This moving story opens in June 1914 - the beginning of the
long hot Edwardian summer preceding the First World War. Clarissa lives
a life of luxury at Deyning, her family seat in Sussex: the youngest
child and only daughter of wealthy parents, she spends her time playing
tennis and croquet, painting, and wandering about the beautiful grounds,
waiting to marry a suitable husband. Her older brothers, up at
Cambridge or Aldershot, appear occasionally at Deyning with their
affluent, carefree friends; Clarissa longs to be part of their grown-up
world, and is about to be sent to a Paris finishing school, when her
father, hearing rumours of worrying events in Europe, decides to
postpone her trip.
Tom Cuthbert is the son of the Deyning housekeeper, but is -
somewhat mysteriously - a student at Oxford. Down for the long
vacation, he is immediately attracted to Clarissa and she to him, but
both know that any relationship between them is impossible; Clarissa’s
beautiful but remote mother is especially determined that her daughter
must not become involved with someone who is ‘not one of us.‘ Clarissa
and Tom meet fleetingly during the summer, but their worlds are torn
apart by Britain’s declaration of war on Germany. Tom, together with
Clarissa’s brothers, enlist, and within weeks most of the young male
population of the country has disappeared to France and Belgium.
Clarissa spends the rest of the war in London; her family suffers tragic
losses, as do all the families she knows.
In 1917, a wonderful and devastating event changes Clarissa’s
life forever; the secret that this forces her to keep almost destroys
her. After the war, nothing is the same, and although some survive,
they are irrevocably damaged; whilst some lose family fortunes, others,
liberated from old social strictures, find huge success in a new world.
Will Clarissa break free from the role society has given her? Will she
ever find true happiness? And what is the secret that her own mother
is so anxious to keep?
Judith Kinghorn has written a novel that manages to tell a
touching personal love story whilst also breathing life into a turbulent
period of British history. This is the story not only of two people
kept apart by prejudice and snobbery, but also of the way in which the
1914-1918 war - now almost ancient history to our children - affected
every man and woman, whatever their social background. The reader is
there on the terrace at Deyning, listening to the young men’s
enthusiastic response to Lord Kitchener’s rallying calls, but she is
also there at the London stations, when those same young men, blinded by
mustard gas, hold on to one another as they stagger back to a very
different world.
As I closed this book, I felt both satisfied and exhausted - I
had been on a journey with Clarissa, and she and her family and friends
had become real to me: this, I think, is the mark of a good story well
told.
Reviewed by Rosemary Kaye
No comments:
Post a Comment