British author Jane Gardam has had a long and successful career in her home country but for one reason or another has remained fairly unknown here in the United States. Hopefully that will change because her writing is of a quality and elegance that should not be overlooked. Old Filth is the novel to start with and is a paperback original that came out in 2006, and The Man in the Wooden Hat came out in 2009.

On the first page you discover that the title Old Filth is the nickname of the main character Sir Edward Feathers and it stands for "Failed In London, Try Hong Kong". Filth has had a long and successful career as a judge and advocate in Hong Kong, but is now retired and in his eighties. Filth and his wife Betty returned to England and lived in a cottage in Dorset. The recent death of Betty has left a void and has been a trigger for the release of buried memories from his youth, experiences that have shaped his life. Born in Malaya of a mother who died days after his birth and a father who ignored his existence, he is shipped off at age five to a foster home in Wales, and then to boarding school. You learn of his dysfunctional relations with the family he has, of the few close friendships he finds, and of his experiences guarding the Queen during World War II. As the story progresses, moving back and forth in time, you learn how this man has become who he is today. The road of reckoning and self discovery Filth travels on into his older age is dramatic and powerful but Gardam does a fine job balancing it with wit and humor. This is a beautiful and bittersweet story.

The Man in the Wooden Hat is more of a companion novel than a sequel, and while it is a story interwoven with Old Filth it is a story that holds up on its own extremely well. This is the more feminine of the two books and it concentrates more on of the courtship and marriage of Betty and Sir Edward Feathers. Told mostly from Betty's point of view Gardam masterfully captures her characters with the influences and contradictions that occur living in an exotic land and being a part of a the very best British society.

I loved both of these books and would be hard pressed to tell you which one I preferred, and author Jane Gardam's writing draws you in and captures your imagination. ~Mara