Archive for January, 2010

 My fifth account of a book on the Romantic Novel of the Year long list, though actually this is one I had already read before the list was published.

THE SUMMER HOUSE by Mary Nichols spans World Wars 1 and 2, metropolis and village, big house and slum terrace.   It was a time of enormous change, in social conventions, moral values, class structures and education and one of the many delights of this book is the author’s unobtrusive but faultless sense of place and time.  

Essentially, this is the story of tragedy in three women’s lives – and how they survive and grow afterwards.  The constraints of the times affect the practical outcomes.  But the feelings, described here with a restraint that makes them all the more painful,  are universal.  During the Great War young Lady Helen marries a man her family feels at home with and then, finding him a stranger, falls in love with someone else.  Her family cannot permit her to keep a child that is not her husband’s, so she is hustled into something close to prison until the birth and then the child is taken away.  The moral disdain of those employed to help her through the birth is chilling but the withdrawal of affection from her family is worse and rings heartbreakingly true.   Eventually, widowed and orphaned by the War, Helen sets out to find her daughter.  But the lies she has been told, and holes in the records make it  very difficult – and when she does, she has to confront a whole human dilemma.

Anne  sacrifices everything, including the emotional honesty of her marriage and her own self-aproval, to have a child.  And Laura,  the precious and beloved daughter,  discovers when Anne dies that she has been lied to throughout her life.  The relationship of the three women is spiky and difficult and utterly believable.  They may be jealous, they are certainly fearful, and they have deep wounds to deal with, but they all, in their own way, try to be reasonable, even to those who can hurt them.  Laura, caught up in the consequences of old secrets, does cry out at one point, ‘It’s like a contagion, spreading and spreading.  I don’t feel like being fair.  No one’s been fair to me.’   But these women are practical and honest and, in the end, Laura is fair, in spite of intense provocation.  It is nothing short of heroic.

The most important love affair – well, this is long-listed for the Romantic Novel of the Year, after all – is mainly told from the hero’s point of view, and is a real heart-turner.  He is one of the good guys, quiet and responsible and outshone by flashier chaps – at least two of them in this book.  And then the awful thing happens and he starts to think of himself as a monster.  

A rich, understated book of many dimensions –  including a whole East Anglian village coming to terms with the wartime arrival of American troops.  It is  a five handkerchief weepie along the way with, ultimately a  deeply satisfying resolution, in which steadfastness is rewarded and endurance justified.   A feast

 DECLARATION OF INTEREST   Mary Nichols is an author I am proud to call a mate.  She is also a Treasure of the Romantic Novelists’ Association.  In 2009 she had three books, all in different genres, published within six weeks of each other and celebrated her diamond wedding anniversary.  She got a card from the Queen – and a blog post from us.

This is my fourth book from the Romantic Novel of the Year longlist:  BEACHCOMBING  by Maggie Dana. 

I’ve actually been reading steadily through the long list and not blogging at all in the busy few weeks since Christmas.  (Okay, I admit it, that’s my priorities for you.)   As a result, I’m backed up with notes on several other long-listers.  Will put them up in short order, I promise.

BEACHCOMBING is another first novel.  This time it’s from the MacMillan New Writing stable which, along with Authonomy and the Romantic Novelists’  own New Writing Scheme, are seen as good routes to publication .

Jill Hunter had a boyfriend when she was a teenager, the sort of boyfriend that teenagers dream about and almost nobody finds – handsome, kind, considerate, divinely competent, and not ashamed to hold hands.  They have a moment of passion and then he disappears.  Well, his father is disgraced and the family moves away, but it’s hardly his fault and he never gets in touch.  It niggles.  Even after moving continents, marriage, divorce, two sons and a whole load of life experiences, a bit of Jill still has this question mark – and this template of perfect love.

Flashbacks are an integral part of this book and one of it strengths is that you see how the teenager is still part of the mature woman – and vice versa.  The plot moves from Jill’s beach home (and hanging-on-by-the-fingernails career) in small town Connecticut to London and Cornwall, where friends from the teenage past resurface.   Pretty soon the reader is thinking:  there’s more than one mystery here, but Jill has only noticed the missing boyfriend.  Most satisfyingly, you have to wait but you get the answer to that other mystery too, along with the emotional truth which as a teenager she did not question.     

As for the missing BF – he resurfaces too.  He still has wonderfully kind green eyes.  Jill does what  probably 99% of us would, given the chance.    

This book is very good about female friendship, about kindness, about the shore and the store and the pressures of only-just-earning-a-living.  (The scene where Jill goes head to head with a loathesome client had me punching the air in pure wish fulfilment.  Yay!)  Jill is a practical, up-beat funny woman and you are delighted to spend time with her first person narrative.  She can dream, she can be sad, but basically, she’s a problem solver with a heart, who just happens to be what my grandmother would have called A Bad Picker.

But do not worry, Bad Picker though she is, a true hero is there.  You recognise him because he does things for her that will warm the heart of every woman, well every woman I know, anyway.  Read the book and find out. 

DECLARATION  OF INTEREST    I’d never heard of Maggie Dana until I picked up this book.  So this author is a complete stranger to me, too.