A 1926 novel which begins with the death of a young man during the war, flashes
back to his happy childhood shared with the young woman who is the narrator, and
then describes how the war - inevitably - took them unawares, destroyed their h
appiness and has left her, the young woman, emotionally maimed. In one sense it
does not sound very entertaining. But the quality of the writing is extraordinar
y and it tells the reader as much about the after-shock of the war as, say, Test
ament of Youth as it records the impact of the war on a generation of women torn
between an old world which had been destroyed and a new world whose rules they
had not yet learned. These are the closing lines: 'And this is all that has hap
pened. It does not seem very much. It does not seem worth writing about. I was h
appy when I was a child, and I married the wrong person, and some one I loved de
arly was killed in the war . . . that is all. And all those things must be true
of thousands of people.'
A contemporary reviewer said: 'Well, they are "tru
e of thousands of people", but most women of forty cannot sit down and see how l
ife has taken them and shaped their plans into others and ignored their hopes fo
r beautiful things that never happen. Most women, too, the thousands who might h
ave written this story, cannot take disappointment and ugly houses and imperfect
husbands and change such elements of life into a spiritual experience that is b
eautiful, and something that is not a sordid string of complaints.' LP Hartley s
aid: 'One cannot help liking the book. It is marked by dignity and distinction a
nd the indescribable grace of a rare spirit.' And our proof-reader Kitty wrote:
'I found the book remarkable on all sorts of different levels. The way people fe
lt in the lead-up to the beginning of the war was very real - the initial disbel
ief and then their gradual acceptance of the inevitability of it. The descriptio
ns of Yearsly and the changes to it during and after the war, insights into pre-
war Oxford undergraduate life, descriptions of walks through London, and details
of wartime living - all these were fascinating. But what has made the greatest
impression on me is the beautifully conveyed feelings of nostalgia and homesickn
ess for the happiness and security of the past.'
