Her research draws on original newspapers and magazines published in 1914, all duly acknowledged. And that's not the author's imagination working overtime. Those not in khaki are sent white feathers, their names published.
Uniforms are issued, men strut around to admiring folk, now in festive mood. He also realises that marrying Lucy would make her an exotic war widow following his death. Hugh discovers Sir Alex's job offer now means enlisting in the army, taking front-line notes for the surgeon's book. With everyone doing their bit for the War Effort, a scenario verging on hysterical as women compete for bigger and better fund-raising parties and men rush off to do their duty for King and Country. Part Two, Germany invades Belgium and the atmosphere changes. The probability of war looms, sending a collective shiver down everyone's backbone. An uncool toff makes a play for Beatrice when all she wants is to get on with her job of teaching Latin, but there are hitches: small boys who sneer at her, misogynistic male teachers, spiteful locals jealous of her sexy youthfulness. Hugh is not sure if he is in love with Lucy, daughter of eminent surgeon Sir Alex Ramsey, who wants him as his assistant. She is met by Agatha's nephew Hugh Grange, just down from his medical studies, and his pesky cousin Daniel Bookham, striving to be a poet, and the action begins.
Already a case is presented for women's rights and Beatrice is elevated to heroine of a class-ridden community ranging from aristocracy to gypsy, each one knowing their place in society. Her father, on whom she doted, has just died and she is here to take up the position of Latin teacher at the local school, a provocative appointment made possible by her benefactor, Agatha Kent, one of two women on an otherwise all-male board. It is 1914 when Beatrice Nash, 23, arrives at the small coastal town of Rye and is about to start a new life. War beckons and the author allows this knowledge to permeate life like a black cloud, from the start.
It first appeared in her successful debut novel, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand (2010), but this time the bucolic background is less rom-com, more thick-lit, the plot intense. When you learn the author, now living in America, spent her formative years in a Sussex village, you may think she is working Ye Olde English Village genre out of her system, and you could be right. But first acclimatise yourself to the prose, written in the weirdly formal style of Edwardian literature, not so much long-winded as habitually including every thought and detail in a sentence before they can escape. By the time the camomile tea has chilled, two chapters in, you are hooked.
0 kommentar(er)
