Best of Ten!
It’s a warm day in the spring of 1924, Mothering Sunday, a day when servants are released from their duties to visit their mothers. Jane Fairchild is a young maid in the home of the Nivenses, but she has no mother. She plans to curl up with a good book until she receives a phone call from her long-time lover.
Her lover is Paul Sheringham, the only son left after World War I to a neighborhood family. Although he is to be married in two weeks, he sets up a tryst with Jane in his own home while his parents and the servants are out.
Jane is to revisit these hours spent with her lover for the rest of her life. For something happens that afternoon that changes the course of her life.
This is a remarkable novel. It is very short, but it somehow covers the course of Jane’s entire life while minutely examining one scene, the meeting with her lover. It touches on every action and word, considers them from several sides just as the mind does as it re-examines an event. At the same time, it examines what qualities make a writer and what a writer attempts to do when writing. This is an excellent novel I read for my Walter Scott Prize project.
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I enjoyed this one too and was impressed by how much was packed into such a short book.
Yes, it was really well done.
Taking notice, ladies, 🙂
I adored this book; read it in one sitting & almost started it again straight away when I finished it; I loved it sooo much.
It’s really good.
I must get round to reading this I’ve only heard wonderful things about it
I am so pleased that you felt as I did about this novella. I was absolutely stunned by it; it showed me how great a short novel can be. So much content and nothing rushed or skipped over. One of my favourites 🙂
Sounds very impressive. Thanks!