About this deal
Indeed there is a clear sense that her characters need and want relationships, and the beginnings of love are celebrated. We see two women, one trapped in a loveless marriage to a priggish man who escaped fighting in the Great War; and the other living in limbo, not unhappily, as her (brave) husband has absconded to the Continent, and a new man (wounded in the Great War) pursues her. Headed by Herbert Blackett – a conceited, self-absorbed puritan who considers himself vastly superior to the Frasers – the Blackett family have three children, Flora, Rhoda and Mary, all similar in age to some of the Frasers. The Frasers occupy a corner of Chatterton square – here live – Rosamund Fraser, her childhood friend Agnes Spanner and Rosamund’s five almost adult children.
Their mother is unusual; concerned for her children, she has the rare ability to love them without stifling them. I loved this book, though it took longer than I expected -- normally I can zip through a novel in just a few of days, but this was a fairly dense read.So, I came for the historical interest, which is very much there, but actually came away impressed with the emotional deftness of the book and the overall portrait of a society on the brink of war—the book was published in 1947, but set in the run-up to the war, in 1938.
Herbert Blackett did not serve, and has managed to justify his staying at home as a matter of principle: “War! One of the things I love about Ms Young's novels is the way her writing can transport you to a particular place and time - in this case a residential square in Radstow (Bristol) before the start of WW2. It's much more serious than the witty Miss Mole and I still felt the time period was more late Victorian - probably because of Mr. Anyway, Herbert is aghast and at the same time titillated he is living next to a woman with loose morals because she is separated/divorced from her husband and it must have been her fault since her husband left her, right? I have three more of her books unread on the TBR shelves and had intended to read Jenny Wren for the Back to the Classics Challenge; however, I may put it off a bit more and try to ration out my E.But whilst he struts in the background, allegiances form between Rosamund and Bertha and their children, bringing changes to Chatterton Square which, in the months leading up to the Second World War, are intensified by the certainty that nothing can be taken for granted. In 1902, at the age of 22, she married Arthur Daniell, a solicitor from Bristol, and moved with him to the upscale neighbourhood of Clifton. Men are admired/tolerated if they are bold and show more interest in outdoor pursuits or machines than in the opposite sex.
We all know what happened – but for the people living through those few months, the tension and the constant swinging from optimism to despair was agonising.I've found an article in the Evening Post archives that suggest Chatterton Square is actually Clifton's oddly triangular Canynge Square, and it would certainly be in about the right place for that to be true.
As free as unmarried women, they were fully armed; this was an unfair advantage, and when it was combined with beauty, an air of well-being, a gaiety which, in a woman over forty had an unsuitable hind of mischief in it, he felt that . She wrote about love and hate and, of course, about sorrow and joy and pain and all of the little, almost imperceptible emotional mutations which mean that we are living, that we are alive. Otto is utterly insufferable and completely oblivious of his impact on others – a very memorable character to spend time with on the page, but an absolutely nightmare to have to deal with in real life, no doubt!This was all fascinating but it was also sometimes difficult to understand this aspect of the book because people and events are not referred to by name.