The Man in the Wooden Hat

Written by Jane Gardam

Narrated by Bill Wallace

Acclaimed as Jane Gardam’s masterpiece, Old Filth is a lyrical novel that recalls the fully lived life of Sir Edward
Feathers. The Man in the Wooden Hat is the history of his marriage told from the perspective of his wife, Betty, a
character as vivid and enchanting as Filth himself.

They met in Hong Kong after the war. Betty had spent the duration in a Japanese internment camp. Filth was
already a successful barrister, handsome, fast becoming rich, in need of a wife but unaccustomed to romance. A perfect
English couple of the late 1940s.

As a portrait of a marriage, with all the bittersweet secrets and surprising fulfillment of the fifty-year union of two
remarkable people, this novel is a triumph. The Man in the Wooden Hat is fiction of a very high order from a great
novelist working at the pinnacle of her considerable power.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781705010068

Reviews for The Man in the Wooden Hat

[ma_washigeri · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I read this even faster than 'Old Fith', maybe too fast. I think in the first book I was slowed down a bit by the complex jumping around of time frames which I really enjoyed. This was more straightforward. Another reviewer observed that this book starts with her marriage so I went and checked and 'Old Filth' starts with Betty dead. I felt more sympathy with Betty than with Edward but maybe just a smidgeon less admiration for the book itself. I shall buy book 3 and put it away for a year, hoping it centers on the women friends and not Veneering or Ross.

[liz.mabry · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

My god - absolutely beautiful. I picked this up on a whim before a flight, knowing that I had an afternoon to kill, and I am so, so glad that I did.

Why did I love it so much? Maybe it's the way Ms. Gardam writes about emotionality without becoming maudlin. The characters all stand on their own, and I don't feel she expects or wants me to pity them, even at painful times. Maybe it's the lack of overblown prose - description when necessary, but not so much that I wanted to skip it. Every sentence has a point, even if it comes much later. Maybe it's just the simplicity of tracing the steps of a marriage that endures.

At any rate, it's gone into my permanent favorites category, and I suspect will be one of those books that I'm pressing others to read.

[quondame · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The writing is once again gorgeous, and for me worth the time spent, but I didn't find Betty and her trials any more fundamentally engaging than I found Filth.What was actually a premarital affair really is made a big deal of and the book concentrates on a less than 3 year stretch of a 30 year marriage. And the end, except that Albert Russ survived Filth, is pretty much a repeat of [Old Filth]. Early sexual adventurism and it's later revelation is really thin material.

[thorold_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The storyline of Old Filth doesn't seem to offer much scope for sequels - it's pretty much a cradle-to-grave novel, with no obvious sign of a younger generation following - but, like Laurence Durrell in The Alexandria Quartet, or like Ford Maddox Ford in The good soldier, Gardam uses the trick of going back over essentially the same material from the viewpoint of a different central character, and showing us how it can all be read with quite a different slant. I think she must have had FMF in the back of her mind - Sir Edward Feathers sometimes seems to have more than a hint of Ashburnham (or even Tietjens) about him.The man in the wooden hat puts Feathers's wife, Betty, in the spotlight, and shows us something about the history of the love affair hinted at in the first book, but what it's really interested in is the way two people who are married for fifty years and may be presumed to know each other better than anyone else does, can still have important pieces of their lives that they aren't prepared to share - whether or not their "secrets" are really secret. And what the presence of those "secrets" in their lives means to them.I felt that this was perhaps even a better, more complicated novel than Old Filth, although it's difficult to assess, because it does also rest quite heavily on the heavy work of exposition and scene-setting that's already been done in the first volume. Certainly, Gardam seems to be more comfortable with Betty as a character, and is more prepared to take risks and let herself be witty.

[clue_4 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is the second book in the Old Filth trilogy. The first book, about Edward's and Elisabeth's life together, is told from Edward's point of view. This book is told from Elisabeth's. If you have read Old Filth (Failed in London, Try Hong Kong), you know the basic story although, not surprisingly, Elisabeth sees things differently than her husband. She has interests that Edward didn't speak of and lives apart from Edward mostly happily during the later part of their marriage. We learn that both have secrets.

[wassilissa · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Der zweite Teil von Jane Gardams "Old Filth"-Trilogie beschreibt die bereits im ersten Teil geschilderten Geschehnisse aus der Perspektive von Feathers Frau Betty. Ich finde schon, dass man den ersten Teil kennen muss, denn im zweiten Buch sind die Personen und Geschehnisse weniger akribisch ausgearbeitet. Es würden doch wesentliche Teile fehlen. Im ersten Teil werden die Nebenfiguren so gelungen dargestellt, dass diese Kenntnisse eine gute Grundlage für den zweiten Band bieten. Doch das zweite Buch ist mitnichten eine reine Nacherzählung des ersten aus anderem Blickwinkel. Es bringt neue Themen und ist sehr gut zu lesen.Aus meiner Sicht steht in "Eine treue Frau" im Zentrum, dass man eine lebenslange (und auch gute) Ehe führen kann, ohne über den anderen wirklich Bescheid zu wissen. Ehe ist immer ein Kompromiss, der hier aus Bettys Sicht auch im klaren Bewusstsein dieser Tatsache eingegangen wird: Liebend und doch wissend, dass es auch Gras auf der anderen Seite des Zaunes gibt. Am schwersten wiegt sicher die ungewollte Kinderlosigkeit: Betty geht die Beziehung nicht in erster Linie ein, weil sie Filth heiraten möchte, sondern auch, weil sie eine Familie gründen möchte. Auch aus dieser Tatsache heraus kann man Ihre lebenslange Zuneigung zu Harry und Terry Veneering erklären. Sie ist nicht nur Terrys Geliebte, ganz zuerst ist sie für seinen Sohn eine mütterliche Figur, nimmt einenRolle an, die Elsie Veneering nicht ausfüllt. In dieser Rolle wird sie von beiden geliebt.Dieses zweite Buch zeigt die ganze Meisterschaft in Jane Gardams Trilogie. Sie entwirft eine Konstellation an Figuren und Handlungen, die insgesamt aus allen Perspektiven glaubhaft und plausibel erscheint. Am besten ist das natürlich an den Szenen zu erkennen, die sich in beiden Büchern finden. Dass Gardam dabei auch die Blickwinkel wechselt, macht das Buch besonders interessant.

[chazzifrazz · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is the second book in the "Old Filth" trilogy. The story is told from the perspective of Betty Feathers, Old Filth's wife. They meet in Hong Kong after WWII. She has spent time in a Japanese internment camp, later went to boarding school and Oxford and worked at Bletchley Park as a code breaker. She receives his marriage proposal by mail on his official letterhead. He is looking for a proper wife who will always stay with him. She is looking for marriage, stability and children. Neither is exactly what the other is looking for, and both have secrets that they think are hidden from each other.This tells the story of two people who are more dependent on each other than they think. Also how they make their lives mesh while rising to higher levels in society. Filth through his work in the courts and Betty with her involvement in running a house with staff, social duties and being a successful barrister's wife.Two other characters are woven into this tapestry. They are Filth's nemesis Veneering and Veneering's son Harry. Harry becomes the child that Betty never had, in her eyes and mind, even though she is not his mother.Written in a style that carries the reader along, with descriptions, situations - humourous and serious, and supporting characters, it is a book to take time reading and not racing through.

[pgchuis · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The second in the series, with the perspective mostly that of Edward's wife Betty. I liked this more than the first novel, and there were various revelations about Betty's relationship with Veneering, which filled in things I had been wondering about. Also a couple of shock revelations about Edward. Looking forward to the third.

[bookconcierge · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Wonderful British story of a decades-long marriage. A companion to the earlier work "Old Filth," but this time told from wife Betty's point of view. I've not read the earlier work, so I don't know if I would still have been surprised by some of the revelations in this book.

[vicki_weisfeld · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Getting to know intimately one half of a married couple can ill prepare you for meeting the other half, who may fail to live up to their superior advance billing, or, as likely, be so surprisingly normal—even pleasant—that you mistrust your own memory of past marital revelations. Award-winning British writer Jane Gardem’s books Old Filth (from the husband’s point of view) and The Man in the Wooden Hat (the wife’s) apply these different lenses to the same 50-year marriage. I’ve read only this one, published in 2009, but went back to reviews of Old Filth (2006) and found that many of the animating events in the couple’s life are described in both novels. While the bones of the relationship remain the same, “Little here is as it seemed in ‘Old Filth,’ and both books are the richer for it,” said Louisa Thomas in her New York Times review.The sobriquet Old Filth—created by and applied to talented barrister Edward Feathers, later Sir Edward—is an acronym for “Failed In London, Try HongKong.” Try there, he does, and succeeds. Also in Hong Kong, his future wife Elisabeth Macintosh debates whether to marry him, decides to, and carries through at rather a slap-dash pace in ancient borrowed finery. Eddie’s preoccupation is that Betty should never leave him, and she promises she won’t. This is a promise Betty learns will be enforced by Edward’s best friend, the card-playing Chinese dwarf Albert Ross (“Albatross”): “If you leave him, I will break you,” Ross threatens, and she is sure he means it.The wedding ceremony follows by a few hours a one-night affair, in which Betty is deflowered by Eddie’s nemesis, rival barrister Terry Veneering. Trust Charles Dickens to recognize an allusive name when he hears one; like the nouveau riche social climbers in Our Mutual Friend, this Veneering has a charming surface. His attraction Betty lasts for decades, and he weaves in and out of the story of the couple’s marriage. While a story of interpersonal relationships, the book takes place after World War II, and is necessarily revelatory about broad social upheavals in Britain. Class and privilege are never the same after the unraveling of Empire, the economic upheavals of the decade before the war, and the war itself. The world into which the three protagonists were born simply disappeared beneath their feet and dissolved out of their arms.The novel follows the couple from youth to old age, with Betty’s death planting tulips in their rural garden. Mostly, though, it focuses on their early relationship, including the tragedy of a miscarriage that leaves Betty unable to have her heart’s desire, children. The closest relationship she maintains with a young person is with Veneering’s precocious son, Harry, whom she meets when he is nine years old and “crunching a lobster” under the table at a banquet. She has numerous lively and colorful friends in Hong Kong and later in London, whose appearance in the narrative is always welcome. As for the everyday relationship between the spouses, the reader is shown the benefits of accommodation rather than the head-to-head battles that often characterize such books.Well plotted and carefully written, full of good humor and getting on with it. A third book in the Old Filth trilogy, Last Friends, was published in 2013. It’s a view of the Feathers’s marriage from Veneering’s point of view. Now that should be interesting!

[randymetcalfe · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Often described as the ‘companion’ novel to Gardam’s Old Filth, The Man in the Wooden Hat covers much the same ground but focuses instead on Sir Edward Feather’s wife, Betty. Not exclusively, and not in the way in which Old Filth tells the tale of Sir Edward from earliest boyhood through his traumatic youth to his formative years prior to his career in law. Rather, we catch up with Betty on the verge of her engagement to Eddie. And this forces a disparity between the two characters. For Sir Edward, the reader (of both volumes) has a reasonable grasp from the start of his troubled inner life and this underwrites our sympathy for him both in his youth and his later life. With Betty this is simply not the case. And so a number of her positive actions seem virtually inexplicable, as least to me.Despite the reservation noted above, I think Gardam’s writing is wonderfully spare, elegant, and multi-layered. Betty may be an illusive character, but she is nonetheless fascinating. And she establishes a marked contrast to the other ex-pat women in Hong Kong, both with her opinions, her local knowledge, and her unblinking recognition of the essential untenuousness of British Rule in these colonies.If you’ve read Gardam’s initially offering on these characters, then you’ll need no further inducement to renew acquaintances and carry on. Gently recommended.

[jnwelch_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Man in the Wooden Hat is Jane Gardam's second novel involving the upright and seemingly stodgy Sir Edward Feathers. He is a lawyer and then judge known as Filth, the nickname derived from "Failed In London, Try Hong Kong". In the first novel, Old Filth, he was introduced as a lonely widower residing in western England, looking back on his days of wealth and fame in Hong Kong. This one tells the story from the perspective of his beloved wife Betty, starting with her saying yes to his proposal in a Hong Kong hotel.Gardam is particularly good at letting us see the inner workings of outwardly convention-observing characters, as they struggle with inner yearnings versus the desire to be moral and respectable, and successful in the eyes of others. When, shortly after Filth's proposal, Betty runs into Terry Veneering, Filth's rival, she wishes the proposal had come an hour later. That attraction will have have long lasting effects for all of them.The steamy Hong Kong and austere English countryside atmospheres are vividly portrayed, and there are revelations around every corner, including a corker at the end. Betty evolves from a clever but unworldly youngster with "unpainted, sandy toenails" to a decisive ruler of her realm. What a feat for Gardam to so engagingly tell the story from two different perspectives in two different novels. A third novel, Last Friends, will tell the story from the POV of Filth's rival Veneering. Reading high quality writing always feels good, and like the first novel, this one is cleverly conceived and affecting, as you find out more about all three protagonists. Four stars, and it may well deserve more.

[katiekrug · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I loved this book just as much as I did Old Filth. This is mostly Betty's story, and just like Filth's, it is a bittersweet, funny, and moving story of an individual in search of herself. As a portrait of love and marriage, with all the attendant flaws and misunderstandings and missed opportunities, it is spot on and told with warmth and humor. A very wise and wonderful novel.

[sianpr · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Excellent story telling. Enjoyed this more than Old Filth.

[y2ash · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The Man in the Wooden Hat is told from Betty's, Old Filth's wife, point of view. It depicts a young Betty becoming engaged via letter to Edward Feathers a.k.a Old Filth. However, while accompanying him to a party she lays eyes on Terry Veneering, Filth's long time adversary, and is smitten. That same night they have relations with Betty vowing she won't get married to Filth.

Except that she does but still holds a torch for Veneering as he does her. After suffering a miscarriage, she becomes even more attached to Veneering's son, Harry. She visits him when it looks like one of his legs might be amputated and gives him a significant amount of money for his gambling debts. Harry is a surrogate son for Betty.

Naturally, she is understandably crushed when he is killed in the line of duty. Once again, she resolves to leave Filth once and for all...except she doesn't and channels all of her energy into gardening and decides to bury her "guilty pearls" from Veneering into her garden. Betty finally declares it's too late to leave him and dies. After that it's a quick summary of the events of Old Filth's sort of aging friendship with Veneering until the latter dies. Filth follows him some time after that.

I know The Man in the Wooden Hat is told from Betty's point of view but I never really got the sense of Betty unlike Old Filth did with the titular character. She wasn't as sexually repressed as Old Filth was but she was as emotionally repressed with people her own age. That yearning for children of her own helped her establish a relationship with Harry.

With the exception of her miscarriage, my heart never really went out for Betty. In fact, I felt bad for Filth even more because Betty was such a bitch to him at times. He had abandonment issues and she had some issue that made her more fickle than the weather.

I tried really hard to like her and I once did in the first book despite the cheating but now I pretty much can't stand her and said good riddance once she perished. Despite my misgivings, I thought the book was well written by Gardam.

[cariola_6 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Another lovely installment in the Old Filth trilogy, this one told from the point of view of Betty Macintosh Feathers, Old Filth's wife. Like Edward Feathers, Betty was raised in the far eastern parts of the British commonwealth, and she, too, had lost her parents at a young age. She understands his loneliness and the pleas that comes with his proposal: "Don't ever leave me." Yet almost as soon as she accepts, Betty has regrets--particularly when she meets Eddie's arch rival, Terry Veneering. But a promise is a promise . . . This is the same story we heard in Old Filth, at least from the time that Betty meets Edward Feathers, but here we get her perspective. It's quite intriguing to see how Eddie's interpretation of events differs from the reality that Betty reveals, and to learn of secrets that apparently were never revealed. Like so many women of her day, Betty focused on fulfilling her wifely duties and appeared to lead a rather dull life focused on her tulips, dinner parties, and her husband's career. Gardam lets us see, however, that she has a vibrant inner life, full of secret memories, dreams, and loves. Her relationship with Harry, the Veneerings' young son, is one such secret. Unable to bear children, Betty becomes attached to Harry, a charming and clever boy whom Filth later says is "the only one she ever really loved."The Man in the Wooden Hat serves as a reminder that even ordinary lives can be extraordinary.I'm looking forward to the last book in the Old Filth series and will be seeking out more novels by Jane Gardam, whose writing is beautiful, original, amusing, and moving.

[timtom_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This companion novel to "Old Filth" relates the couple's marriage from the spouse's point of view: here, the story is told by Betty, Filth's wife. While the text still vibrates from Gardam's extraordinary prose and remains throughly enjoyable, I was nevertheless a little bit disappointed and found Betty less interesting than her husband.

[maelinor · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I have always been a great fan of Jane Gardam's writing going back to the Days of Bilgewater ( which I heartily recommend) and I have just finished reading Man in a Wooden Hat for the second time as it was my book club's choice for the month. I found it a rather good novel complimenting the previous Old Filth and short story, The People on Privilege Hill and it saddens me to read that camelling was disappointed with this it but we can't all like the same writing as then we would have nothing to discuss! Reading it for the second time made me go back to reading the other books as well as I found it was like going back to visit old friends and I truly enjoyed the visit. Each stands on it's own merit of course but read together they give a greater understanding of the real character of Ms Gardam's creations.

[cameling_2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

After the charming delight of Old Filth, this was rather a disappointment. Elizabeth Feathers does not enchant, does not endear herself to the reader and remains a rather 2-dimensional figure. At times, I found the writing rather forced, as if the author were trying very hard to convince the reader that this rather spoilt young woman deserves to be embraced wholeheartedly, that she's just misunderstood rather than just a woman behaving badly.

[tangledthread · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book should be read along with Old Filth, one of the author's other titles. They really are companion books...tales of a marriage from the viewpoints of both parties. The Man in the Wooden Hat is Betty's view of her marriage to Old Filth. Both books characterize a time past, when both Betty and Edward were born to British parents living in Asian colonies of the Empire. Edward, aka Old Filth, was a Raj orphan returned to England in a foster home to be raised from the age of 4. Betty was also in England, but the critical influence in her life was being held in a Japanese internment camp in China during the war. The books do compliment and strengthen one another. I strongly recommend that if you read one, you read both.

[carltonc_5 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A wonderful novel made even brighter by being a brilliant complement and sequel to Old Filth.Jane Gardam's prose is perfectly chosen and her style reads so simply and succinctly. Yet she manages to pack in such a story through glimpses into a life, almost a series of connected novellas.The story is of Elizabeth (Betty) Feathers (nee Mackintosh) - her engagement and marriage to Edward (Eddie) Feathers (whose story has been told in Old Filth and the The People on Privilege Hill). A life spent as support to her husband, as he works hard and prospers at the Bar, although we have glimpses of her life and friends before this. We also share meet the brief passion of her life, Terry Veneering, and her love for his son, Harry Veneering. Through this, we learn of the stifled life of the last of the professional British ruling class in Hong Kong, but much more, we learn of the emotional turning points in Betty Feathers' life.A wonderful read, with some satisfying twists at the end that do not change what has gone before, but throw further light on it.

[theampersand · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"The Man in the Wooden Hat" is less a retelling of Gardam's terrific "Old Filth" than a complement to it. While it's narrated by Edward Feathers's wife, Betty, he's still very much the focal point of this story, a compelling, enigmatic, oddly charismatic figure. Those who enjoyed "Old Filth" can expect more of the wonderful same. There's Gardam's startlingly lucid prose, her elegant insights in to her characters' emotional lives, and a slowly developing disquisition of what it means to grow up as a permanent expatriate in a dying Empire. Gardam fans shouldn't expect any major revelations here, though I hardly think they'll mind. The author seems to use Betty's side of this twice-told tale to describe how the effects hastily made decisions can play out over the space of an entire lifetime and how passions felt in one's youth can linger into one's retirement years. Recommended, though readers new to Betty and Edward should certainly start with "Old Filth."

[hazelk_9 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I love the way Jane Gardam knows what to include and what to leave out and how the surprises in the narrative come over as natural rather than props to make the story more interesting. Somehow Betty's actions and inactions seem perfectly comprehensible whereas for some writers the putting on of a green silk dress to the events in the remote tree house some hours later, just as an example, surprise but then appear quite natural and we accept non-judgmentally.The last chapter's revelations were a surprise but Old Filth was never ever such a boring old f..t as his colleagues often thought.A good read indeed.