Helen Simonson

Simonson’s last novel The Summer before the War is set in 1914 before the beginning of World War I; this novel is set in the summer of 1919 just after the end of that war.

Constance Haverhill is sent as a lady’s companion to Mrs. Eleanor Fog, an old family friend who is convalescing at a hotel in Hazelbourne-on-Sea. After the summer, Constance will have to find a position to support herself but in the meantime she finds herself mixing with the elites who live in the hotel. In particular, she meets Poppy Wirrall, an unconventional young woman, the leader of a group of independent-minded motorcycle-riding women, and her brother Harris, a fighter pilot trying to adjust to life as an amputee.

The book focuses on the challenges of post-war life, especially those faced by women. During the war, women took jobs left vacant by men who were off fighting; these jobs allowed women to show their competence and gave them both responsibility and freedom. With the end of the war, however, women are expected to give up these jobs to returning soldiers. Constance, for instance, managed a large estate but is told she is now no longer needed; Poppy expresses her frustration: “’I got used to feeling life was urgent and I was doing something important. Now we are all expected to go home to the kitchen or drawing room.’” Mention is made of the Restoration of Pre-War Practices Act which legislated certain jobs could be held only by men. Those women left widowed are expected to survive on an insufficient pension whereas those who are unmarried find a limited supply of potential husbands after the deaths of so many young men.

Women also experience misogyny. Constance admits that when showing her wartime employer “’how well his estate was doing . . . I forgot men don’t like women to be too competent. I should have been more circumspect.’” Men and women are certainly judged differently. One man’s comments are jokingly dismissed as overbearing but a woman points out that “’when I am overbearing, which I often like to be, they call me an absolute shrew.’” It’s best that women “’simper and faint and hide our abilities in all things worldly.’” Constance is careful “never to share her opinion, especially with a man” because she knows that if a woman says anything of import, “It was as if when offering a dog a biscuit, the dog had thanked them and begun to quote from the Encyclopaedia Britannica.”

Of course men must also adapt to changes. Those who survived the battlefield and the influenza pandemic have to integrate back into society. Injured men like Harris find themselves being treated as incapable of resuming work; Harris, for example, wants to continue to fly planes but is discouraged from doing so: “’They look at me as if my brain has gone missing along with the leg. Or rather they refuse to look at me at all.’” He also struggles with survivor’s guilt. Men who suffered serious injury are hidden away from society. In a parade celebrating victory and peace, attempts are made not to include the seriously wounded as if to prove one woman’s opinion that “’it seems as if the dead are more convenient than the wounded.’”

Classism is addressed. Men of lower classes who might have proven during wartime that “competence, decency, and grit were not the sole purview, or even the natural gifts, of the well-born” have to return to lives in which they are no longer seen as equals. And as a woman who has to earn a living to survive, Constance does not have the freedom of the wealthy. For instance, Poppy, because of her wealth and social class, is able to engage in activities not available to Constance: “Respectability was the currency in which Constance knew she must trade for the foreseeable future. She . . . did not have Poppy’s wealth and position from which to defend herself against notoriety.”

The book also touches on xenophobia and racism. At the hotel there’s a waiter named Klaus Zeiger, a German-born naturalized citizen. At the beginning of the war, he was kept in an internment camp, and after the war, because of lingering anti-German sentiment, he tries to keep a low profile. “’British India and the independent princely states together contributed over a million men to this war,’” but an Indian delegation is prevented from marching in the Peace Parade in London. One Indian pilot mentions that when he applied to the Flying Corps, he was told to become an air mechanic instead: “Some imputed weakness of my race, or perhaps a disinclination to train and empower a colonial.’” There is also racism against blacks; a visiting American expresses particularly odious views: “’Relationships across the races being, we believe, against the laws of the state and nature.’”

This book will be described as a gentle, quiet read but its charm is not a disguise for fluff. Though its plot, especially the romance, is predictable, the book captures the mood of the world after the First World War. It is the novel’s social commentary that I will remember. It’s an entertaining book that provides food for thought.

Note: I received an eARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

Please check out my reader's blog (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/) and follow me on Twitter (https://twitter.com/DCYakabuski).… (mais)

I was delighted by this novel and set aside all other books to read it.

I loved it for the witty epigrammatic insights of the characters. I loved it for the sensitive portrayal of the post WWI world of Britain. There are the war wounded men, struggling with horrific disfigurement and trauma, unable to obtain employment because no one wanted to be confronted with the human cost of the war, and because they were considered mentally as well as physically handicapped. Spunky women who had kept Britain together were being forced out of jobs after the government classifies the jobs as for men only. I loved it for the wonderfully drawn characters. So often, I was reminded of Jane Austen, that master of the comedy of manners and reversals of fortune in affairs of the heart.

In 1919, Constance Haverhill is a companion to her mother’s dear friend, connected by regard and not by mere economics, summering at a seaside resort. Come fall, she must find employment or become dependent on her brother, who had inherited the family farm. During the war, she had run an estate, her accounting and management skills top notch. But that job was going back to a man.

Constance meets the iconoclastic Poppy and her women friends who hope to continue their independence with a motorcycle transport business. These daredevil ladies include a mechanic and a motorcycle racer. Poppy hopes to expand the business by adding flying lessons for ladies; her brother Harris was a pilot in the war, returning home without a leg. He is morose and surly; his fiance had thrown him over, unable to face a crippled husband.

The war had left two million disabled and over forty thousand amputees, many of the men maimed with no prospects for employment or love, Constance learns when she visits the local convalescent center filled with veterans. Constance and Harris face the same challenges, unable to find employment. “People are unable to see beyond what they deem our limitations,” Harris concedes.

With the introduction of an American Southerner and a man from India with a secret, the story addresses racism on both sides of the pond.

Constance is drawn into Poppy’s exciting circle and her welcoming family, taking risks she would never have imagined. But even they fail her, their wealth sheltering them from their worst actions. Her prospects growing dim, Constance outwardly keeps her place while secretly she is breaking limits, daring to hope for a fuller life.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book.… (mais)