Tag: 20th century

Review 2046: Dear Hugo

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Sara Montieth has purchased a cottage in a small Scottish border village because she wants a quiet life. She has chosen the village because it was the boyhood home of her young man Ivo, who was killed in the war, and his brother Hugo.

Dear Hugo is an epistemological novel, consisting of Sara’s letters to Hugo, whom she has never met and who lives in Nairobi. It is about her daily life, the people she likes and dislikes, the events in the village. Although she wanted a quiet life, hers becomes eventful, especially after her cousin, who is newly remarried, asks her to take his 13-year-old son Arthur during his school holidays. It’s even more so after Hugo sends them a puppy.

The letters are written with gentle humor and describe all the village characters, including Miss Bonaly, a disapproving spinster who urges Sara not to hire Madge Marchbanks, an unwed mother, to help with the housework, and kindly, perceptive Mrs. Keith, who knew Ivo and Hugo as boys.

This is a nice, gentle novel of village life. It didn’t end quite the way I was hoping for, but I enjoyed it very much.

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Review 2045: A Town Called Solace

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I enjoyed Mary Lawson’s Crow Lake a great deal, but I can say for A Town Called Solace that at some point, I became so interested in it that I had a hard time putting it down to get other things done. This novel is set in 1972 and in memories of 30 years earlier.

Eight-year-old Clara is nearly stunned with anxiety. Her 15-year-old sister Rose ran away from home several weeks ago. Clara’s mother is prostrate from grief, and Clara stays looking out the window, because Rose told her she’d send her a message and she doesn’t want to miss it. She takes comfort in going next door to feed Mrs. Orchard’s cat, as she asked her to do when she went into the hospital. The only thing is, a strange man has appeared in Mrs. Orchard’s house.

That man is Liam. Clara’s parents haven’t told her that Mrs. Orchard died and left everything to Liam, a neighbor from her previous home she took care of when he was four. Liam has recently split from his wife and on hearing of his inheritance, quit his job and traveled all the way to far northern Ontario to Solace. His plan is to fix up the house and sell it, but he slowly becomes involved with people in the community.

Liam, who has always had trouble forming relationships, understands that Clara believes her parents are liars because they didn’t tell her about Mrs. Orchard, so he extends her the peace of his home when he is out so that she can feed and play with the cat, and the courtesy of not lying to her. Periodically, the novel returns a few months in time to Mrs. Orchard’s last few days and her memories of that time when Liam was four years old.

I absolutely loved this book. It is about loneliness and the difference that love and understanding can make in a life. It is empathetic without being mawkish or manipulative. It’s also about ordinary people trying to make their way through life. It’s lovely.

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Review 2041: The Marble Staircase

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Charlotte Moley’s life has always been dominated by others—first by her mother, both before and after her marriage and widowhood, and lately by her grown daughter Alison. Her only periods of happiness were the summers she spent in Italy with Mrs. Gamalion and her friends, long ago before the war.

Now Mrs. Gamalion has left her a legacy—a run-down old house in the coastal town of Nything. It is full of souvenirs of the old lady’s life, and Charlotte decides to keep it and stay there, much to Alison’s disapproval. She also begins making friends, meeting Mrs. Bateman her first night on the esplanade.

Charlotte has old memories to deal with, both of her mother and her disappointment in love one Italian summer. It is Mrs. Gamalion’s gift that helps Charlotte let go of the past and make herself a new life.

I have read and enjoyed every Elizabeth Fair novel that Dean Street Press has reissued. This is another very pleasant light read in this imprint.

I received this book from the publisher in exchange for a free and fair review.

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Review 2037: #ThirkellBar! Private Enterprise

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Private Enterprise is Thirkell’s first wholly post-war Barsetshire novel. It reflects the confusion and discomfort caused by government measures that make things seem more difficult even than during the war.

The novel begins with Noel and Lydia Merton. Noel is back at his law firm, and they are now parents of two small children. To them for part of the summer holidays comes Colin Keith, Lydia’s brother, whom we first met in Summer Half. It is immediately apparent that he has fallen in love, with Mrs. Arbuthnot, a young widow. He is trying to find a house for her and her sister-in-law, Miss Arbuthnot, near Barsetshire.

Colin makes a fool of himself over Mrs. Arbuthnot but manages to find the two women a house. They move in and are quickly welcomed into the community. Again, we meet or hear about quite a few of the characters from previous books, including Mrs. Brandon and Francis Brandon, her son. Mrs. Brandon has gotten older, but we remember how young men used to fall in love with her and Noel Merton enjoyed flirting with her. We’re told several times that Mrs. Arbuthnot resembles her.

Unfortunately, Colin is not the only person who makes a fool of himself over Mrs. Arbuthnot. In the meantime, Miss Arbuthnot, older and less expectant, has her own quiet romance.

I noticed Thirkell’s snobbishness more in this novel than the previous ones, maybe because the others were more fun. It is clear that things are changing for the entitled classes and they don’t like it. Still, this novel seems an accurate record of life for these families (and to some extent of those of the less privileged) in post-World War II England, and I am still enjoying hearing about my favorite characters.

A comment about my edition. In the series up to this book, I have been reading the Virago editions, but Virago chose not to issue the post-war books, so I will have to finish the series reading Moyer Bell editions. As always with Moyer Bell, I am spotting lots of typos that seem to result from machine-reading a word wrong and substituting one that doesn’t make sense. Those are trivial, though, compared to the odd selection of the cover design and pictures at the beginning of each chapter. They are all by John Everett Millais, a Pre-Raphaelite artist. I have nothing against the Pre-Raphaelites, but they were a Victorian movement, and Millais was dead by the beginning of the 20th century. The women depicted in his paintings are dressed completely wrong for post-World War II England, of course, which makes me wonder why these paintings were selected for this novel. It’s a very odd choice. Perhaps the editors thought the novel took place after the Boer War?

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Review 2033: Astonish Me

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I enjoyed Maggie Shipstead’s Great Circle, although maybe I thought it was a little overhyped. However, I liked it well enough to look for something else by her and found Astonish Me.

When ballet dancer Joan sees Arslan Rusakov dance, she falls madly in love with him. A brief encounter leads to a correspondence, and a few years later, in 1975, Joan helps him defect from the USSR. Arslan is not faithful to her, however, and once he finds that she is not a good enough dancer to dance with him, he seems to lose interest.

Joan finds she is pregnant and decides to leave the dance life. She seduces her lifelong friend, Jacob, and marries him. They settle in to a suburban life in California.

Their son Harry develops the same kind of friendship with his neighbor Chloe that Jacob had with Joan—he worships her while she seems often embarrassed by him, yet appreciates his friendship. But as they reach their teens with both turning to ballet, it becomes obvious that Harry will be a great dancer while the jury is still out on Chloe.

At first, I was turned off by Joan’s decision to deceive Jacob. I felt it was particularly unlikely for that time. However, as the novel digs deeper into the fascinating world of dance, I found it more and more compelling. I liked, too, that Shipstead’s characters have their faults. They’re human, not perfect. If anything, I liked this novel better than Great Circle.

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Review 2029: Long Summer Day

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R. F. Delderfield is known for his ability to capture slices of English life, and he certainly does that in this long volume, the first book of A Horseman Riding By.

Paul Craddock is just recovering from being seriously wounded in the Boer War when he learns that his father has died, leaving him a great deal of money and a half share in a scrap metal business. Paul wants nothing to do with scrap metal but thinks he’d like to buy a farm. However, Franz Zorndorff, his father’s business partner, sends him to the West Country to look at Shallowford, a large estate that’s for sale. Although it is much bigger than he had in mind, he ends up buying it.

At first people tend to treat Paul as a dabbler, but he begins to win over the regard of the people in the dale by making improvements to his tenant’s property and by his commitment to his new life. He makes friends with Claire Derwent, and people expect them to marry, but on his original trip to look over the property, he was struck by Grace Lovell.

This novel covers the first nine years of Paul’s Westcountry life, beginning with the accession to the throne of Edward VII in 1902 and ending with the accession of George V. Of course, by then, the First World War is approaching, but not many of the characters in the novel seem to be aware of it. The novel gets somewhat involved in the politics of the time and in the suffragette movement, but it mostly centers on life in the valley.

There is a strong awareness of the dale with many descriptions of it. The novel itself is slow moving with only a few major events, mostly to do with the private lives of the inhabitants—marriages, births, and deaths among them. One thing I found surprising was that there was so little emphasis on actual farming issues. It’s like the estate just runs itself.

There was much of interest about this novel, but for me some of it was hampered by Delderfield’s writing style. He likes long, involved sentences that verge on being and sometimes are run-ons. He also has the odd habit of leaving out the comma in a compound sentence, which many times forced me to reread. Even with the modern tendency to use fewer commas, I’ve never seen anyone else do that and am surprised his editors didn’t add in a bunch of commas.

Am I ready to read the second book? I don’t think so. The novel has a lot to recommend it, but at 800+ pages, this first book in the series indicates that it will be very lengthy.

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Review 2021: A House in the Country

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All during the war, Ruth, her husband, four friends, and the Adam children have been stuffed into an uncomfortable house in London, suffering privations of every sort. As early as 1941, they all began dreaming of taking a house in the country together, where they could have space, good food, and plenty of fresh air for the children. At the end of the war, Ruth finds an ad for a large house in Kent, 33 rooms. They go to see it and fall in love.

They figure that with their combined incomes, they can barely afford it. Ruth will do the housekeeping. The house comes with Howard, a handyman/gardener who has lived there most of his life and whose assistance proves invaluable.

Adam lets us know right away that this plan doesn’t work, but the descriptions of the beauties of the landscape and garden sometimes made me forget this. Written with a deadpan humor, the autobiographical novel tracks the ups and downs of this experience, through employment issues, attempts at agriculture, paying guests, house sharing. But as Adam repeatedly states, the house was built to be served, not to serve.

The story of the hapless occupants is funny and touching. I found it fascinating.

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Review 2020: #ThirkellBar! Peace Breaks Out

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Although Peace Breaks Out begins by returning to Anne Fielding, now almost 19, who was Miss Bunting’s student in the last book, it spends a lot of time with the Leslie family, whom we have encountered in several of the books. Anne has just met Sylvia Halliday, a beautiful, golden girl a few years older, and shortly thereafter, both girls come to the attention of David Leslie.

At 37, David should have toned down his tricks, but he hasn’t, so Anne is smitten while the older Sylvia’s reaction is a bit harder to ascertain. Anne’s being smitten puts her friend Robin Dale in a funk, which is good because he was tending to take her for granted. And David seems to be almost seriously considering her as a wife.

For the first time, we get a true sense of how tired the British are with the living conditions of the war. This is expressed by being upset about the peace, which makes conditions even worse.

In this novel, readers meet or hear of almost all of the main characters from the previous novels. Rose Fairweather, in all her beautiful idiocy, reappears from America, and more importantly, Rose Bingham, a Leslie cousin who we saw a bit of on the occasion of the other Rose’s wedding, returns from the continent.

It’s really been useful for me to have begun reading these novels in order. I only wish I had started out making charts of characters’ relationships, what books they appeared in, and some notes about each one.

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Review 2013: Touch Not the Nettle

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Touch Not the Nettle is not necessarily a sequel to Molly Clavering’s Susan Settles Down, but it features the same locations and some of the same characters. The Armstrongs get a call from Jed’s cousin asking if her daughter, Amanda Carmichael, can come to stay. Amanda’s husband, Cocky, an explorer, has been lost in Brazil, and Amanda is being driven crazy by her selfish mother, who is demanding that she behave like a widow when they don’t know if he is dead. Although Amanda, rather brittle from her struggles in an unhappy marriage, doesn’t really want to go stay with strangers, she soon finds herself happy to be with Jed and Susan and loving the beauty of the borderlands of Southern Scotland.

Like Susan Settles Down, Touch Not the Nettle contains many descriptions of the lovely landscape and many of the same delightful or irritating characters. It is darker, however, and I’m not sure (spoilers!) how happy I am with the love interest for Amanda, Larry with the angry temperament and drinking problem. The couple’s problems are also too magically cleared up.

Perhaps this is a deeper novel than Susan Settles Down, but it is also more facile, and I didn’t like it quite as much.

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Review 2006: Susan Settles Down

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Susan Parsons has been leading a wandering life keeping house for her naval officer brother Oliver, but Oliver was badly injured in a fall months before and has left the Navy, still suffering a limp and not his old self. Then Oliver inherits a small estate in Southern Scotland. It’s not in good condition and the Parsons haven’t much money, but Oliver decides to make it their home.

While Susan struggles to get some help in the kitchen and repair the worst problems of the house, Oliver begins supervising the farm work and almost immediately meets Jed Armstrong, the farmer next door. Although they immediately become friends, Susan finds Jed rude and uncouth.

Soon, the two siblings become involved in village activities. Susan befriends Peggy Cunningham, the parson’s young daughter, who has been receiving unwelcome attentions from the organist. The Parsons become fast friends with the Cunninghams, and all try to avoid the Pringle sisters, three mischievous gossips.

This novel is a lovely tale of village life in pre-World War II rural Scotland, featuring two romances. The descriptions of the landscape are beautiful, the characters are attractive, and I enjoyed it very much. However, I continued to find problems with Furrowed Middlebrow blurbs. Twice now the main character’s name has been misspelled, and this time the blurb places the novel in the Highlands.

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