A few weeks ago, when I was looking at empty years in my 100 Years of Books project and books that might fill them, I was reminded of a book I read a A few weeks ago, when I was looking at empty years in my 100 Years of Books project and books that might fill them, I was reminded of a book I read a good few years ago and I was seized by a wish to read it again.
I rushed to the Persephone bookcase, but I found that the book wasn’t there. Then I remembered that I had read a library copy, and I set about ordering it again. I found that my book has disappeared from the catalogue! And so I had to order a copy. I was sure that it was a good investment – and now that I have read it again I have no doubt at all that it was.
‘The Runaway’ is a story written for children, but it is so very well written that I think it can be appreciated at any age.
Clarice lives in a country house with her widowed father, who travels to work in the city every day. She loves her home and the people around her, and she hopes to have the kind of adventures she has read about in books one day.
A quite unexpected adventure begins one day when she is out in the garden picking flowers. Clarice discovers Olga, the runaway of the title in the shrubbery. Olga asks Clarice to hide her, Clarice agrees, and so the story begins.
At first Clarice is delighted with her new friend, but it isn’t long before she starts to worry. Olga is a live wire, she hates being shut up, and she is eager to explore her new surroundings. Clarice understands, but she is torn when her governess becomes anxious at the strange noises in the house and she hates not being able to tell her father the truth.
She begins to wonder if she is doing the right thing in hiding Olga, she wonders what the consequences will be, and doubts about the truth of Olga’s story of who she is and why she ran away grow in her mind.
There are many joys in this book.
The plot plays out beautifully, through many lovely scenes. Many of then were wonderfully dramatic but I think that my favourite was a quiet scene, with Clarice trying to ask her father for advice without giving away her secret.
A dramatization could be wonderful; as would reading aloud.
I loved spending time with the two girls. What I learned of their background enabled me to understand how they had grown into the girls they were They complemented each other beautifully, and I found that I could empathise and understand each of them.
I loved Clarice for her lovely mix of imagination and sensibleness; and I appreciated that she was good not for its own sake but because the world and the people around her cared for her and she cared for them and wanted them to be happy.
I loved Olga for her vitality, her joie de vivre, and her gift for doing the unexpected.
The story shows them both off so well, a dramatic conclusion bring the best out of both of them, and I was captivated from the first page to the last.
The illustrations are utterly charming, and they match the story perfectly.
‘The Runaway’ was a particular favourite of the artist Gwen Raverat, it was at her suggestion that it was reissued, illustrated with her wood-engravings, and the Persephone Books edition reproduces them all.
I was sorry to leave them, the two girls, and their world when they story came to an end.
Anyone wanting to run away from life for a little while would do very well to run into this book. ...more
A book that suits its dove-grey covers very well ...
I was intrigued by The Exiles Return as soon a I saw it written about, as a forthcoming PersephoneA book that suits its dove-grey covers very well ...
I was intrigued by The Exiles Return as soon a I saw it written about, as a forthcoming Persephone Book last autumn. The authors name was familiar, because it was her grandson who wrote The Hare With Amber Eyes, a book that I think everyone in the world but me had read. But this was a book that hadn’t been read, though the author made every effort to get it into print.
And yet it holds a stories that have been little told. Stories of exiles returning to Austria after the war, when the country regained its independence. Fascinating stories, that are quietly compelling because they are much more than stories. They are testimonies created from the authors own experiences.
There are three main strands. There is a Jewish professor who had taken his family to America when he saw danger at home; they thrived in their new life but he did not, and has returned alone. There is an entrepreneur, of Greek descent, who is returning to a city where he believes he will find business and social openings. And there is an American girl, the daughter of immigrants, who has been sent to stay with relations in the hope that it would pull her out of what seemed to be apathy with her life.
And in consequence there are three very different stories, told in different styles. I questioned the shifting narrative at first, but as I read I came to realise that it was very, very effective. It emphasised that so many lives were affected, in so many ways, and that there would be countless consequences.
There are so many moments that I could pull out.
Professor Adler’s realisation that he really had come home. His later realisation that home had changed, in ways he had not anticipated. Most of all his realisation that there were people who had supported what he saw as an evil regime among his friends, neighbours and collegues.
For me Professor Adler was the emotional centre of the story. He was an intelligent and sensitive man, and he saw that the years he spent in exile could not be made up, that her would always be a little out of step with those who had stayed. The telling of his story was pitch perfect and utterly moving.
His experiences may have mirrored those of a German gentlemen who lived here on the promenade until he died a few years ago. He and his wife came to England during the war to try to raise awareness of what was happening in Germany, and they went home after the war but eventually they retired back to Cornwall. I am so pleased that this book has finally come into print, to shine a light on stories like his.
Resi’s story touched me too. She blossomed as she met her Austrian family, as she learned new things about her family background, and it was lovely to watch her living happily, in the country, with her cousins. It was the family’s move to the city that took the desperately pretty Resi out of her depth, and kicked off the plot that would bring the different strands of the story together.
That plot didn’t quite work, it felt a little over dramatic after the subtle and thought-provoking writing that has come before. And I was unconvinced that Resi would have acted as she did at the very end. But that by no means spoiled things, and I am more than ready to believe that a dramatic plot might have been necessary to sell a book about the consequences of war when it was written, years ago.
The Exiles Return is not the best written or the best structured novel on Persephone’s list. But it is as heartfelt, as honest, and as profound, as any of the one hundred and one titles it joins.
“It may be true that one loss helps to prepare for the next, at least in developing a certain rueful sense of humour about things you’re too old to cr“It may be true that one loss helps to prepare for the next, at least in developing a certain rueful sense of humour about things you’re too old to cry about. There’s plenty of blather, some of it true, about turning pain into growth, using one blow to teach you resilience and to make you ready for the shock of the next one. But the greater truth is that life is not something you can go into training for. There was nothing in life Susan Selky could have done to prepare for the breathtaking impact of losing her son.”
That paragraph, on the very first page, made catch my breath and touched my heart. I had to breath again, but the emotion, the concern, that those words created stayed with me as the story unfolded. And they have come back to me again as I am thinking of it.
“Alex Selky, going on seven, so eager to grow up, kissed his mother goodbye on their front steps on the hot bright morning of May 15 1980, and marched himself down the street on his way to the New Boston School of Back Bay, two blocks from his corner. He never arrived at school, and from the moment he turned the corner, he apparently disappeared from the face of the earth.”
Susan Selky, a recently divorced English professor, faced her worst nightmare when her son didn’t arrive home from school. She called a friend, whose daughter was in Alex’s class, and learned that he had never arrived at school.
A police investigation begins, family and friends rally round, but days and weeks pass and there is still no trace of Alex.
Eventually the police have no more leads to follow, and there is an acceptance that Alex is lost, probably dead, that he will never be coming home.
Acceptance by everyone but Susan, who will never believe that her son is lost to her and will do anything, absolutely anything, to bring him home.
Her story is extraordinarily vivid. And utterly, frighteningly, real.
It tells of a life consumed by one thing, and of how nothing else matters.
It tells of people who offered wonderful support, and of people who offered harsh judgements.
It tells of the media, and of how attention slipped away when the case was no longer ‘newsworthy’.
It tells of relationships that fractured under pressure, and of relationships that grow with the most unlikely people who were able to understand or to accept.
But, most of all, it tells one mother’s story.
“As the days grew shorter and the chill in the autumn air deepened, the long uneven panes of glass in the living-room were grey with thin frost when Susan went with her coffee cup in the early mornings to sit looking down at the street. From the lush gold and blue, deep as an overturned bowl, of the last morning on earth that she saw her son, the light had changed to the flat grey brightness of impending winter.”
‘Still Missing’ was a difficult book to read. It had to be. It was right that I felt terribly unsettled, and it was right that I was forced to consider my own feelings about what was happening.
I could do that because the characters, their stories, their relationships, were all perfectly drawn.
There were moments when things happened that didn’t feel right. But they were right; answers can’t always be neat and tidy, and politically correct.
What mattered was Susan’s story, and that was painful, emotional, and frustrating at times. But it was pitch perfect, and my attention was held from the first page to the last.
I was surprised when I first saw such a recent book in the Persephone list, but now I have read it I have to say that it’s inclusion makes perfect sense. ...more
Several Persephone Books called me from the shelves, quite sure that they were the book I should read this week-end though. I deliberated for quite soSeveral Persephone Books called me from the shelves, quite sure that they were the book I should read this week-end though. I deliberated for quite some time, but in the end I was contrary.
I picked up the book that was sitting quietly, not making any attempt to draw my attention.
The idea of a novel in verse, albeit blank verse, rather intimidated me, but I put my faith in Persephone.
The opening caught my attention. Mrs Delmer, mother of Lettice and wife of the doctor in charge was visiting a “Special Hospital”, an institution for unmarried mothers and young women with venereal disease, determined to do good works and to show her support for her husband.
The bleakness and horror of such a place; the staff’s understanding of that, and that Mrs Delmer’s efforts must be tolerated; and Mrs Delmer’s embarrassment when she misreads situations are all caught perfectly.
But Mrs Delmer is determined to get things right, determined that she and her husband will do as much as they can to give help and support. They will even take a young woman into their home, and reunite her with her infant son.
Their concern is laudable, but of course it will affect their daughter.
A lovely picture is painted of Lettice, eighteen years old, spoiled, uneducated and uninformed, and yet charming. And it is easy to feel sympathetic towards Lettice, because it is so clear that she is the product of her upbringing and because she is so clearly ill-equipped to deal with what life may throw at her.
The arrival of Flora Tort and her son Derrick is not a success, but the Delmers persist.
They can’t understand what is happening to their daughter, that the disruption of her home life, her rejection by the young man with who she thought she had an understanding, will hurt her deeply and lead her to become estranged from her family.
Lettice’s life takes a downward spiral.
She is in many ways infuriating – stubborn, proud, and so often failing to understand the people and the world around he – and yet there is a vulnerability, a feeling that Lettice really cannot cope, so that it is quite impossible not to feel for her.
And her story is counterbalanced by the story of her family, as it evolves into something very different.
Lettice’s is a dark story, of depression, abortion, suicide, despair, death … but it is also a story of faith, hope and redemption.
The characterisation is lovely and the psychological insight is acute. But the failures of communication and understanding are infuriating, and so sadly believable.
I’d love to say more, i’d love to quote, but I’m afraid I can’t without having to say and explain too much.
And the verse? I have to say it works wonderfully well, giving the story and the characters room to breathe and grow, and at the same time giving the story just the right rhythm and urgency.
Very clever.
Lettice Delmer is not a comfortable book, and I found it very unsettling, but it is both moving and compelling.
And certainly worthy of its dove-grey jacket. ...more
She could only say defiantly, “Well, even if what you think its true it’s not all that wrong. You’ve never had to do without your husband, and in any She could only say defiantly, “Well, even if what you think its true it’s not all that wrong. You’ve never had to do without your husband, and in any case, you’re different from me. Some women can do without a man and some can’t, and I’m one of those that can’t.”
Oh, the lies that we tell ourselves to allow us to behave however we choose.
“Deborah, said Joe, “I want to tell you what my wife said to me in New York just before I came away. she said, “Joe, you’re a normal man and we’re maybe going to be parted for a long time. It’s no good shutting our eyes to what’s going to happen, but I’m going to ask you one thing. Don’t cheapen our marriage. I’d hate you to think of you going with any cheap woman and then coming back to me. But if you ever find a girl you can really respect, like you do me, I wouldn’t mind so much, because it wouldn’t be cheap.”
And the consequences that those lies can have.
To Bed With Grand Music is a story about those lies – ones that we sometimes don’t realise are untruths – and those consequences.
The story open with Deborah in bed with her husband Graham. He is about to go away and, though he does not offer the same, she promises loyalty and fidelity.
But that promise is swiftly broken. Deborah is bored at home and her mother and her housekeeper are more than willing to take care of her infant son. And so Deborah heads for London. To keep busy, to help the war effort, to be happier…
But Deborah meets Joe, a charming American, a family man without his family. A relationship develops. When Joe is sent overseas Deborah meets Sheldon, another American. And then Pierre, an older Frenchman.
“Pierre, said Deborah urgently. “Will you teach me to be a good mistress?”
“I tell you it is a question of temperament,” said Pierre, “and you do not understand, because you have not got that temperament. But you have got a lot of other things, beauty and freshness and naivety.”
“To hell with naivety,” though Deborah angrily, “I’m damned if I’m going to be put off learning what I want, just because Pierre likes me naive.”
I couldn’t find it in myself to like Deborah. But though it might seem that it would be easy to dismiss her as selfish and vacuous, it wasn’t.
There isn’t too much background, but it was fairly clear that Deborah was a trophy wife. A woman who could only see herself as significant in relation to her man. Her mother’s character strongly suggested that she had been brought up to be just that. She had no other interests, no idea how to occupy her time.
But she lied to herself about what she was doing, what the effects would be. Did she realise? I think she did, but I think she just lied to herself again so she could carry on.
Yes, she was selfish. She was vacuous. And she was responsible for her actions and their effects.
There would be more men as Deborah turns slowly from a faithless wife into a scarlet woman. Her journey was compelling and utterly convincing.
And so I found another Marghanita Laski book that I could argue with while reading. She is so good at that!
She’s great at characters and storytelling too, and she makes some very telling points along the way about double standards and the emotional effects of war.
And then there’s the ending. She is so so good at endings, and this one is stunning. War is over, and the implications of that do not suit Deborah one little bit. Even after everything that has gone before, it is a shock to realise what Deborah has become.
Little Boy Lost. The Village. The Victorian Chaise-Longue. To Bed With Grand Music.
Four novels by Marghanita Laski reissued by Persephone books. All different and all excellent.
Lucia Holley, is a wife and mother, living with her daughter, her son, and her father, while her husband serves in the navy during WWII.
Lucia’s daughtLucia Holley, is a wife and mother, living with her daughter, her son, and her father, while her husband serves in the navy during WWII.
Lucia’s daughter, Bee, is a worry to her. She has become involved with an older man who her mother thinks is quite unsuitable, and Lucia is determined to put a stop to the relationship.
Her efforts though lead to a whole series of events – murder, blackmail, fraud - that threaten to destroy the very things that Lucia is trying to protect.
It’s a simple story, but it’s so terribly well executed.
Lucia, her family, and their relationships are so well drawn. The central conflict between mother and daughter is particularly well done. Lucia went straight from school to marriage and motherhood, but her daughter wants a very different life. Neither can understand the other.
That spoke loudly and clearly of the changing times. So did the many small inconveniences of daily life in a small America town during wartime
Lucia’s life, once so certain, was certain no more.
She had to keep her family safe, but she struggled to balance that with the demands of her children, her father, her home, her community.
Her behaviour, her attitude, became less and less rational, and at times I was infuriated as I watched her, but I really couldn’t have come up with a better plan.
Overall the balance of the book is lovely: perfect family and domestic details on one side of the scale, and classic suspense on the other.
And a mystery driven so well by character is a wonderful thing.
The ending maybe tilted a little too much towards melodrama, but it didn’t matter. I was already hooked by the story and the characters, and it did round things off nicely.
Elizabeth Sanxay Holding has been compared to both Ruth Rendell and Patricia Highsmith. I’d have to agree, but I’d say that she is more subtle than the former, less dark than the other, and that she writes lovelier prose than either.
And that suits her dove-grey Persephone jacket very well.
It begins with three people, an English couple and an American friend, on holiday in the Scottish Highlands. They see a sign, on grOh, this is lovely.
It begins with three people, an English couple and an American friend, on holiday in the Scottish Highlands. They see a sign, on grand wrought-iron gates, advertising a magnificent residence to be let. They are intrigued and the gatekeeper invites them to look more closely, assuring them that the housekeeper, Mrs Memmary would be only too pleased to show off the house.
“He unfastened a side-gate and they ran their car along a mile of carriage-drive, through a plantation where rabbits sat in the shaded roadway unafraid, hopping to one side to let them pass, and blackbirds sang a pure, clear song from the thicket; then across a vast park covered with grazing cattle and rows of pheasant coops. From here they could see the house and it took their breath away.
It was a classic white mansion of the late eighteenth century, glittering white , with pillared facades and sweeping terraces, standing in a formal garden to which long marble steps ran down.”
They were honest, they explained to Mrs Memmary that they weren’t potential tenants, that they were simply curious visitors, but she was still delighted to show then the house, a house that she so obviously knew and loved.
As they walked through beautiful empty rooms, room that cried out for the lives to be lived in them as they had in the past, Mrs Memmary told them stories of the house’s owner.
Lady Rose was the only child and the heir, thanks to the good graces of Queen Victoria, of the Earl of Lochule.
She was pretty, warm, bright, and her open heart, her boundless curiosity, her love of life, charmed everyone she met. And she grew into a proud Scot and a true romantic, inspired by the writings of Walter Scott, the history of Mary Queen of Scots, and, most of all, her beloved home and lands.
It was lovely, Lady Rose was lovely, and I felt that I had fallen into a fairy-tale,
Lady Rose’s parents were distant figures. That wasn’t unusual, for their class, for their times, for Queen Victoria’s courtiers, but it worried me. Because Lady Rose’s idyllic childhood was no preparation for the life she would be expected to lead when she became first a debutante, then a wife, then a mother.
Her head was full of dreams
“Rose indulged in the most romantic dreams about marriage. Of course they were all delightfully vague and abstract, and for practical purposes they began and ended with white satin and pearls and sheaves of flowers at St, Georges’s and red carpet in front of Aunt Violet’s house in Belgrave Square, and tears, and hundreds of presents. After that came a kind of ideal and undefined state in which you lived blissfully under a new name, and had your own carriage, and didn’t have to ask permission from Mama when you wanted to go out. Floating airily through all of this, of course, was a man. He was not like any other man you had ever seen; they were just men. This man – your husband, queer, mysterious word – was hardly human at all. He was dreadfully handsome, and a little frightening but, of course, you didn’t see very much of him. When you did see him there were love scenes. He always called you “my darling” in a deep, tender voice, and he gave you jewels and flowers, and sometimes went down on his bended knee to kiss you hand. All of this came out of the books you had read. Some day, almost any day after you were presented, and began to go about with Mama, you would meet this marvellous being. You would be in love. You would be married. And that was the end, except that, of course, you would live happily ever after.”
It was a lovely dream, but was Lady Rose ready to adapt, to deal with the strictures of Victorian society, to find that happy ending?
She made a wonderful match, exactly the match her parents had wanted. But she didn’t find that happy ending. Her conventional husband didn’t like her having her own independent wealth and title, he was aggrieved that she was so devoted to her own home and uninterested in his, and he didn’t understand her nature, her love of romance, fun, and life’s simple pleasures. It was sad, but it was understandable.
In time though Lady Rose saw a chance of ‘happily ever after’. She seized it, but there was a scandal, she lost everything and was driven into exile.
The fairy-tale had become an indictment of a society that cast women into restricted roles, that gave men control of their money, their homes, their children, and dealt harshly with anyone who stepped outside its conventions. That indictment was subtle, but it was powerful it lies in a story so full of charm.
Mrs Dacre was captivated by Mrs Memmary’s stories – the framing story worked beautifully – and so was I.
But that’s not to say I was happy with all of Lady Rose’s action. I understood her desire to love and be loved, of course I could, but I couldn’t believe that she was so heedless of the consequences of her actions for her beloved home, or for the two sons she adored.
But the story, and most of all, the heroine never lost their hold on my heart. I was involved, and I cared, so very much.
The visitors left, and Mrs Memmary was left in her beloved house.
There was a gentle twist in the tale, that wasn’t entirely surprising but was entirely right, and the final words brought tears to my eyes.
This is a beautiful, moving, romantic story, told by a consummate storyteller, and I am so pleased that I met Lady Rose, a heroine as lovely as any I have met in the pages of a Persephone book. ...more
In September 1946 23-year-old Emma Smith set sail for India, to work as an assistant with a documentary unit making films about tea gardens in Assam. In September 1946 23-year-old Emma Smith set sail for India, to work as an assistant with a documentary unit making films about tea gardens in Assam. She was dazzled by India ...
‘I went down the gangplank at Bombay, and India burst upon me with the force of an explosion.’
... and she wrote down as much as she could about her experiences because she so wanted to pin down the wonder of it all.
A few years later she would use what she remembered and what she wrote as the foundation for a wonderful, wonderful novel that would go on to with the James Tate Black Award for 1949
'The Far Cry' tells the story of 14-year old Teresa Digby. She's an introspective and rather award child, and I think it's fair to say that she is what her circumstances made her. When her parents' marriage broke down her mother left her to go to America and her father left her for his sister to bring up. Teresa's aunt wasn't unkind, she was bringing her up as well as she could, but she lacked warmth and she lacked empathy.
When he learned that his wife was returning to England, and that she wanted to see her daughter, Mr Digby decided that he would take her to India, to visit his daughter from an earlier marriage, who was married to a tea planter. It wasn't that he was interested in his daughter, it was just that he didn't want his wife to have her.
He was a self-absorbed, dull-witted man who could never be the man he wanted to be or have the roles in life he wanted to play, but who would never acknowledge that, even to himself.
It's telling that he remains Mr Digby from his first appearance to his last,
His sister knew his weaknesses, knew what he was lacking, but she believed that she had played her part and it was time for him to play his.
"He polished off this diplomacy and his visit with a kiss that landed haphazard on the nearest part of her face, and so left. Such kisses are interesting. For it might be thought that lips which had once, so any years before given off those dark flames of roses must always at a touch bestow a scent, the merest whiff, a pot-pourri of passion. But no, nothing like it."
The relationship between between father and daughter is awkward, they are uncomfortable with each other. They don't know each other, they don't particularly want to know each other. He disdained her awkwardness as she dealt with so much that was unfamiliar - getting in and out of taxis, eating in restaurants, holding on to things like gloves and tickets - but she struggled through, and she came to realise that in attaching so much importance to such things and in not understanding how new and strange things must be for her it was her father who was lacking.
"Teresa, who had watched defeat and then recovery first line and then illuminate his face, observed the breach in his armour: he was old, and therefore weak. And she was young, with her strength growing. Age shook him as fiercely as he had yesterday shaken her in the street. Thoughtfully she ate her breakfast. That she had seen his weakness and was bound to take advantage of it was a tragedy, and a tragedy that the only alternative to his conquering her seemed to be for her to conquer him."
When they set sail for India Teresa find a role and her confidence grows a little more. She helps with young children, and she formed a tentative friendship with Miss Spooner, an elderly spinster who was travelling to visit her sister. Her father lacks a role, and is left to worry over mosquito nets and play the occasional game of piquet.
In India though the story that had played out in London would play out again. Teresa was overwhelmed and that made her awkward, leaving his father to organise and mange their progress. He was ineffectual, and so Teresa stepped forward, with the interest in the strange new world they were encountering.
The early pages of this novel were an intriguing character study, so well done that even seemingly unsympathetic characters became interesting, but in India there would much more. Through Teresa's eyes I saw the wonders of India, and I was as smitten as she was and as Emma Smith had been. She caught so many impressions so very, very well.
"Teresa's head was full of sound and colour. Her head was a receptacle for tumbled rags of impression, rags torn from exotic garments that could never be pieced entirely together again; but the rags were better."
The sea voyage, the journey though India, the feelings of strangers in a strange land are caught perfectly; every detail, every description feels so right.
In Assam Teresa meets the older half-sister her father adores.
Ruth is a beauty, she had been told that since she was a child, but her tragedy was that she was so caught up in presenting that image to the world, that she had lost the woman she really was. Edwin, her husband adored her, she wanted to tell him how she really felt, but she lacked the courage to tarnish the façade she had worked so hard to create.
It's a compelling, heart-breaking, horribly believable portrait.
The presence of her father and her half-sister unsettles Ruth's world; Teresa didn't realise, she was caught up with new experiences and impressions.
There was a tragedy and Ruth thought that it might offer her an escape. Maybe it did ....
Sadness and hopefulness mingle in the end of this story
There is so much that makes it special.
Smith’s prose really is gorgeous. It's distinctive, it's right, and the descriptions so lovely and they catch every sensation. She follows the journey and she manages the both the day-to-day and the set pieces wonderfully well.
“Lights, no bigger than the candles on a Christmas cake, fringed every balcony, every wall, every stall, every hovel, a multitude of tiny red flames flickering alive in the huge dark night. They were still being lit: glistening haunches bent forward, hands poured a trickle of oil into saucers…The warm air was soft with sorrow. They trod among the muddy unseen ashes of the dead. Widows lay along the slushy steps, prostrate in grief, or crouched forward silently setting afloat their candles in little boats of tin the size and shape of withered leaves.”
The characters and relationships are captured beautifully; with the understanding and the empathy that they lack.
The direction that the plot takes is unpredictable; it isn't contrived, it twists and turns as life does,
And everything works together beautifully, in this profound story of people alive in the world.
"India went on and on, on and on, as though it had no end, as though it had no beginning, as though seas and shores and other continents were only part of a feverish dream, as though this was the whole world and nothing exited beyond it; a world fat and dry on whose immense surface, far apart from one another, dwelt men and their beasts, living and dying together, generation after generation."...more
This may be the loveliest opening to a novel that I have ever read.
“Mary sometimes heard people say: ‘I can’t bear to be alone.” She could never underThis may be the loveliest opening to a novel that I have ever read.
“Mary sometimes heard people say: ‘I can’t bear to be alone.” She could never understand this. All her life she had needed the benison of occasional solitude, and she needed it now more than ever. If she could not be with the man she loved, then she would rather be by herself.”
It captured my own feelings perfectly, and expressed them more beautifully than I ever could.
MarianaMary escaped to the country with just her small terrier dog, Bingo, in tow. Her husband was at sea, in the navy, and the country was at war. Because she wanted to be quiet, to remember, to think.
It was lovely watching Mary and Bingo settle in, lovely to be reminded of the depth of Monica Dickens’ understanding of character and of her talent for catching exactly the right details to paint a perfect picture.
I was particularly taken with her understanding that a terrier can be sound asleep and alert at the same time …
The peaceful scene was disturbed when Mary switched on the wireless, when she heard that her husband’s ship had been hit. There were survivors, there was hope, but Mary had a night to get through before she found out the next morning if her husband was alive or dead.
It was a sleepless night, and as she lay awake Mary turned over memories in her mind.
She remembered her childhood, with a mother who had been widowed in the last war and who worked as a dressmaker to support them. Her husband’s family would have helped but she didn’t want to be beholden to them. It was enough that they gave Mary lovely, idyllic summer holidays in the country. And a place in a bigger family.
She remembered going to drama school with grand plans, and coming to realise that she was on the wrong path. Fashion college in Paris was a much better idea. She could have a lovely time and she could play a part in the family business. Mary had a wonderful time in Paris, and she made a marvellous catch. But even the most marvellous catch is not necessarily the right catch.
Mary found her happy ending back in England, at the most unexpected moment.
Now it has to be said that Mary is not the most sympathetic of characters. She is often awkward, thoughtless, selfish even. But she was real, and for all her failing I did like her, I did want her to find her path in life, her place in the world. Sometimes fallible heroines are so much easier to love.
And Mary was real, alive, and her emotional journey was so utterly real. There were highs and lows, tears and laughter. Every emotion a young woman might go through. And so many incidents, so many moments to recollect.
All of this was observed so beautifully, with understanding, intelligence, and just the right amount of empathy.
But if Mary’s life was the foreground, the background was just as perfectly realised. Her world was as alive as she was, and every character who was part of that word, even if only for a short while, was caught perfectly.
I loved watching over Mary’s life. It was an ordinary life, but every ordinary life is unique and Monica Dickens highlighted that quite beautifully.
And I could have stayed in her world quite happily, but morning eventually came, and Mary had to face whatever news of her husband might come. And when it came I had to leave.
I’d love to know what happened in the next chapters of Mary’s life, but failing that I’ll go back and read about the years I know all over again one day. Because this is a lovely book, and a lovely way to get lost in another life and another world. ...more
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