A Five Year Sentence by Bernice Rubens

A Five Year Sentence Reviews

• 
  Warwick

  This book's salmon-pink cover, and vague air of twee English provincialism, belie a devastating and utterly ruthless narrative lurking under the surface. A Five Year Sentence puts its characters, and its readers, firmly in a vice – quite openly, without any deception – and then proceeds to turn the screw, rotation by rotation, unblinkingly and deliberately until something goes pop. It is breathtakingly uncompromising.
  
  Bernice Rubens starts with some quite simple, blackly comic elements – the retiring spinster, the overbearing mother, the blandness of suburbia, the tyranny of routine – and with quite extraordinary resolve, she follows them all the way through to the darker recesses of human psychology: sexual deprivation, the need to submit or to dominate, the twisted resentment of parental dependence, the ultraviolence implicit in prolonged frustration. Though such themes are not exactly ignored by writers or filmmakers, they are usually explored by means of photogenic twentysomethings who give them a veneer of titillation. And much as I love veneers of titillation, there is something ferocious about seeing the same ideas made to play out in this handful of damaged, dislikable sexagenarians.
  
  This book really took me by surprise. I was stunned and delighted by the skill and the fearlessness in the writing, even while I was horrified by its effects. It lost out on the Booker in 1978, but for my money it seems even more unusual and worth reading now, when its themes have been so taken over by other, more seductive and less clear-sighted narratives.
• 
  Paul Bryant

  This old English dame is retiring from the boring factory where nothing has happened to her in her entire life, in fact less than nothing, all she’s ever done her entire life is followed orders, but now there will be no more orders as she’s retiring, so she figures she will commit suicide (only natural) but as a leaving present they give her a five year diary and she comes up with a plan where the diary will give her orders if she writes them down in it for the following day which she does and of course at first they’re all simple like “go to library” but then because she’s all alone not even a cat no friends and never married and was a cruelly treated orphan so has no family (this is a comedy) the diary orders get more daring like “go to the library and meet a man” which she does only the guy she meets turns out to be a number one creep – this dame never ever gets a break (this is a comedy).
  
  The guy she meets, this Brian, he realises that she’s so lonely he can charge her for his physical services, like a gigolo, but that word does not get a mention. So he writes up a menu, like in a restaurant, where it’s 5p for hand holding, 10p for knee caressing, and so forth. For some reason I was reminded of an old song from the 1920s
  
  I brought my girl an apple, she let me hold her hand
  I brought my girl an orange, we kissed beneath the band
  I brought my girl bananas, she let me squeeze her tight
  I'm going to bring a watermelon to my girl tonight.
  
  But she does not pay him to bring her a watermelon to begin with. And I was also reminded of that contract thing in 50 Shades but it’s actually not like that although you have to say that this dame is a masochist and Christian Grey woulda had her in the red Room of Pain quicker than you could sing I brought a watermelon to my girl last night but of course he would not have done that cause this dame is old.
  
  The fun in this book is seeing an old dame beginning to dream these ridiculous romantic dreams about this creep Brian and then have these dreams crushed until the total horror of her self inflicted situation is clear even to her blind eyes. It’s a comedy.
• 
  Hugh

  Another one from the 1978 Booker shortlist. This book is bleak, relentless, full of savage humour, and undoubtedly memorable. At the start of the book we find Jean planning a suicide on the morning of her final day at work. A product of a strict and loveless orphanage, she has spent a life of duty working in a sweet factory, and as a leaving present her colleagues give her a five-year diary. This becomes another form of duty, as she sets herself tasks and ticks them off, taking her outside the simple limits of her experience - initially towards a form of fulfilment, but ultimately towards a disastrous denouement.
  
  The 1978 shortlist was such a strong one that I can't place this one any higher than fifth on my list, but reading them has been an intriguing project.
• 
  Paula Mota

  Miss Hawkins looked at her watch. It was two-thirty. If everything went according to schedule, she could safely reckon to be dead by six o'clock.
  
  Claro que um começo destes me fez logo ficar de orelhas em riste. Miss Hawkins é uma desgraçada sem amigos nem família, que cresceu num orfanato sob alçada de uma directora digna de Dickens, perita em castigos, humilhações e na omnipresente ameaça do inferno para as pecadoras. Depois de décadas a trabalhar numa fábrica de doces e a tricotar um cachecol interminável para canalizar a sua frustração e fúria, Miss Hawkins reforma-se e, sem outro propósito na vida, decide suicidar-se. O seu plano, porém, sai gorado porque lhe oferecem um diário para os próximos cinco anos, e sendo a pessoa obediente que foi ensinada a ser, encara a oferta como uma ordem e sempre que inventa algum acontecimento para escrever nele, sente-se na obrigação de o cumprir. A ideia seria excelente se Bernice Rubens usasse este estratagema para fazer a sua protagonista desabrochar e recuperar o tempo perdido, mas preferiu enveredar pelo fácil e pelo óbvio: pôr-lhe um homem à frente.
  Em vários momentos Miss Hawkins fez-me lembrar as protagonistas de dois livros de que gostei bastante, “Educação de Eleanor” e “Quanto Mais Depressa Ando, Mais Pequena Sou”, mas nestes dois casos, o humor negro e a falta de competências sociais é explorado de forma mais satisfatória. Gosto quando um/a autor/a estima as suas personagens, por mais desajustadas que sejam, e não senti isso em “A Five Year Sentence”.
• 
  Amanda

  Books like this are why I love Goodreads groups. I would have never come to this book on my own.
  
  This was deeply disturbing novel. I was written in the late 1970's but it felt more like something from an earlier time.
  
  Miss Hawkins is an about to be retired factory worker. She is an orphan and has never been married or even had any relationships that we can tell. She is all about following directions and order. She doesn't think she can survive retirement. As a leaving present she receives a five-year diary, which she uses to give her life some meaning. She takes great pleasure in writing herself little directives and then ticking them off at the end of the day.
  
  Things get complicated and then devastating when she meets Brian. Both Miss Hawkins and Brian are unstable and have suffered various different kinds of abuse. To say anything more would spoil the story but if you are looking for a quick (but certainly not light) read, I recommend this one.
• 
  Nicole

  That was a deeply disturbing little book. I was not expecting it to go right down into the depths of abuse and rage and masochism and subservience, but it did. I place it alongside Mary Gaitskill's work for tackling some of the parts of human experience that people really don't want to look at, without the softening of cleverness or wit or the wink at the reader none of that ha ha I'm writing from the perspective of a serial killer, but we all know it's a game, and aren't we all having fun?
• 
  Elizabeth (Alaska)

  On the day of her retirement, Miss Hawkins plans her suicide. She carefully checks to see if her cupboards are clean, that her clothes are clean and carefully folded or hung. She wants nothing left that would leave a negative opinion.
  
  But at her retirement, she is given a 5-year diary. As a person who has followed instructions all her life, she now feels she must postpone her plans so that she can fill in the diary’s pages. This is the five year sentence of the title. The humor of nearly the first half-life the novel, is that she first writes instructions for herself and then ticks them off. Took a long walk: tick; Went to the library: tick; Met a man: tick.
  
  Miss Hawkins has been single all of her life. We are told about her childhood in more detail than her working life, but it is obvious she has been single all of her life. About men, she knows nothing, and oh meeting this man is quite possibly the most exciting thing that has ever happened to her. ... transported into a beat of life that was never ugly, never lonely, never poor, and ever sick.
  
  I liked the way Rubens writes. I thought the characterizations of the two main characters quite good, that of Miss Hawkins fully-fleshed, that of Brian Watts somewhat less so. The plot is relatively simple and straight-forward. Unfortunately, I found the ending predictable. For this last reason, it is just a middling 4-stars.
• 
  Nancy

  Blackly, bleakly humorous and horrifying in its depiction of desire and deprivation, of domination and the need to be loved - unfulfilled. No one is deserving, no one is even kind. A gut punch. Thoreau's "the mass of men live lives of quiet desperation" on steroids.
• 
  George

  A dark, sad, sometimes comical, memorable read with two main characters. Miss Jean Hawkins is in her 60s and now retired. As a parting gift, Miss Hawkins receives a five year diary from her candy factory work colleagues. Miss Hawkins has no friends and uses the diary as a means of getting her to do activities. For example, she writes ‘invited a man to dinner’ and then to fulfil her diary record, makes herself meet a man and ask him to dinner. It happens to be a retired man named Brian Watts, who has always lived with his mother. His mother is now dependant on care and Brian cares for her. Brian sees Miss Hawkins every Monday afternoon.
  
  Miss Hawkins has no family. She grew up in an orphanage and when she left the orphanage she found work at a candy factory where she worked her whole working life.
  
  A short novel that has well developed characters and good plot momentum.
  
  Shortlisted for the 1978 Booker Prize. Bernice Rubens won the 1970 Booker Prize for her novel, ‘The Elected Member’. Bernice Rubens wrote 25 novels.
• 
  Jane

  I used to walk past Bernice Rubens’ books in the library, thinking they were a little too literary, a little too serious for me. But in recent months I’ve found myself enjoying books by authors I thought weren’t for me, and so when this book popped up on a list of recommendations I took a closer look.
  
  The opening sentences were striking;
  
  “Miss Hawkins looked at her watch. It was two-thirty. If everything went according to schedule, she could safely reckon to be dead by six o’clock.”
  
  I was intrigued and, although the story promised to be dark, but there was simplicity, clarity and real humanity on the sentences that followed, and so I had to read on.
  
  I learned that Miss Hawkins had been raised in an orphanage, that she had worked in the same factory office for forty-six years, and that on reaching retirement age she thought that her life was over. She lived alone, she had never acquired the knack of making friends and building relationships, she just moved forward through life flowing the rules she was given in the orphanage.
  
  A Five Year SentenceMiss Hawkins’ plans were thrown into disarray when she was presented with a retirement gift. A five year diary.
  
  She saw that as an instruction to live, and she decided that her diary would direct the rest of her life. So she didn’t record what she had done, she recorded what she was going to do. And when she did it she happily ticked it off in red crayon.
  
  She started with small things. Window shopping. A trip to the library. A new knitting project. And as she gained in confidence her ambition grew.
  
  It was lovely to read. I suspected that Miss Hawkins had always wanted to live, that she had just wanted somebody – or, as it turned out, something – to guide her.
  
  Miss Hawkins decided that she should meet a man. And that the library the library would be a happy hunting ground. It was – she met Brian, who was there to change his mother’s library books.
  
  Brian was as much of a lost soul as Miss Hawkins; he had never quite escaped from his domineering mother.
  
  But the story turned dark, as Brian found in Miss Hawkins a solution to his own unhappy life. Miss Hawkins reflected on her troubled childhood in the orphanage, and made plans for a happy ending that I knew would never be. And the diary counted down the days, What would happen at the end of five years?
  
  The story that plays out is simple, engaging, and very, very cleverly constructed. It’s beautifully written, and the style suits the story and the characters wonderfully well. The ending made perfect sense, and yet I hadn’t know quite what it would be until we got there.
  
  I hoped for the best for Miss Hawkins, but I feared the worst as she became increasingly detached from reality. And I wanted Brian to get his come-uppance, though I was less than sure that he would.
  
  If only the diary had told Miss Hawkins that she would meet another single lady, that they would be friends and companions, how nicely that could have played out … but that would be a different story …
  
  This story is strange and dark, but it is also poignant, and it tells some very real truths. The way it evolves is wonderful. I don’t usually like comparing authors, but this is the best way I can think of explaining without giving too much away.
  
  ◾As I read the early chapters I thought of Margery Sharp.
  ◾As I read the middle chapters I thought of Muriel Spark.
  ◾As I read the final chapters I thought of Barbara Vine.
  
  Three wonderful authors, but Bernice Rubens had a voice and a style that was entirely her own.
  
  I can see half a dozen of her books in the library’s fiction reserve, and I am sure that I’ll be ordering one of them in before too long.
  
• 
  Sarah

  This book is brilliant and bonkers! I can’t say all the reasons I love it without spoiling the story but I can’t imagine anyone who wouldn't enjoy it. Darkly funny, sad, shocking, exciting .... my bathwater ran over and I’m late for work 😳 I couldn’t put it down. Grier you are my guru ❤️ And Lynn too.
• 
  Doug

  An odd little book, shortlisted for the 1978 Booker Award, it seems more like a novel from the '50's. Although humorous, it is ultimately somewhat sad, as it depicts the dwindling fortunes (romantic and financial) of a spinsterish orphan, who after deciding to kill herself upon retirement from her dreary job in a candy factory, decides she must live in order to fill up the five year diary presented as a present upon such occasion. She meets a man with whom she begins a relationship whereby she pays him for each little romantic 'favor' - and this is where I begin to quibble. The arrangement is initially presented as strictly financial, but morphs halfway through the book inexplicably, whereby she then asserts that the money paid her gigolo is being set aside in investments for her. This makes little or no sense, since Brian would than have no incentive for carrying out his 'obligations'. My other objection is that the chapters detailing Brian's life (with his other customers, as well as his crotchety incontinent mother) take over the book - for the better - and one wonders why HE wasn't the focal point all along, rather than the dispiriting Miss Hawkins.
• 
  Ali

  I was sent this novel by another bookcrosser as part of a surpeise RABCK. I have another Bernice Rubens novel on my wishlist (The Elected Member) but I hadn't previously heard of this novel, or had any experience of her work.
  This really is quite an unusual novel. It is beautifully written, the characters poignantly drawn. It is a novel I will find hard to forget, and I certainly enjoyed it, if that is the right word, and am now keen to read more by this author.
  The novel opens on the day of Miss Hawkin's retirement after 46 years. She has decided to kill herself. However her plans are thwarted when her colleagues present her with a five year diary. Having been slavishly obedient all her life, Miss Hawkins sees this as an instruction to live. Her diary starts to direct her entire life. Instead of writing in it what she has done, she writes what she will do - and then joyously ticks her achievements off in red crayon. Miss Hawkins starts to embrace life and all it's passions. She is aided by the rather creepy Brian whom she meets at the library. Things take rather a dark turn as Brian finds in Miss Hawkins a solution to his own deeply unsatisfactory life. In her loneliness Miss Hawkins reflects on her dreadful childhood in the orphanage, and invents Maurice whom she dines with and talks with from time to time. The ending is stark and inevitable, and quietly brilliant.
• 
  Ade Bailey

  Stunning!
  
  My first acquaintance with a marvellous writer.
  
  She lays out starkly the contours of a diseased soul. Funny and formally delightful, a perfect example of how literature always excels academic studies of the human condition.
• 
  GEORGIA

  I also give my diary a little too much power
• 
  Jonathan Pool

  
  "In his pin - striped suit, and pointed shoes, he looked like a travelling salesman with a suitcase full of cunning"p176
  
  Thus Brian Watts is described in A Five Year Sentence.
  
  It's rare to find a book where every main character is deeply flawed, but this is exactly what Bernice Rubens delivers. For the reader there's a ghastly inevitability that things won't turn out well.
  
  In 2016, the Internet, and dubious internet sites with bogus alter egos are lying in wait for the unwary. In the 1970's the world was seemingly just as duplicitous.
  
  A Five Year Sentence is very well written, and it deals expertly with orphanages, old age and avarice.
  
  A good quick, ultimately humourous, read.
  
  
  
• 
  Forestofglory

  I gave up on this half-way through. The premise is interesting, but the relationship dynamic between the two main characters was making me cringe and want to throw things.
• 
  Stefani

  An article in last week's NY Times profiled a "new trend" of elderly Japanese people
  https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/world/asia/japan-lonely-deaths-the-end.html living isolated lives in senior communities, a pattern that seems a bit out of whack given the past prevalence of intergenerational living in Eastern cultures that seemed to cushion the old from the sort of nursing home gulag/cat-food eating, solitary existence old people in Western culture seem to fall into. The article goes on to mention a few gruesome anecdotes involving dead bodies—discovered only after their decomposing smells wafted into other tenant's apartments—and the true nightmare of an unseen existence begins to take shape.
  
  In A Five Year Sentence Miss Hawkins seems destined for a similar fate. Abandoned by her parents, Hawkins spends her formative years at an orphanage trembling under the tutelage of a matron who taunts her with the venom of hellfire and eternal damnation. On to adulthood, where she spends her lifetime working at a candy factory, only to retire and to be confronted with overwhelming loneliness and solitude, having no friends, family, or pets to speak of. She contemplates suicide, but reconsiders when her former colleagues gift her with a "5-Year Diary" (kind of a strange gift for anyone other than a teenage girl) and the ever-dutiful Hawkins feels compelled to fill the pages with exactly the kind of events her life has been entirely lacking up to this point, challenging herself with a series of daily commands that become increasingly more bold as time goes on. She soon meets a man, Brian, but insists on paying him for his "services" in a bizarre attempt to evade the guilt and shame she feels in association with her sexuality. Gradually, Hawkins becomes more and more entrenched in a fantasy world involving Brian, and her delusions threaten to both impoverish and embarrass her.
  
  As another reviewer mentioned, I see the similarities to Mary Gaitskill and her ability to expose the deepest and most unpleasant facets of human nature. I was prepared to be depressed, but the sad was nicely balanced with a lot of darkly comic moments, phenomenal writing, and an energetic storyline. The ending will be shocking but also deeply satisfying.
• 
  Colin Davison

  Teasing and original, Rubens' black comedy manages both to entertain and to unnerve by dredging up those deeper instincts that most of us are too sane or socialised to indulge.
  Miss Hawkins, raised in an orphanage where another girl Morris committed suicide, has led a ghost of a life, without friends or purpose, doing what she is told, so plans to kill herself on the day after her retirement. Until, that is, she is given a five-year diary, with the implied obligation to make an entry every day.
  The meek, obeisant woman may be half-crazy, but who will not recognise that compulsion to comply, then to tick off the tasks and challenges she records for herself in advance every day?
  As a result, along comes creepy Brian, a 60-year-old mother-dominated, virgin gigolo, who charges her (and others) for knee-trembling services, that are all the spookier for stopping short of the full works. He's a rotter, of course, and there's an interesting twist after his business with another client leads via intercourse to a marriage of mutual prostitution. This perhaps lies at the dark heart of Rubens' original concept, as much as her portrait a life trapped within a shell of loneliness and submission.
  Meanwhile, like Tom Hanks and his Wilson volleyball in Cast Away, Miss H invents the homophonic Maurice with a black-crayoned moustache on the mirror to share her thoughts and anxieties. And in a marvellously surreal fantasy at the height of her deluded idea of marriage, imagines introducing him to Brian's mother.
  Sad, mad, but real enough to be pitiable, and to be excused the savage satisfaction to come.
  
• 
  John

  Auto recommended at another site, so I decided to start with this title. A bit difficult to explain without spoilers, but I'll do my best ...
  
  Starts off with the fascinating premise of the main character deciding to do away with herself after her retirement party since she sees no future ahead. However, that idea is thwarted at the last minute. We also get to learn some details of who she was to get to that point. The author is quite good at releasing them slowly rather than dumping information during the story.
  
  The next set of events started out promising, but gradually became more grim which left me wondering what could be the point of the story for a "payoff" as they say? Around 2/3 of the way through the book, a dramatic plot twist appeared, signaling a showdown, working well to create tension.
  
  Since the narration does include other points of view, the reader is left wondering how the main character will react when she learns the truth of a situation she has handled with blissful ignorance. Not quite the conclusion I expected, but it works well.
  
  Rubens' style reminded me somewhat of Jane Gardam, so fans of the latyer's works might be interested in this story. I'm looking forward to the other Rubens books on my TBR list.
  
• 
  Jerry Pogan

  A slightly humorous but disturbing tale of an old woman who received a five year diary as a gift at her retirement. Her intention had been to kill herself after her retirement party but with the diary she felt obligated to continue living for the required five years to fill out the diary. Hers had been a lonely life, having grown up in an orphanage and never marrying. She had never had any friends or relatives her entire life. She found that she had little to write in her diary and so began making up things to write which she then felt obligated to actually do. One day she wrote in the diary that she met a man and so felt obligated to go out and meet a man. This led to a very disturbing and disastrous relationship.
• 
  Elif Yıldız

  Ayakta kalmanın maliyeti yüksekti.
  
  Yıllarca birileri tarafından yönetilerek yaşamış bir kadın. Bayan Hawkins’in hikayesi çok değişik aynı zamanda da çok korkunçtu. Kaldığı yetimhanenin müdiresinin psikolojik şiddetine yıllarca maruz kalmış. O kadar bastırılmış ki kadının zihni hastalıklı duruma gelmiş artık. Bir gün hayatını kendi başına yaşamaya başladığında bir erkekle tanışıyor ya da tanışması gerektiğine inanıyor ve işler iyice sarpa sarıyor. Biz de okurlar olarak bastırılmış, yaşanmamış bir hayatın aslında ne kadar tehlikeli ve yaralayıcı olabileceğini okuyoruz.
  Eğer farklı bir kalem ve değişik bir yaşam hikayesi okumak isterseniz tercih edilebilir.
• 
  Sally Green

  I admired many aspects of this extremely odd book, but I also found Miss Hawkins' final fixation in particular (trying to avoid a spoiler here) unconvincing, which took me out of the story. I loved her sentence craft at the beginning, and the bravery and reach of the narrative, but some crucial passages that established her character went by too fast and were unconvincing, while the major plot twist relied on too much coincidence. But what a vision, wow! and Ick!
• 
  Rob Forteath

  This novella is something like "Diary of a Nobody", but with decidedly anti-social twists.
  
  It's completely hilarious through the first part, then perhaps less so as the conclusion is marched towards. The three main characters are somewhat pathetic, hopelessly lonely and stunted, and each has longed for the death of at least one other person. So we aren't cheering too hard for any of them.
  
  This is a quick and enjoyable read -- and your own life will seem not so bad, in comparison. ;-)
• 
  Chrystal

  This started off well - Rubens was a fine writer with a wickedly funny turn of phrase. I thought the book was going to be an uplifting story with a positive message about being purposeful with how you spend each day & finding joy in every moment. It soon turned ugly and depressing and ended up being horrible & morbid.
• 
  Kathrin Passig

  Erste Hälfte ein großes Vergnügen, die zweite fand ich weniger überzeugend. "Drei Jahre später" ist im Film wie im Buch immer schwierig, vor allem, wenn im Abschnitt davor viel passiert ist und im Abschnitt danach auch wieder viel passiert. Aber in den drei Jahren dazwischen soll einfach nur Zeit vergangen sein.
• 
  Katharine Harding

  I read this because Bernice Rubens was also from Cardiff. When I began it I thought it was going to be like an early version of Eleanor Oliphaunt is Completely Fine, but it rapidly became much darker than that. Wow. Very dark. Bernice Rubens deserves to be better known and I will look out for more of her books.