Tag: Ann Bridge

Review 2691: The Lighthearted Quest

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I started out Ann Bridge’s Julia Probyn series in the middle after reading two of her nonseries books, which I’ll say right now I preferred. The Lighthearted Quest is the first in the series, and if you can ignore some 1950s attitudes, is a fairly entertaining travel/adventure story.

Julia is a reporter who is able to pick her stories because she has her own income. She is a beautiful girl who has men following her around for most of the novel, but she is described several times as looking like a dumb blonde, which, as she is not at all dumb, does her some service in this adventure, but is also rather offensive.

Julia is summoned to her aunt’s house in Scotland because her uncle has died and so has the man who has been running the estate. Her cousin Edina has been doing the job in the meantime, but she is a highly paid advertising executive, and the family needs her salary in these hard post-war times. The family has lost track of Colin, the heir, who went abroad more than a year ago, reportedly sailing from port to port on the Mediterranean selling oranges. He hasn’t responded to any letters or advertisements asking him to return. So, a family friend, Mrs. Hathaway, has suggested they ask Julia to look for him, as, since she is a reporter, she’s allowed to take more money out of the country than the roughly $300 a year allowed to most Brits at the time.

Julia agrees, and the first thing she finds out is that nine months before, Colin had his bank account transferred to a bank in Casablanca. At this point, her bank informant, who had previously been very helpful, shuts up and advises her not to pursue it. Julia finds it interesting both that the transfer was allowed by the bank and that her source has dried up.

Finding that the best way to Morocco is to take a cargo boat, Julia departs. It’s not until she is telling her story to the first mate, Mr. Reeder, that she realizes her cousin is probably involved in smuggling (something I thought of right away and wondered why she didn’t).

Julia has booked to Tangier, which was listed as the ship’s first stop, but at the last minute it got a load for Casablanca, so she gets off there. She has left with the names of some contacts, but everywhere she goes, people either know nothing or get cagey.

The novel becomes a sort of travelogue as Julia goes from city to city—Casablanca, Tangier, Fez, Marrakesh—following up scanty leads and shocking various people with how much she’s figured out. She also takes a job on a Phoenician archaeology site so she won’t run out of money, as the search takes much longer than she expected. Near the beginning, she even sees Colin from a distance standing on a rooftop with a red-haired man but is unable to get to him.

Because her explanation of her search is not taken at face value, Julia finds herself being followed, and there are hints of a Cold War theme that is much more prominent in the other books in the series.

If you can put up with Julia calling a group of gay men “pansies” more than once and some patronizing attitudes toward the locals along with a discussion of what great things the French have done for Morocco that would probably send shivers down the spine of any Moroccans, the book makes quite a good adventure. What Colin is up to is patently ridiculous, but that is really a MacGuffin. And there’s a romance for Cousin Edina as well as a hint of one for Julia, and a bit of peril. Quite entertaining.

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Review 2676: The Portuguese Escape

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Having accidentally plunged into the middle of the Julia Probyn series by Ann Bridge, I already knew some of the plot points of this book from reading a later one. So far, I find the two non-series books by her that I read first to be better than these Cold War thrillers.

This book begins with the British authorities in Lisbon being concerned with the release of Countess Hetta Páloczy from Communist Hungary. The countess was only ten years old when her father had to flee Hungary with the advent of the Russians. Hetta, suffering from scarlet fever, had to be left in her convent school, and her father tried for the rest of his life to get her out of Hungary. Now she is being released to her mother.

And my first question is, why would they make a person leaving the Eastern Bloc travel across Europe to Lisbon to be received? Surely, at least one person would have got on the train with her as soon as they crossed the Iron Curtain.

Anyway, once the convents were disbanded, Hetta stayed with one of the nuns, who became housekeeper to a theologian, Father Antal Horvath. At least, Hetta was doing the work, because the nun was so incompetent.

At the beginning of the novel, the situation is being discussed by Richard Atherley, the First Secretary at the British Embassy and Townsend Waller, who is in the same position with the U. S. Embassy. Both of them also discuss the girl’s mother, whose biggest concern seems to be not the arrival of her long-lost daughter but getting an invitation to an upcoming royal wedding.

Hetta turns out to have a good but rigid sense of values and doesn’t get along with her mother at all. However, others are much taken with her, including both First Secretaries and Julia Probyn, a reporter in town to cover the royal wedding.

Soon, though, another Hungarian arrives, this one an agent being brought West with information about conditions in the East. It happens to be Hetta’s beloved former employer, Dr. Antal Horvath. Hetta is asked to identify him at the airport to make sure he is legit. Horvath is in danger, because the Communists want him back, and so is Hetta, because she knows where he is. Julia helps them by arranging with her former employer, the Duke of Ericeira, for him to stay there.

From this rather slow start-up, the book eventually becomes about protecting Father Antal, rescuing Hetta from the Communists, and a budding love affair between Hetta and Richard Atherley. It’s a little slow moving for a thriller, and I was especially astonished when Bridge began describing the scenery while several of the protagonists were chasing after Hetty, who has been kidnapped. I found both girls’ various suitors to be a little tedious, but Hetty is very likable, and some of the secondary characters, including the Duke, his daughter, her nanny, and Julia’s old friend Mrs. Hathaway, are delightful.

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Review 2606: The Episode at Toledo

~ whatmeread ~ 2 Comments

I have read two books before by Ann Bridge, and although the second was more action-oriented, they were both about women discovering themselves. When I looked for another book by Bridge, I wasn’t aware that she had a series of books around the character of Julia Probyn. This is one of them, about the sixth or seventh in the series, but Julia is a fairly minor character.

Although not necessary, it might have helped me to have read the series in order. I say this mostly because of the beginning and ending of this book, where Julia is ensconced in Scotland among a throng of characters who are briefly introduced but who I couldn’t keep straight.

Julia receives a guarded letter from her Hungarian friend, Hetty, who has married Richard Atherley, British Counsellor in Madrid. Hetta has asked that Julia send either her husband or another friend in Intelligence out to Madrid but doesn’t explain why. However, her friends speculate that it might have to do with a visiting admiral from the U. S. Understand that this is definitely a Cold War novel, and that in an earlier novel Hetta was kidnapped and drugged by Hungarian Communists.

Hetta is worried because she thinks she has recognized the American ambassador’s chauffeur as a Hungarian Communist who years ago closed down the Catholic school that Hetta attended and took delight in harassing the nuns. However, when Hetta’s friends check into it, they find he has been vetted by American security, so they dismiss her fears.

Of course, he is a bad guy, so Hetta does her best to keep the American admiral out of the ambassador’s car. On a tour to Toledo, Hetta suffers a broken arm after she delays the car, which has an accident trying to get to a rendezvous in time to be blown up.

After that, Hetta’s husband arranges for her to go to Portugal to stay with friends, as she is pregnant. But danger follows her.

For a suspense novel, there is a lot more inactivity than activity. Somehow the balance wasn’t right. There is also a lot of repetition as one group after another discusses the same incidents. Frankly, the last 20 pages or so, in which Hetta’s husband arranges for her to return to Scotland and she does, seem to have no relevance except to return to Julia and her confusing pack of relatives and friends. I would estimate that 50-75 pages of this novel are unnecessary.

Was Bridge tired of writing this series? She seems to have been trying to replicate the kind of books Mary Stewart wrote, combining suspense with lovely descriptions of the country. But Stewart did it better. This book also reminds me of the Cold War books of Helen MacInnes, only they have more romance.

To really evaluate this series, I think I would have to start with the first one, which I plan to do. In the meantime, I prefer her other books.

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Review 2598: A Place to Stand

~ whatmeread ~ 3 Comments

The first novel I read by Ann Bridge was contemplative. This one becomes much more action oriented. But both are about women developing new conceptions of themselves. This one is about a young woman becoming an adult.

A Place to Stand was published in 1951, but it is set ten years earlier. Hope Kirkland is a little bit spoiled, a nineteen-year-old American whose wealthy father is an oil executive living in Budapest for the last eight years. Although she and her mother have lived there that long, neither of them seems to understand much about what’s going on around them politically.

Hope is engaged to Sam Harrison, a young journalist who has just been transferred to Istanbul. At his departure, he gives Hope a large box of chocolates, which she thinks is an odd goodbye gift. However, when she opens it, she finds it contains two passports for young men and money with a note of where to take them. So, she does. In a less desirable neighborhood, she finds a group of Polish refugees, an old woman, her two sons Jurek and Stefan, and Jurek’s fiancée Litka.

Hungary is neutral, but Poland is fighting the Nazis. Some Hungarian politicians are pushing the country toward Germany, so Polish refugees are in potential danger. Stefan and Jurek are almost ready to leave the country, but they are waiting for something to arrive from Poland first.

Hope is immediately drawn into the affairs of the Polish group. She is struck by what was clearly once a wealthy family having no home and no possessions. Then the Nazis arrive in Budapest and immediately begin looking for Poles. At the same time, the Americans are asked to leave the country.

I had to get over my initial reaction to Hope and her general obliviousness, which was made worse for me by Bridge’s continual use of the word “little” to describe just about everything about her, her little hand, her little figure, etc. However, this novel turns into an adventure that results in self-discovery for her. I enjoyed it quite a bit, acknowledging that probably many rich American girls at the time were silly and clueless (although ones living right there in Budapest? I’m not so sure).

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Review 2445: Illyrian Spring

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This is a lovely book. In some ways, it compares to Elizabeth Von Armin’s The Enchanted April, but I think it is deeper and more thoughtful.

Grace Kilmichael has left her family. Although she is a famous painter, her husband Walter treats her art like a little hobby. He has always teased her about being stupid, but lately there seems to be an edge. He constantly makes admiring remarks about a female coworker and spends a lot of time with her.

Grace’s children are grown and don’t seem to need her, and she has lately had a poor relationship with her daughter Linnet, who no longer confides in her and acts impatient with her.

Accepting a contract for some drawings on her travels, she leaves without telling anyone where she’s going. She simply writes Walter a letter offering him the opportunity to leave her for Rose.

Lady Kilmichael has avoided meeting any of her friends in Europe, because she wants no one to know where she is. However, she runs into her friend Lady Roseneath in Venice. Lady Roseneath is traveling with her nephew, and when he appears, Grace realizes that she met him the day before on Torcello, where they had a conversation about architecture and he helped her correct a drawing of mathematical design that she plans to send to her archeologist son.

His name is Nicholas Humphries and he’s a little older than her sons. On an expedition the next day, he confides that he wants to be an artist but because he made the decision late and he wanted to be an architect as a child, his father is determined he will study architecture. The situation is made worse because his sister decided to be an artist before him, although she has little talent, and his father won’t stand for two artists in the family. When Grace sees his work, she realizes he needs to develop but has talent. So, eventually she agrees to help him learn.

She has told Lady Roseneath she is going to Greece because she doesn’t want her family to find her, but actually she goes to Spalato (Split) on the coast of Croatia, and the boy comes with her. Grace feels that he is giving her insights into her relationship with Linnet, and Nicholas, who was sulky when she met him, begins to be more happy.

As well as containing gorgeous descriptions of the towns and countryside of 1935 Croatia, the novel thoughtfully explores the relationship between the two protagonists. It describes Grace’s own personal growth and her insights into her relationships with her family members. It’s a lovely novel about personal development.

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