Staying On refers to the fact that Colonel Smalley decides to stay on, after the ‘debacle’, as his spouse calls it, against her wishes really, he will write a last note in which he calls this ‘hanging on’, the circumstances were adversarial, he was forty-seven when the British agreed to India’s independence, too old to start something new

He was also some ten years too young, in that his retirement package would not be enough to provide a decent living, at least not in Britain, so he thought that given the different standard of living at the time (and now) they would be rich, compared with the average Indian, although not the ones they were mixing with, as he puts it

 

I wonder how this compares with A Passage to India https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/04/a-passage-to-india-by-em-forster-is.html which is on The Modern Library’s Best 100 Novels list, and not just that, it is in the Top 20…Magister Ludi Kingsley Amis wrote:

“EM Forster isn't the old bastard tedious and diffuse? Could you ever read 'A India'? Because I never could.”

 

Mrs. Lila Bhoolabhoy is the most important character, after the Smalley couple, she is larger than life, obese and with a very strong, and obnoxious personality, cruel to her nymphomaniac husband, greedy, she is the owner of the Smith’s Hotel and the British couple are renting an annex from her, until the end of the book

She wants to be part of a consortium, ergo she has to accept their conditions and plans: they are interested in The Smith’s and annexes only as land to built something else on, so they will demolish the thing and want the tenants out, something that will shatter the peace of the colonel, who had already had a heart attack

 

They have already had conflicts, the latest regarding the grass that will get ‘jungly’, which used to be the duty of ‘ownership’, but a change in the lease ‘made fools’ of the colonel and his wife, and Lucy Smalley hires some help, without her husband’s knowledge, so that he does not feel humiliated further by Mrs. Lila Bhoolabhoy

In the end, Tusker will find, if he had not guessed already, and he is furious, arguing with their only servant, Ibrahim, his wife, and the shock of getting his eviction letter is too much for his heart and he dies

 

Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – I am on Goodreads as Realini Ionescu, at least for the moment, if I keep on expressing my views on Orange Woland aka TACO, it may be a short-lived presence

Also, maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the benefits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

 There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

 

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

 

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’