Helen Simonson - The Summer Before The War

Rating: 4/5

Review:
An enjoyable novel

This is a very good book in many ways; it is generally well written with some finely-drawn characters and is genuinely moving in places, but I did have some reservations about it.

The story is set in 1914.  Beatrice Nash is a young, unmarried woman whose inheritance is held in trust by a stultifyingly "proper" aunt, but who manages to secure a teaching position in Rye, a small Sussex town.  The story is of her experiences and those of others in the town as the country moves toward the start of the First World War and during the first few months of the War.

Helen Simonson creates some excellent characters, and manages to make her points about the subjugated position of women and other unjust social attitudes very well.  In Beatrice Nash she creates an intelligent woman with a mind of her own and who is also a believable character of the time.  There is some comedy with strong echoes of Mapp and Lucia – but also a fine portrait of how such petty, self-aggrandizing attitudes can cause terrible human damage.  I very much enjoyed the scarcely-disguised Henry James character, and there is also a lovely Austen-esque love story and some very good passages about the War itself.  Simonson manages to do all this with charm, truth and pathos without ever becoming twee or over-sentimental.

Like many people, I loved major Pettigrew's Last Stand, not least because Helen Simonson's language and setting were pitch-perfect.   Here, she doesn't do quite so well, and in a book so based on manners and the spoken and unspoken ideas of her characters I did find it a bit disconcerting.  Very prim, meticulously-spoken characters say things like "I'll be right there" or "I'll be fine," and the odd Americanism creeps in, like "railroad."  These are modern usages which have no place in Rye in 1914 and it did throw me out of the story somewhat.  I also thought the book was rather too long and could have done with a slightly firmer editorial hand in tightening the narrative.

Reservations aside, though, this is a very enjoyable, readable book with some fine portraits and insights into the meaning of courage, kindness, integrity and fulfilment and I can recommend it.

(I received a free ARC via Netgalley.)