One of those rare, short, deceptively simple books that
resonate in so many ways. It is
reminiscent of Ian McEwan’s Chesil Beach.
As the book opens, two young lovers are having a final fling in his bedroom on “Mothering
Sunday,” when the respective family members and their servants are all absent
from two grand houses. The aristocrats
are enjoying lunch out and planning for the marriage in two weeks’ time of Paul
Sheringham to Emma Hobdey. The servants
have dispersed to visit their mothers on this English holiday in March 1924. But Paul is in the arms of Jane Fairchild, an
orphan with no mother to visit and a maid at the other grand house. They’ve been lovers for seven years, since
just after the end of World War I, which has taken the other young sons from
both houses. It is not only the last
time they will be together, but the first time Jane has actually been in his
house, their trysts having taken place in fields and barns. Is this the “romance”
in the title? Not entirely, as the book
turns in a completely other direction precisely at the half-way point of the
novel. It more in the definition of “romance”
as “a prose narrative treating imaginary characters involved in events remote
in time or place and usually heroic, adventurous, or mysterious.” I won’t give any more away. Loved it.
But then Graham Swift is himself a marvelous writer. 177 pp.
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