Unauthorised use and/or duplication of this material without written permission from this blog’s author is prohibited. They cannot know, but some are pretty sure – and some are adamant that it will not; I think this sort of dramatic irony might be something we see a lot of in the 1947 Club. The protagonist feels isolated in her community (but not in her home) by what she sees as acceptance of the loss of what England stands for and why it matters. Just try to get everyone's names straight in your head as soon as you can, and strip in for a nice ride through the emotional life of two very different families living in adjacent houses during a tense moment in history.

It is also something that Rhoda, Bertha’s favourite daughter, notices at an early point in the novel when her father makes one of his many disparaging remarks. There is feeling that men see women as a constant in their lives, something to be acquired and then bent to their will. I’m glad you said it was a book to take a while over, because it seemed to take me ages to read, but I loved being immersed in that world and quite sad to leave it.I read Chatterton Square before this beautiful new edition came out, (in a green VMC) but I have this edition as well for when I want to re-read it. Rosamund – whose husband has disappeared off to France to find creative fulfilment – is an attractive, liberated woman, the kind of mother who encourages her children to pursue their own ambitions and preferences in life wherever possible. Living with them is Miss Spanner – a spinster and friend of Rosamund, who suffers still from the memories and affects of an unhappy childhood. The story of the Frasers and the Blacketts, was building up to be an interesting mingling and confrontation of two families, so very different from each other in their conceptual grasp of life, of education, and of politics.

Rhoda Blackett also develops a gentle friendship with Agnes Spanner, another woman rarely referred to by her first name, seemingly defined instead by her status as a spinster. As the story progresses, the female members of the Blackett family develop increasingly close friendships with the Frasers much to Mr B's consternation. Framed by the advance of the Second World War, the subtle mechanics of marriage and love are laid bare through the observation of three of the marital options open to the mid-century woman: unmarried, separated, miserably married. He is fascinated and repelled by the Frasers who have so much fun despite the somewhat mysterious absence of any husband and father. She unfurls, creating new connections and relationships; releasing her younger daughters from tyrannical rules and crucially sleeping outside of the martial bed.

I'm not a huge fan of Zoom but I do love that I'm finally able to see members of this group face-to-face, especially since many of them live in the UK. I was just thinking about her the other day — she was always recommending interesting midcentury books that I’d never heard of before. The Blackett household also includes his long-suffering wife Bertha,who seems sweet but downtrodden, and his three daughters, one of whom, Flora, takes after him exactly.

His wife and daughters can't stand him but he doesn't realise that because he only sees what he wants to see and he is so far up himself with such a high opinion of his worth. H. Young’s other novels, and although it is centered on one of her most memorable characters, Rosamund Frazer, it is both more important and more compelling than any of her previous novels because of the decade which has intervened between it and her others. The only one I felt somewhat lukewarm about was May Sinclair’s The Tree of Heaven – a perfectly good book, but a little loose or baggy for my tastes.After Henderson's retirement and the death of his wife, Young moved with him to Bradford on Avon in Wiltshire. He isn’t violent or abusive, the cruelty is more subtle and Mr Blackett wouldn’t, of course, recognise it as such.