Tag: Norah Lofts

Review 2772: The House at Old Vine

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The House at Old Vine is the second book in Norah Lofts’ Suffolk trilogy. Like the first book, it changes narrators, but as each section is considerably shorter than the first section of the first book, the effect is of linked short stories.

The novels follow a house and a family through time, beginning in the Middle Ages. This one begins sometime before 1496 and ends in 1679 and has half a dozen narrators. Each section is separated by an Interlude, which briefly tells more about what happened next.

In 1496, Josiana Greenwood tells the story of her life and her doomed love. Some of the characters from the previous book are still in the periphery. Josiana is a bastard child whose mother refused to tell her parents the identity of her child’s father. Her grandparents have treated both her and her mother like the lowest of laborers, but when she is 13, her grandfather wants to sell her off to a much older man who disgusts her. To protect her, her mother takes her to the nuns at Clevely, where she is educated and meets her true love. We know from the beginning that her love, Walter Rancon, is going to be burned by the church as a Lollard, but the story goes back in time to divulge other facts and secrets, including the connection to the family of the original serf who accumulated the property, Martin Reed.

In 1565, the background of the story is the reign of Elizabeth and a Catholic priest in hiding. Elizabeth Kentwoode is a child who has been thoroughly spoiled by her grandfather. She is quite a vicious child, and she shows what she will do to keep her string of blue beads.

In 1620, Elizabeth Kentwoode, now a redoubtable woman sometimes called Madam, selects Barbara Hatton to be the wife of her nephew John. Barbara is in love, but shortly after the wedding, Elizabeth lets her know that John has a long-time lover, a bar maid, who looks a lot like Barbara.

In 1645 during the English Civil War, Anthony Flowerdew is a spy for Parliament trying to find Royalist supporters when he comes to stay at the Old Vine, now a respectable inn which had first been run by Madam and now by Mrs. Kentwoode (Barbara). Anthony falls in love with Barbara, now a widow with a son, and decides to quit being a spy.

In 1670, Ethelreda Benedict is a girl from an island in the fens who has barely ever met anyone besides her father when he dies. She has to leave the island and eventually gets a position at Old Vine, now a boys’ school run by Anthony Flowerdew and his stepson Chris Kentwoode. A sort of leech on the place is Barbara’s relative Canon Hatton, who while everyone has plain fare, sits in his room and eats only the best food. Yet the others think he has nothing.

In 1679, Oliver Stanton, one of Anthony Flowerdew’s old students, breaks with his father and returns to Old Vine hoping to get Flowerdew’s help in finding work. There he finds Flowerdew as an old man struggling to support the school by himself with Ethelreda Hatton now doing all the work and the Cannon still hulking by his fire. Chris Kentwoode has died, and the number of students has dropped off. Oliver takes a job as a teacher there and soon begins to feel sorry for Ethelreda, who is overworked and mistreated by her husband.

Some readers may find this format keeps them from being involved in the characters, but I felt some interest in some of them. Although it would have spoiled some surprises, I would have liked to see a chart tracing the characters’ relationships, at least the ones from the last book, as sometimes it was difficult to follow how they connected to the original characters.

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Review 2709: The Town House

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The Town House is the first book in Norah Lofts’ Suffolk Trilogy. Fairly early in the book, a 14th century serf, who later calls himself Martin Reed, escapes from his manor with the knowledge that if he can live in a walled city for a year and a day without being captured, he is free. With him is Kate, the young woman he intends to marry.

The novel follows three generations of Martin’s family. At first, everything he tries comes to nothing. Already trained as a smith by his father, he serves an extra year of apprenticeship only to have the guild decline to make him a member, which means he cannot be a smith. Hired by a carter and asked to privately shoe horses, his work is discovered and the guild attacks him and leaves him for dead. All these years, his family lives in abject poverty. It is not until he does a favor for the church that he finally gets an opportunity, but it is too late to save his family from tragedy.

The book is divided into five parts, from the point of view of different characters. The first is Martin himself. The second is Old Agnes, a homeless woman he takes as housekeeper after the tragedy. The third is Anne Blanchefleur, the young woman of good family but no fortune who marries Richard, the now wealthy Martin’s son. The fourth is Maude Reed, Martin’s granddaughter. The fifth is Nicholas Freeman, Martin’s secretary.

Although the beginning of this book is almost identical to that of Cathedral of the Sea (The Town House is written earlier), I was more involved in The Town House. Martin’s prosperity and home are built on tragedy and betrayal. This is a story of complex characters, many with deep faults. I found it interesting in both the story it told and in the background details about Medieval life, especially in the section narrated by Maude, who goes to live for a time in the household of a wealthy and noble cousin. I have already ordered the second book in this series.

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Review 2591: Lady Living Alone

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For quite some time in reading this novel, there is no indication of what it will become. It seems to be a domestic novel about a modest woman in her 30s, Penelope Shadow, disorganized, scatterbrained, unconventional, undomesticated, and of little means until she has a hit with her fourth novel. Soon enough, she is doing well and is able to move out of her sister’s house and buy her own. She has trouble keeping servants, however, and that is mostly an issue because of her phobia of being in the house alone at night.

On her way home from visiting friends, Penelope is forced to stop in a hotel at night because of the weather, but more because there is no one at home, the servants having quit while she was gone. The hotel is pretty dreadful, but a very handsome young man who is working there brings her tea when she wants it. He later confides to her that he’s leaving in a few days because he was hired as a waiter but is made to do all kinds of other work—cooking breakfast, cleaning, and so on.

He is so efficient and seems so kind that Penelope decides to ask him to work for her. His reaction when she’s not looking is the first indication that the novel is going somewhere other than expected.

Everything goes so well at home with Terry working for her that she is in seventh heaven. This state lasts for months until Terry comes home angry because, he says, people are spreading nasty rumors about their relationship. Instead of hiring another woman to live in the house, Penelope says they should get married.

Maybe, like me, you don’t think this is a great decision. Slowly, the novel shifts from a domestic drama to suspense.

This novel is a little different from anything I’ve read. It takes its time getting to where it is going without being a long book, and even after the reader is fully aware that things are going badly, Penelope is basically the only person who doesn’t know that.

I liked this novel a lot. I liked Penelope and sympathized with her problems, even though she is so impractical and looks too hard for people’s better nature. My dread grew toward the end of the book, and the ending was quite suspenseful.

Lofts wrote this book under the name of Peter Curtis so as not to confuse her usual readers, who expected historical novels. I’m going to look for more by Peter and also for those under her own name, as she is a writer I haven’t read before.

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Day 265: Here Was a Man: A Novel of Sir Walter Raleigh and Elizabeth I

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Cover for Here Was a ManI don’t think I’ve read anything by Norah Lofts before, but even though she was a prolific historical novelist, I would rate this effort as mediocre.

Here Was a Man attempts to draw most of Raleigh’s life in a short space and does so by a series of vignettes illustrating important events. Although I am not completely familiar with his career, I know that Lofts  has chosen to portray a couple of apocryphal events, in particular the cloak in the mud story, which I believe has no basis in fact. The other serious lack of the novel is any depth of characterization.

The novel begins with Raleigh as a teenager, listening to sailors’ tales and dreaming of traveling the seas. He is also full of ambition for worldly success, an ambition that sometimes works to his disadvantage.

We are told many times about Raleigh’s sense of adventure, but we don’t really feel it. In fact, he seems to spend more time in prison than on his adventures. It is curious, too, that although he has many enemies at court, at least in this novel he has done nothing to earn their enmity. I would doubt that was really the case.

Raleigh is probably a character who could support an interesting and exciting novel, but this is not it. To be fair, it looks like it may have been one of Lofts’ first works.