Tag: Furrowed Middlebrow

Review 2669: Dean Street December! The Musgraves

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My last selection for Dean Street December is The Musgraves by D. E. Stevenson. It’s a little inconsequential compared to some of her others but makes a pleasant read nonetheless.

Esther Musgrave married a much older man when she was quite young, and her biggest regret of that time was that she was unable to befriend his son Walter, who was only a few years younger than herself. Despite her efforts, he was jealous and sulky, and when Charles tried to call him to order, he left university and disappeared. Charles died years later without hearing from him again.

Now two of Esther’s daughters are grown, and the other one has just finished school. Margaret is happily married to Bernard, a solicitor. Rose is dreamy and affectionate. Only Delia, the oldest daughter, poses a problem. She has very little to do and resents being asked to help out. At Bernard’s suggestion, Esther has moved off the family estate because she can’t afford to keep it up. Now Bernard is trying to sell it. Esther is happy in her small house, but Delia constantly complains about it. Delia’s only interest is in the local drama club, and she has fought for the lead in the upcoming play, but now she’s having trouble learning her lines.

A new resident has moved into the neighborhood, Eulalie Winter. Delia befriends her and becomes jealous of her, so much so that Esther feels she should not call on her. Bernard says he recognizes her as the companion of a wealthy woman who died, leaving her all her money. Her appearance and name are changed, but Bernard thinks she’s the same woman he met on a cruise with the old lady.

Rose, quite naïve, has met a young man in the woods by the abbey. Young, maybe, but a lot older than she is. He has been working on her sympathies and has convinced her not to tell her mother about their meetings.

And Walter comes to call! He has come to England on business from South Africa and says he regrets the pain he caused everyone.

Esther herself is a bit silly and ineffectual, a big worrier. But everyone in the family is going to experience a change.

I liked this one, but I didn’t really get pulled into it or feel affection for any of the characters. Still, I wanted to know what happened.

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Review 2667: Dean Street December! Cecil

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Through about 20 years’ time, Lady Anne Guthrie becomes more and more concerned about the relationship between her husband’s much younger stepbrother, Cecil, and Cecil’s mother, Lady Guthrie. Anne’s husband Charlie was already an adult when his elderly father married Edythe, who was very young. They had only one child, and Lady Guthrie, who plays the invalid card, does everything to keep her son with her, saying he is too nervous to be sent to school, keeping him out of university, and opposing his proposed career as a diplomat. This novel is set in the late 19th century, seemingly for no apparent reason, perhaps because the events later in the novel are more believable then.

Anne, who finds Lady Guthrie tiresome, thinks her decisions are misguided, but Charlie’s cousin Nealie thinks Edythe is more selfish than misguided. As Cecil grows to an adult, it becomes obvious that his mother will do anything to prevent his marriage, but Cecil sees only the sacrifice she has made to live with his frequently ill father and raise him virtually on her own.

Charlie and Anne try to help Cecil, whom they are fond of, but the events of the novel become darker as it proceeds. This is a terrific character study of a “delicate” woman who uses her health and close relationship with her son to manipulate him. I found it very involving.

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Review 2661: Dean Street December! Charlotte Fairlie

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When Charlotte Fairlie was a girl her relationship with her widowed father was close. Then he met someone, and she seemed to be nice, but as soon as they were married, she became jealous of Charlotte. In the end, he sent Charlotte to his brother, and she never saw him again. (Oddly, she reflects later that it was the only thing he could do, but I think not.)

Now Charlotte has achieved her goal since she was in school. She has been appointed head of St. Elizabeth’s, her old school. She is young for such a position but has been wearing a stodgy hat to board meetings to disguise that fact. The only thorn in her side is Miss Pinkerton, who thinks she should have had the position and is a real troublemaker.

A new girl starts at the school, Tessa MacRyne. She is an unusual child, self-possessed but homesick for her island home in Western Scotland. Charlotte catches her running away one day and learns that a letter from her mother has informed her that her parents are divorcing and her mother has returned to her parents in the U. S. Tessa feels she must return home to comfort her father. Charlotte’s handling of the situation earns her Tessa’s affection and an invitation to the island of Targ during summer break.

A friendship begins between Charlotte and Lawrence Swayne, the headmaster of the boys’ school. Unexpectedly, her proposes marriage to her, thinking they would make a great partnership.

I found this novel to be deeply touching and involving. I generally think of Stevenson’s books as very light romance, but I felt this book was a little deeper.

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Review 2518: Dean Street December! The Fledgling

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Here’s another book for Dean Street December!

I have read two memoirs by Frances Faviell, but The Fledgling is the third of her three novels and the first of her novels I’ve read. For me, It wasn’t as successful as her memoirs.

One reason is the main character. He is not very appealing. I’ll explain why later.

Neil Collins is serving his compulsory military service in 1950s England. This service was apparently controversial because the country was not at war.

Neil is a fragile, small young man who gets so nervous when ordered around or bullied—which he frequently is—that he gets stupid and can’t remember how to do things. He has already gone AWOL twice and has promised his grandmother he won’t do it again.

Everyone in his unit picks on him. He thinks he has one friend, Mike, but when Mike bullies him to desert, planning to follow him and use Neil’s contacts to get to Ireland, he realizes Mike has just been using him. So Mike bullies him more until he goes. Sexual abuse is implied.

Neil shows up in his grandmother’s rooms hoping to get his twin Nonnie’s husband, Charlie, to take him to Southampton before the arrival of Mike, who was supposed to leave the next day. However, his grandmother wants to turn him in, like she did last time, and Charlie doesn’t want to help him. To make matters worse, the walls of the rooms are very thin and people keep dropping by and trying to come in. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the family, Mike is across the street all day watching the house.

I found Neil unlikable not so much because of what he is doing but how he acts. He is like the most timid heroine in a Gothic novel. He gasps loudly when he’s hiding, he keeps raising his voice despite many warnings about the nosy neighbors. He actually falls through the door when he is eavesdropping on his grandmother and her social worker. Basically, he’s an idiot with no control over himself. He acts more like a five-year-old than a twenty-year-old.

Of course, the book is about how he gets some stuffing to brace him up, but some of the book’s values are very dated. For example, Nonnie is supposed to tolerate Charlie’s infidelity because he’s jealous of her connection with her twin. And Neil has to get in a physical fight to gain some confidence. I also didn’t really find any of the characters to be that likable.

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Review 2515: Dean Street December! The Late Mrs. Prioleau

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Here’s another one for Dean Street December!

Because of the war, Susan Prioleau never meets her mother-in-law before she dies. Mrs. Prioleau seems to have kept an unhappy home, with children who left it as soon as they could, excepting Austin, her oldest son. She adored him but convinced him he is an invalid with a bad heart, which his doctor says is not true. He is immensely fat and makes his heart an excuse for doing nothing.

Susan hears stories about Mrs. Prioleau that don’t agree. She was adored by her servants of long ago, but she has written people cruel, vindictive letters. Both her daughters say she never gave them any attention, although the oldest, Nonnie, remembers a time when things were different. Her daughter Melissa disliked her, and she was estranged from her sister, Catherine, for years.

As Susan gets to know the family and helps Austin clear the house (although he won’t let her remove much), she begins to learn more about her mother-in-law’s life. Eventually, she learns about events that turned her from a selfish but warm-hearted girl to a spiteful old woman.

It’s a pity Monica Tindall only wrote one novel, because this is a good one. Although some of its secrets are easy to guess, the journey was absorbing.

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Review 2512: Dean Street December! The Dancing Bear

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The rate I’m knocking out books for my A Century of Books project has been slow lately because first I was reading books for Novellas in November (some of which also qualified for ACoB), and I also wanted to read at least a few books for Dean Street December. And I don’t know what I was thinking, but I also put several books for my other projects on my library reserve list, and they have arrived. I must be crazy! Anyway, I read The Dancing Bear for Dean Street.

Although The Dancing Bear is set in time after Faviell’s A Chelsea Concerto, it is actually her first memoir. It covers her time in post-World War II Berlin, where her husband was part of the Occupation. The people in the city are freezing and starving, and even their occupiers are on strict rations of many commodities.

Much of the book is about Faviell’s relationship with the Altmann family. She is being driven in her car when she spots Frau Altmann, an older lady of fragile build, trying to move a heavy cart of furnishings through the streets. Faviell’s German driver thinks it’s hilarious when she falls, but Faviell stops to help her and shames him into helping, too. Despite the dictum not to give rides to Germans, she takes Frau Altmann home in her car.

There, she gets to know Herr and Frau Altmann, two gentle and dignified older people, their daughters Ursula and Lilli, and their sulky son Fritz, a former member of a Nazi youth group against his parents’ wishes. Ursula is the only bread-winner, making money by fraternizing with the British and American soldiers. Lilli, extremely frail, is a ballet dancer.

Aside from descriptions of the living conditions and the changing situation between the Soviet and the other occupiers, much of the story is about Faviell’s relationship with the Altmann’s and with her regular driver, Stampie, who trades on the black market to keep some German families alive.

This is a fascinating account of how some people meet and overcome difficult situations and some don’t. I also wasn’t aware of the conditions in Berlin (although I had heard of the Berlin Flyover) and all the manipulation the Soviets did to try to claim the entire city from their other allies.

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Review 2486: A Chelsea Concerto

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A Chelsea Concerto is Frances Faviell’s memoir of the Blitz. Although I have now read several memoirs and novels set during this time, this one is remarkable for its integration of war news and its detailed descriptions of air attacks and their results. Faviell lived in Chelsea during the Blitz—an area that was very hard hit—and the book ends with a massive bombing of the area.

The book begins before the official war, with Faviell getting involved with working with Belgian refugees because of her ability to speak several languages. It continues to follow events of the war and the Blitz. It’s so detailed as to indicate that Faviell must have notes or diaries to refer to, as the memoir was not published until 1959. The descriptions of damage caused by the bombings is very vivid.

Unfortunately, Faviell often assumes knowledge on the part of readers that they may not have, either because it was common knowledge at the time or that it was so familiar to her that she didn’t think it needed explaining. This problem includes unexplained abbreviations, people identified only by name with little context, and at the end of the book, a mysterious reference to some event three years after the events of the memoir.

Also, there are lots of people mentioned in the book but characterization of only a few of them. This led me sometimes to be confused about who they were.

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Review 2478: Village Story

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Like Buckmaster’s Family Ties, Village Story presents us with lots of characters and we begin slowly to sort them out and differentiate them. Buckmaster, who frequently speaks directly to the reader, states that Mrs. Ethelburger is her heroine, but Mr. Noyce gets more attention.

The novel begins with the Darlingtons because they have the nicest garden in the village, but it’s only their daughter Linda who has a minor role in the story. Linda, we’re told, having been pronounced “gifted” in school, has been spoiled. Hoping to keep her out of trouble, Mrs. Darlington takes her up to the big house in the village, the Noyce’s house, and gets her a job as a housemaid. There, she proceeds to make trouble by telling everyone that Mr. Noyce has been making love to her in the drying cupboard. This is a lie. In fact, Mr. Noyce is hardly even polite to her. But from a 21st century viewpoint, this minor plot is troubling on lots of levels, not least of which is the author’s attitude toward girls’ education. We must try to view it in the context of its time, where these views were not unusual.

Next, we briefly meet Mr. Noyce, who led a cosmopolitan life before settling down in the village on the family estate after his father died. Mrs. Noyce is an artist, one whom Mr. Noyce believes could become great, so he encourages her to keep painting. Even though that’s what she wants to do, her relationship with Mr. Noyce is on edge, and she seems to be rude to everyone. Of course, the village thinks she shirks her household duties.

Mrs. Ethelburger isn’t much interested in household duties, either, and since she has several small children, her house shows it. We’re told she and Mr. Ethelburger love each other, but he isn’t much of a character in the novel, and she is just breaking off an affair with Mr. Browning, a young businessman who lives with his mother. Mrs. Ethelburger used to visit old Mr. Noyce, so one day she wanders onto the property—now much more private—and strikes up a friendship with Mr. Noyce.

Also in the village are the Sparks, the rector and his wife, an elderly couple. He tends to be studious while she has decided to become a Communist without really understanding anything about Communism.

The novel only has the suggestion of a plot, mostly about the party the Noyces decide to have and the fate of the Noyce’s marriage. But somehow Buckmaster ties it all in with the fate of the village itself. I was interested in the story but sometimes couldn’t remember who all the characters (many more than I described) were and wondered where it was going.

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Review 2466: Table Two

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One of the main characters of Table Two is more of an antihero. It’s Elsie Pearne, a bitter, disillusioned middle-aged woman who works for the Translation Office of the Ministry of Foreign Intelligence. She is intelligent and hard working, but she has a chip on her shoulder and a tendency to paranoia and doesn’t understand that it’s her own behavior that makes people dislike her.

She works at Table Two of the translation office with some eccentric coworkers. One blasts the room with cold air every morning while another can’t stop talking. A third takes delight in others’ misfortunes.

At the beginning of the novel, London has not had much of a problem yet with bombing, so the Ministry employees are simply bored and frustrated during the frequent occasions when they have to take shelter during the workday. But soon that changes.

Offsetting the character of Elsie is that of Anne Shepley-Rice, a young woman of the upper class who comes to work in the department. Elsie takes a fancy to her and takes her under her wing. But although Anne is grateful, she is much less invested in the friendship than Elsie is.

In the workplace, a plot centers around who is going to be appointed the Deputy Secretary of Table Two once the competent Mrs. Jury leaves for family reasons. The question is important because the Director, Miss Saltman, although a pleasant manager, is hopelessly disorganized, and Mrs. Jury does most of her work.

On the personal front, Anne feels she is hopelessly in love with Sebastian Kimble, her long-time friend and neighbor. Not only does Seb show no signs of wanting to settle down, but Anne’s family has lost its money, so she feels she is no longer a catch.

Although I’ve read quite a few novels set during World War II that are contemporary to that time, this is the first one that deals so much with the workplace. It is acerbically funny but also could be about a modern workplace, dealing with the same concerns of getting along with disparate people.

Elsie is not likable, and she creates her own problems, but I couldn’t help feeling sorry for her at times. Anne is sympathetic but a bit milk-toasty.

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Review 2463: The House Opposite

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I didn’t like the main character of The House Opposite at first. Elizabeth is having an affair with her boss, a married man with two children, and she sees his wife and children only as people who get in the way of her happiness. She’s dating a young serviceman, Bob, simply to hide her affair. She apparently referred to the boy across the street as a “pansy” in his hearing, and the remark has made him doubt his sexuality.

Nevertheless, she’s friendly to her coworkers and as she begins to help with the war—working as a warden and helping in the hospital—she begins to grow on me. As warden, she is partnered with Owen, that same boy she insulted, and it is the developing friendship between the two that is a focus of the novel—that and her own self-evolution.

One of the interests of this novel is the detailed descriptions of what it was like to live through the Blitz in London. Although other novels recount an incident or two, most of the characters in this novel have chosen to stay in London and sustain many attacks, most of them even staying in their homes and feeling a little superior to those who seek shelter.

Although Elizabeth takes a long time to recognize that her lover is a stinker, she otherwise shows herself to be quite likable. There are a lot of themes, involving Owen growing up, Elizabeth humanizing her lover’s wife and children, Owen’s father’s involvement in the black market, and so on.

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