Mary HockingReseñas
Autor de Good Daughters
Reseñas
I found this in a book sale, and was drawn to it, and really enjoyed it. It has a wry eye for people, and also a kindness and a wisdom. It is also full of a love of literature, theatre and the church of England. It is hard not to read Hester as an author-insert, the solitary author, resenting those who impinge on her peace and quiet. The descriptions of suddenly falling in unexpected love, of the joy that seems to infuse everything and how you rise up above life's troubles are very well drawn. As is the commitment to a marriage that is far from perfect, but valuable and important.
I found the ending a little too tidy. Although marriage is prized, the mad love between the adulterers is well drawn as a beautiful thing - 'And what if it wasn't a judgement? What if their love was a gift, the last and most precious life would offer her?' 'We have walked and talked and held hands. And kissed too. Kissed and embraced. Nothing more. So little. Why should we be held to account for so little? To live with nothing - it's not possible; it couldn't be borne.' So how does the author resolve this? The other woman nobly and beautifully dies of a brain tumour, smiling at the vicar as she passes away, and the vicar's wife learns and grows as a person who works harder at her marriage.
I loved the way it showed how people view other people's choices through the lens of their own choices.
And I enjoyed all the cast of characters, the gentle snark about pilgrimages and plays, liturgy and dealing with blocked drains and life's other crises.
'Three days they had snatched in County Galway. And each of those days they had looked across the bay to the low green hills of Clare which seemed to belong to an Irish fairy story, a place that beckoned but remained out of reach, for the only bus which went to Clare arrived, for some peculiarly Irish reason, ten minutes after the departure of the only bus which would bring them back. Each day their longing for the hills of Clare had increased. Yet we could have gone, she thought. It was only that we couldn't get back.'
“…the bright day is done
And we are for the dark”
The place is Scotney – the fictional seaside town in the South East of England, a typical seaside town ripe for redevelopment that butts up against marshes and the Sussex Downs.
“The river twisted through a flat valley with the Downs rising on either side. The valley was treeless and rather drab with pylons striding across it. There were one or two herds of cattle. The only sign of human occupation was an old cottage standing beside what had once been a railway halt. It was a melancholy place, a half-way house between dream and nightmare; it had an attraction for Hannah which she could not define, except to say ‘it speaks to my subconscious.’ Whenever she came to Picton’s Quay, she made a point of visiting the cottage; it was more than a habit, it was a ritual and if she didn’t perform it she felt uneasy.”
A local election has returned Neil Moray as an independent member of Parliament for Scotney. On the night of the election, William Lomax; editor of the town’s newspaper receives a visit from the estranged wife of Moray’s main opponent. She has a tale to tell about Moray’s campaign manager Rodney Cope – which is suggestive of underhand dealings. Mrs Ormerod is known to drink rather heavily, suspected of being rather irrational – Lomax treats her story with little interest initially. However, Lomax’s journalistic interest has been spiked. He starts to wonder.
A great deal has been made of Neil Moray’s personal integrity – his determination to clean up Scotney – and Lomax can’t help but sense there is a story there somewhere. The West Front re-development is a big talking point in Scotney and naturally formed a big part of both Ormerod and Moray’s campaigns. Two very different businessmen have plans for the development, neither of them exactly squeaky clean. One of these men, Mario Vicente is a larger than life Italian, owner of several local restaurants, but who wants to retain the character of the development of the town. The other man, Heffernan sits at the helm of a big company, his plans for the town will change it out of all proportion. So, while Neil worries he may have shown too much bias toward Heffernan over Mario – Lomax wonders whether Rodney Cope could have been just a little too self-serving in his dealings before the election.
Hannah is Neil Moray’s secretary – he takes her for granted – and the scales have started to fall from Hannah’s eyes already. Hannah takes walks past an old abandoned cottage on the marshes outside the town, one day spotting two people who really shouldn’t be there. She spends time ruminating on her family’s disapproval of the choices she has made. They don’t think much of Scotney, would prefer Hannah to just get married. Hannah thinks Scotney has life – and has thrown her lot in with Moray to prove it – living in a small flat above a lock up garage near to the seafront. Now with the election over and won, the only thanks she gets from Neil is a half-hearted bunch of flowers – bought at the last minute – it really doesn’t feel like quite enough to Hannah.
Then, Mrs Ormerod is found dead. Rodney Cope – a nasty, self-serving man if ever there was one – continues along his own path, shrugging off any suggestion of scandal or corruption. Seemingly able to charm everyone around him, with his peculiar fascination. Hannah and Neil begin to look at Cope anew – exhausted after an election campaign but with so much still to do – they begin to recognise there is an enemy much closer to home. Neil begins to see there are more challenges ahead for him than perhaps he had first realised. Distracted, uncomfortable about his campaign manager and the promises his campaign might have made about the development, Neil seems ill-equipped to meet them.
“This disorientated feeling had been even worse this morning. The heat didn’t agree with him. It was still very warm now. Everywhere, windows were open and music blared into the streets; people spilled out of pubs and stood drinking and laughing on the pavements. A young couple strolled in front of him, the tips of their fingers touching; this roused more erotic sensations in him than if they had been mauling each other. The girl wore a long brown dress which looked dowdy and old fashioned. Moray didn’t like brown.”
Lomax steps up his investigation into Cope’s affiliations, putting himself into unexpected danger.
As the summer season gets under way and the weather hots up, holiday makers queue for donkey rides and troupe down to the beach. Meanwhile the scene is set for a dramatic standoff, police sharp shooters gather in a street outside a first-floor office, with TV cameras ready to capture every move.
This isn’t the first Hocking novel I have read that has such a dramatic ending – proving once again that she is a really versatile writer. Where Hocking’s strength lies for me has always been in her exploration of her characters’ psychologies – here beautifully capturing both naïve, and self-serving personalities. She is also adept at making the absurd both plausible and realistic. In The Bright Day small seaside town politics, corruption and journalism make for a compelling story.
“He was not in jail. The thought gave him no satisfaction as he mounted the chancel steps and turned to face the congregation. In fact, he felt rather more martyred here in St. Gabriel’s than he would have done had he been condemned to spend the morning at Cannon Row police station.”
Hocking stands back from her characters with a cool apraising eye – it’s a style not all readers love perhaps, but is one adopted by many exceptional writers like Elizabeth Taylor. I have written quite a lot of posts about Mary Hocking over the last three or four years so I shall resist the urge to go into a lengthy introduction about her – though I am aware that there will some newer readers who do not know who she is. For those wanting to know more there are plenty of old posts that you can explore.
Back to the novel itself.
Ralph Kimberley is a London vicar, an active supporter for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament he has already been on several high profile demonstrations. Now Ralph – and some of his activist friends long to get arrested, as if only that can properly demonstrate their commitment to the cause. Ralph is a good man, though fails to properly realise the effect his political activism is beginning to have on his family and his parish.
“Now he did look at the clock. Just after six. But there was something the clock did not tell him. This was Saturday: the Saturday. The morning sweetness had not been entirely illusory, after all. In the breathless calm of the house he could prepare himself, undisturbed by other claims and demands, for the day’s burden, this enterprise so far removed from the narrow routine of his life; it was more like a promise of fulfilment. He still believed in fulfilment in spite of all the small frustrations.”
At home Ralph’s wife Myra feels neglected and unloved. The couple have no children of their own though Myra’s recently orphaned niece Sarah (around ten) is living with them, and Ralph’s grown up niece Jill – accompanies him on his demonstrations. Naturally, Sarah is feeling unwanted and rather lost – she is not the most appealing child – (though I really liked her) – she is desperately sad in her loneliness. There’s certainly a feeling that the adults don’t have a clue what might be going on in her head.
“Aunt Myra who usually hated doors to be slammed, looked up from the stove but made no complaint. After breakfast, she said to Sarah: ‘Run along and play with Sukie.’
The day when her parents went off in the car, her mother had said: ‘Run along and play with Nancy, there’s a good girl.’
‘I don’t want to play!’ Sarah said vehemently to Aunt Myra, ‘I want to stay here.’”
I found Sarah a brilliant creation, she is sometimes quite unkind, obsessed with the impending death of her friend Joanna – she takes quite violently against Keith Wilson, who comes to stay with Ralph and Myra.
Ralph has taken Keith under his wing, he is a young man recently released from prison – and Ralph is keen to give Keith the opportunity to put his life back together. Keith is rather prone to bitterness, angry with the way society now sees him. Not everyone in the parish knows about Keith’s conviction, and the verger, Spencer is jealous and suspicious of Keith, while the church warden is irritated at his vicar’s distractions. Ralph recklessly puts Keith in charge of the youth club – which inevitably lead to confrontations and recriminations. With Ralph so often absent – Myra feels inappropriately drawn to Keith – but Keith is more interested in Jill. Though there are elements of their relationship I wasn’t especially comfortable with – and I am sure that is intentional.
Ralph needs to acknowledge that obligations to is family and parish must begin to take precedence and the time comes when Ralph must no longer seek the role of martyr but accept a new start for himself as various conflicts are brought to a head.
The Sparrow is an excellent early Hocking, intelligent and at times dramatic, it kept me wonderful company during a very slow reading week. This might now be one of my favourite Hocking novels.
Last night I completed my first read of The Meeting Place and as I pretty much only read in bed, I couldn't wait to get to bed the past couple of nights. I loved it and cannot find any fault in it. There were so many subplots within the main storyline and yet I did not find myself confused with the characters nor the stories. M.H. was just such a good writer.
In The Meeting Place, Clarice is a woman who works as a prompter for plays and as such finds herself in the countyside & on the moors while working on Pericles. In this place she begins to find people, local historical events & places that are seemingly familiar and before she knows it she is seeking more.
Near perfection. A bit of suspense, a bit of the supernatural and a lot of comfort. Not really a book of time travel but I would say more like parallel lives of the protagonist. Like Mary Hocking’s other books I've read, I know it will be even better when I reread it.
I found this story to be very interesting & I believe Hocking will be one of the authors that I *hide* in the trailer as hubby is so concerned about 'book weight'. She is one of the authors that I feel I can always recommend highly.
Daniel Kerr is a micro-biologist, sent back to England from his research employment in Africa by the African ruler. His presence is an interruption in the lives of his wife and teen-age children as well as that of his sister and mother-in-law with whom they live. If Daniel comes to judgement, so do Erica, Giles, Emma, Dorothy, and Mrs. Prentice.
MH takes her time setting up the situation so that we have a clear idea of what each character is doing and why. MH's social skewers are both gentle and adept, and the climax is laugh-out-loud funny. Well worth the bit of time spent reading this small book!
1 
LizzieD | Aug 20, 2017 |
LizzieD | Aug 20, 2017 | 
He Who Plays the King was apparently Mary Hocking’s favourite novel, it is also her only fully historical novel. The novel is really rather different from other works, although I could see several familiar themes threaded through her take on the Henry Tudor/Richard III story. Heavily rooted – as Hocking’s novels so often are – in the British countryside, she also explores the psychology of these fascinating historical characters. It has been a while since I read what I think of as a ‘kings and queens novel’ – as this one is quite brilliant, utterly absorbing, it is a historically detailed page turner. It is also beautifully written; the writing could well be amongst Mary Hocking’s best. The opening sentences captivated me immediately.
“A formation of starlings; the first squadron of the evening. Bats flicker under huge elms. The long line of hills, veined with gullies where dark rivers foam, is now reduced to uniform blackness, and the valley is a desolate sea of grass in which there are strange flickerings of light where water lies in patches of bog. A landscape difficult to set in time; this scene can have changed little in hundreds of years: England on a peaceful autumn night.”
The novel opens with the future Richard lll as a young boy, seven years old in a room above the great hall in Ludlow castle, listening to the voices of adults below. Later peering out a window in the company of his brother George (the later Duke of Clarence). Richard witnesses a younger child – little more than a toddler knocked down in the yard by one of the boarhounds, the other child is Henry Tudor. The young Richard has no idea that, that small child will one day seek to take the throne from him in battle.
If you know your English history (as I already did), you will pretty much know what comes next. Knowing the story doesn’t spoil the compelling nature of it, I found myself thinking ‘ooh this is where Henry Vl’… or ‘this is where Clarence…’ etc. I flew through the whole thing. Mary Hocking paints an exquisite portrait of England in the fifteenth century, as well as bringing her gift of superb characterisation and storytelling to a great historical legend.
“To those who worked long hours on their lord’s fields, the idea that a change of king should bring any change in their lives would have been greeted with scorn, had any such idea reached them. But they had no time for ideas. They worked, bore children who, it seemed, one day cried on their mothers’ laps and the next were working beside them in the fields. They worked during the hours of light, in all weathers, were aware of changes of season and little else. Of the world beyond their fields, drifted away from the land and took service with one of the great lords. His world became their world, his writ was law. What the king wished or did not wish was of no account. And so it was over most of the country.”
I am not going to rehash the whole story it’s quite long, involved and complicated. Many of you may already know the story in some form – though if you don’t, read this novel which brilliantly re-tells one of the most jaw-dropping periods in English history. It concerns a king declared mad, royal protectors a kingmaker and the machinations which follow to put Richard and George’s elder brother Edward on the throne. That of course is just the beginning – Edward becomes kind right enough and marries the young widow Elizabeth Woodville, (though the question of a pre-contract will rear its ugly head years later). Edward lV and Elizabeth become the parents of Elizabeth of York, and of course Edward V and the young duke of York, commonly called the princes in the tower. George Duke of Clarence and Richard Duke of York, the young King’s brothers are deeply ambitious and manipulative, their plots are breath-takingly audacious, there is always the breath of treason and betrayal on the air, family really counted for very little.
Interspersed with the story of Richard, is the story of Henry Tudor – who became Henry Vll – father to Henry Vlll. Henry was taken into the care of his uncle Jasper Tudor. He was of Welsh heritage, and his claim to the English throne was tenuous at best – coming through his mother – great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt. We meet him as a young boy, on a gruelling journey back to Wales, the men who have responsibility for conducting him to Pembroke Castle care little for him.
“He set out in the morning with a few trusted retainers. The Yorkist army was known to be not many miles away, so the small fugitive band kept to the hills. There was little to distinguish the four men and the child from others who straggled along the hill tracks, seeking shelter in that part of the country still held by Lancastrians. The ground was rough and at times they had to dismount and lead their horses. It was a hard journey for a grown man, severe for a child of four. He got very dirty and wet, was often hungry and always uncomfortable; but he accepted this without making undue fuss. Henry Tydder had already learnt to expect little of life.”
He meets a stranger who gives him a small stone as a gift. Henry carries it with him for many years, a kind of good luck charm. Henry spent years in exile in Brittany – before returning to England, where eventually, with conspirators to the right and the left of him, he sought to take the throne from Richard.
As for Richard and the princes in the tower (one of them was actually king though), who was it that did the dastardly deed? A novelist telling this story naturally has to come down on one side or the other, was it Richard lll? The Duke of Buckingham? Or someone else? I won’t spoil it, by telling you which theory Mary Hocking comes down on the side of, but it makes for a wonderfully tense piece of storytelling. Naturally almost everyone interested in this story has their own opinion, so you will either like Hocking’s fictional account of the murder of the Royal brothers or you won’t.
I really think this is one of Mary Hocking’s best novels. On the face of it, He Who Plays the King does seem very different to many of her novels, and yet here too she examines human behaviour, the lies we tell our self and the motivations which drive people to act as they do.
1 Heaven-Ali | Mar 16, 2017 |
Heaven-Ali | Mar 16, 2017 | 
Tom Norris and his wife Isobel live in a large house in a small Sussex village, Isobel stays in the village with her charity work, the WI and her garden while Tom leaves each day to do battle in the County Hall of South Sussex.
“Although it was only late September there was a rasp in the air this evening that was not entirely due to woodsmoke rising from a bonfire. Tom Norris, who had intended to go for a walk by the river, turned back at the end of the village street. There were only a few cottages in the street, most of the larger houses stood farther back at the end of cart tracks which their owners, who were not hospitable folk, had made no attempt to surface. There was no one about in the street. The bus service had been cut off several years ago and since then the village had reverted to the isolation it had known most of the years since Doomsday.”
Tom is the Assistant Education Officer for South Sussex, but now as well the usual office politics, the stresses and strains of life in local government, Tom and his colleagues are threatened by the boundaries commission, who are seeking to get rid of South Sussex county council parcelling up its various parts between the East and West Sussex.
In his spare time, Tom is a writer of children’s books, and his imagination is fuelled by the landscape around him, and the tantalising idea that the wolf could return to the hills.
In late autumn, the weather takes a turn, and soon the country is hit by some of the worst snow blizzards in living memory. Some days people can’t get to work, other days they are practically stranded. Hocking’s descriptions of landscape are always brilliant, her novels are strongly rooted in the England that she knew – whether that was War time London or the Sussex countryside of the 1990’s or county council offices of the 1970s – her world is wonderfully recognisable. She fills her canvas with some pretty odd characters, putting them in often bizarre situations – I’ve noticed this in one or two other Hocking novels – though it isn’t common to all. The Mind has Mountains in another novel which at times is slightly reminiscent of Iris Murdoch.
Norma Rossiter, head of the special schools section is wonderfully eccentric, dressed for a school visit with Tom, in a dunce’s cap and purple cloak. The two end up chasing papers around country lanes and Norma ends up sat in the middle of cows in a field while her confidential documents are scattered to the winds.
“Norma Rossiter was sitting on the bench by the front door when Tom got out of the lift. She was wearing a purple cloak with an enormous long-haired fur collar, a green dunce’s cap with a very high steeple with an orange plume, and boots and gloves of a matching green. It was the sort of outfit Marlene Dietrich could have carried off, and it required impeccable make-up. Norma’s make-up, though generous, had been hastily applied and the line of the mouth was crooked; the whole impression was of an actress who, having made a good attacking start with a part has lost her nerve midway through the action.”
County Hall is a place of grey men, it is hard to distinguish between Chief Education Officer Mather and record keeper Marsden, Phillimore – a war veteran seems stuck in the past. There are several bizarre incidents among the people who work at County Hall – which mirror the turmoil taking place within the minds of several characters – a blackout on the stairs, a peculiar strong room incident – as well as various petty squabbles and tensions.
Naturally there’s an air of uncertainty in the offices of the county council. Among this group of odd, unhappy people – each nursing their own ambitions and anxieties Tom is often seen as a calm, safe pair of hands. Tom, however is entering his own time of crisis – the lines between what is real and what is not becoming blurred and confused. He is looking for his purpose in life, trying to hold things together in meetings – while in private his mind has started to play tricks on him.
Into his office, Tom agrees to take Phoebe Huber, who has made herself mysteriously unpopular among her colleagues in her previous office. Tom’s decision to appoint Phoebe does not go down too well – and the mood at the County Hall worsens. Tom can’t help but be fascinated by Phoebe; a strangely drawn character – she has a peculiar presence and yet remains for us and for Tom oddly enigmatic. He feels sorry for her, and allows himself to get drawn into her slightly peculiar life in the village of Pendlecombe, with her cats and the memory of her aunt. Phoebe appears a meek, lank haired young woman, a little sad, unpopular, a square peg in a round hole, yet she is also oddly subversive. Tom’s world becomes more uncertain and frightening as he spends more time with her.
The Mind has Mountains is a fascinating novel, memorable and thought provoking. Some of the committee meeting sections are a little too realistically dull – though there’s some brilliant set pieces, which liven things up considerably. I have to say though, that I don’t know another writer who writes about the everyday world of local councils and government offices with the authenticity that Mary Hocking does. It was a world she knew well from the inside and it shows.
I have been talking about this book with friends on my Mary Hocking readers Facebook group – which you can find here. Some of us are planning to read He who Plays the King – Mary Hocking’s historical novel at the end of January. I am not doing a big read-a-long thing – steering clear of those – but if any Hocking fans want to join us you would be welcome.
1 Heaven-Ali | Jan 1, 2017 |
Heaven-Ali | Jan 1, 2017 | 
“The wind raided the French windows. There was something imperious about it, as though someone was demanding entry and would not be long denied. Catherine sat very straight in the middle of the couch; her head was still as though held in a vice, but her eyes looked round the room, expecting something to happen, hoping to forestall it. She looked at the antimacassar on the back of the winged armchair; it was a fine example of tatting and had a swan as centrepiece. She had never examined it carefully before, although it was so familiar; the swan had an exceedingly long neck, she was not sure whether it had always been as long as that. She switched her gaze sharply to the mantelpiece. Sure enough, the heavy serpentine clock had moved nearer to the edge. The wind buffeted the windows in a surge of frustration. Catherine looked at the angel which swirled above the clock, the angel was blowing a trumpet the end of which had been broken off. She was not sure how long the trumpet had been broken. Grit fell in the hearth and a little soot puffed into the room. She clenched her hands; they should have had the chimney bricked up long ago. Then, behind her, something clattered down.”
Polwithian, Cornwall is the setting for this complex, romantic thriller – a village where strangers stand out a mile. Huddled along a muddy estuary, it is well off the tourist tack. The Jory family have been living on their farm – which stands apart from the rest of the village – for decades. A strange, reserved family – they keep themselves to themselves. Silas Jory isn’t a farmer however – he’s a solicitor’s clerk – and twenty years earlier he had shocked the community when he returned from the war with a Syrian wife.
“In 1948 Melita Jory ran away with a stranger and was not heard of again. Her mother-in-law went into mourning. Rhoda Penryn said that she did this because she liked black; it was certain she had never liked Melita.”
It is eighteen years since Melita went away; leaving her young daughter Anna behind, Anna a young woman now, still lives at the farm, which has no electricity – with her father, grandmother and Catherine, her father’s troubled cousin.
As the novel opens a stranger arrives in Polwithian – with questions about the Jory’s and Melita in particular. His presence serves to rake up old stories, unearthing secrets and rousing passions, jealousies and violent.
Gabriel – the minister’s awkward son is friends with Anna Jory – they walk together while Gabriel tells her about the birds he sees. Gabriel; an unhappy young boy is not impressed with the stranger – his only welcome is to push him into the wall of the jetty, telling him sharply to leave. Gabriel Harkness will later watch jealously as Anna and the stranger begin to draw closer. Who is this man? Richard Oliver – at first he claims to be representing lawyers acting for Melita’s family.
As Richard begins to become a more familiar figure in the village, the locals start to ask questions about what happened to Melita. Did she go away with someone – or did she leave on her own? Rhoda finds it hard to believe that Melita would have left Anna – convinced she would have returned for her child had she been able. Rumour about Mr Harkness – the minister rise to the surface again – he’d been instructing Melita in Christianity at the time she disappeared. Is Richard’s interest in Anna entirely appropriate?
“The birds no longer had the scene to themselves. A girls was sitting on the rock that jutted furthest out; she sat with her legs curled under her body, contemplating the sea, as much in her element as the oystercatcher on the adjacent rock. She came often, probably every morning, he was sure of that; she was so much a part of the scene. He wondered how she had got there. While he was thinking about this he realised that he was in no doubt about her identity. How she had got there might be a mystery, but he was quite certain whence she had come. He found himself unexpectedly moved by this knowledge. She had been so completely overlooked: they had spoked of Silas, of old Mrs Jory and Catherine, reluctantly they had remembered Melita, nut no one had thought to mention Anna Jory.”
Memories of Melita haunt Silas – and Catherine’s behaviour becomes more and more erratic as Richard manages to manoeuvre his way into staying at the Jory farm – where everyone goes to bed at eight o’clock and the nights are very long and dark.
There is tension and mystery in this novel, it reminded me a little of Look stranger – another Mary Hocking novel which portrays a community living somewhat apart from the rest of society. The reader is not certain who to trust in this novel – relationships are complex – often uncomfortable.
Richard Oliver – the stranger – as often strangers do in literature – brings change to this quiet community. Eighteen years of memories and suspicions are brought to the surface, before the truths are finally revealed. There is both subtlety and tension in this novel which make it a really good page turner.
The story is told by in the third person, the perspective moves around the family and some of those who cross paths with them, but at the centre of the story is twelve year-old Alice, one of three sisters, the middle one.
She was at that interesting stage in life when she had the security of home and family but she was also beginning to see some – but by no means all – of the possibilities that life might have to offer.
Her father, Stanley, dominates his family. He is a headmaster and a lay preacher and he has firm – and maybe idealistic – views about his family should live. He studies his newspaper carefully and he worries about what is happening to the world and what will happen to his daughters when they are grown. His wife, Judith, appreciated his and her daughters feelings and she managed things beautifully, with practical good sense and wonderful diplomatic skills.
The story of their eldest daughter, Louise, propels the plot. Her parents hoped that she would go to university but Louise wanted to be an actress. She persuaded them to let her join a drama group, she let them think it was at her girls’ school, but it wasn’t.
And Louise caught the attention of the boys in the group ….
Meanwhile, Alice is juggling friendships with two girls from very different backgrounds who do not get on. Katia is the daughter of a family of Russian-Jewish refugees, while Daphne comes from a more privileged, but probably less happy, background.
Mary Hocking as much pays attention to her secondary characters as her principals, and so the story of those girls and their families brings another aspect to the story, and illuminates the diversity of 1930s London wonderfully well.
Accounts of school life, where the narrative perspective moves towards their teachers are particularly well done. Mary Hocking worked in education until she could support herself by her writing, and it is clear that she had strong feelings and a depth of understanding.
Alice was an average student but she discovered a talent for writing; that confirmed the suspicion I had from the start, that a great deal in this story was drawn from life.
Mary Hocking paints pictures of family life, and of the world around the family, wonderfully well. Her evocation of time and place is pitch perfect, her period details are well chosen, and I didn’t doubt for a moment that she knew and understood everything that she wrote about.
She wrote well, simply and clearly, in good, old-fashioned English.
A wide-ranging cast of characters and some trips away from home - including one to Cornwall, that probably explains where Mary Hocking got her very Cornish surname - meant that there was always something to hold my attention.
But I have the same reservation that I had last time I read one of her books.
The narrative style and the writing style held me at a distance from the story and I would have liked to be a little closer. to feel that I knew -rather than knew of – the Fairley family.
I wish that she had written this book in the first person, and I am sure that she had the understanding, the grasp of her material, that she could have done it. For me, either a little more immediacy in the storytelling or a little more beauty in the prose would have really elevated this book.
That is not to say that it isn’t a very good book. It is!
Mary Hocking was a very fine chronicler of an age she lived through.
And I am eager to read the second and third books of the trilogy.
1 BeyondEdenRock | 5 reseñas más. | Apr 6, 2016 |
BeyondEdenRock | 5 reseñas más. | Apr 6, 2016 | 
Set in an unnamed Iron Curtain country the action taking place in the week leading up to the outbreak of revolution against the communist government. As I have come to expect from Mary Hocking this novel – like those she wrote later – is very much rooted in time and place. The atmosphere of a grey, bitter chill with a gradually rising tension among the British and foreign community living in the capital city, those attached to the embassy and the journalists who are meant to be reporting on the situation for their newspapers.
“On the east side of the river, narrow cobbled streets ran up towards the centre of the city. It was still, as though the pulse of the city had been crushed. Scraps of washing hanging along the stone walls were hard as iron, and a jagged crust of ice stood out like broken glass around the rim of a pump. In Government Square, the flag above the City Hall was furled in stiff folds, and along the broad avenues the trees stood stark and brittle, rigid in the grip of a frost that had killed their roots.”
Thirty five year old widow Helen Jenner works alongside and shares a flat with twenty year old Canadian Kate Blanchard. Kate has become infatuated with Doyle Lawrence, an Irish Journalist. Doyle is secretive, unreliable and irresponsible, boastful of past adventures, hard drinking; he doesn’t appear to be writing much at the moment. Having become secretly involved with the revolutionary movement – he has been indiscreet enough to hint at his activities to Kate. Helen has concerns – as she sees Kate skipping happily around their apartment trying to squeeze herself into a sophisticated black dress to impress Doyle, she tentatively tries to warn the younger girl. Doyle meanwhile is making late night visits to a farmhouse, where revolutionaries Karel and his wife live.
Paul Daniels; another journalist has been drawing closer to Helen; he is a friend of Doyle’s though someone far more responsible, carefully watching the hourly changing situation. Paul knew the country years earlier, since when he has studied it, written about it and now is anxious to help – in whichever way he can.
“ ’But what can you do? Already her control was beginning to slip. ‘What can any of us do? We are helpless surely?’
‘But doesn’t the man who stands by, equally helpless, at a lynching make the same plea? Yet he still cannot escape the consequence, which is that his own freedom has been impaired.’
‘But that is something which happens in his own country, among his own people,’ she cried. ‘This is not your country, you have no responsibility here,’
‘No, No, no!’ They were shouting at one another now. ‘It’s not as simple as that. I am, after all, of the human race and I can’t stand by and watch a major convulsion without being touched, simply shrugging my shoulders and saying “It’s all very sad, but I am not responsible.” You ask me why I am moved by events here; but what astonishes me is that anyone should be unmoved.’ “
Lady Rosamund Hilton her husband Sir Edward and Marshall Pickard are three of the key figures of the foreign community, along with Jean Dulac a French journalist and Dr. Van Hals – who lives in the apartment above Helen and Kate. Pickard idolises Lady Hilton, she a graceful English beauty, married to a man she doesn’t love. In the past Rosamund had an affair with Doyle, it’s the worst kept secret in the city. Kate’s youthful certainty doesn’t see Rosamund as a threat – more as ancient history – but perhaps all is not entirely over between them. As much as he adores Rosamund, Pickard despises Doyle, and so when he witnesses a tender moment between the two, Pickard can’t help but want his revenge.
Over the course of the week the political situation worsens, revolution is in the air – and on the street corners and in the cafes people whisper the name Matthias. When revolution finally comes to the city – both Paul and Doyle drawing on what courage they have, must make some difficult decisions.
Mary Hocking concerns herself with those age old conflicts between our personal responsibility to others in our lives – and concerns and responsibilities for wider, social issues. As always Mary Hocking portrays complexities and fragilities in human relationships which exist for people, no matter what wider circumstances they find themselves in.
1 Heaven-Ali | Feb 14, 2016 |
Heaven-Ali | Feb 14, 2016 | 
I think it is now probably quite well known among Mary Hocking readers that on 1st January 1972 Auberon Waugh published a scathing review of The Climbing Frame in the Spectator magazine, the article is available online for your delight. However, despite not being a fan of any form of censorship I am not linking to the review here – because I think it is really rather mean. I am not saying that The Climbing Frame is Mary Hocking’s best novel – it’s not – but there is still a lot to admire.
The Climbing Frame shows with searing accuracy how one trivial event can be blown out of all proportion by media intrusion, gossip and petty official posturing.
“And so, on the morning of 9th June, the Eastgate Recorder asked more in sorrow than in anger, ‘Are our County representatives becoming too remote? As a result of the trials and tribulations of a Miss Cathcart, the Recorder was reluctantly driven to the conclusion that they were.”
A single mother complains about the minor accident her difficult son suffers on a school climbing frame. The incident which resulted in little more than a couple of grazes occurred when the class was being supervised by a supply teacher, and the child for a few moments took himself off to play on equipment he was not supposed to be using. The resulting fuss would be utterly ridiculous if it wasn’t all too realistic. Now in 1971 I was three years old (I know big age give away) but I began my primary education in the 1970’s and although I was exempt from education office committee meetings by virtue of my tender years – for me there is still a feeling of absolute authenticity to the interminable discussions and sniping depicted here. Soon the County Education office and County Council Education Committee are involved in a ridiculous wrangle of who did what when, who knew what when, etc. The mother; Miss Cathcart (she insists on Miss!) adds more fuel to the fire, by calling the local press. We glimpse her life only briefly it’s not a particularly happy one, her son is difficult and she finds life a daily challenge filled with drudgery.
“Peter wriggled round on the divan and looked at his mother. She paid no attention to him. He scuffed the linoleum, and when this failed to attract a rebuke, he gave one or two prolonged niffs. But Evelyn Cathcart had gone away; she had gone away more surely and irrevocably than the times when she rushed out of the room, declaring that she was leaving him and would never come back. Then, although he some-times a little frightened if she stayed out for long, he felt that it was a game in which he was included. But this was one of the other times; the times when his mother retreated into a world of her own where he could never find her.”
As so often in her writing, Mary Hocking shows astute understanding of the inner mind, even the doomed romance between two of the characters at the centre of the rumpus has moments of tender sympathy.
The situation surrounding the climbing frame is further complicated by the fact that Mylor Drew (nice 1970’s mini-series name that) the unhappily married headmaster of the school at the centre of the row is having an affair with Maggie Hester an administrative assistant at the education office. As the novel begins their relationship has been of an innocent nature – a few hurried meetings and furtive kisses. Their improbably chaste romance develops as the strains and tensions of Mr Drew’s home life begin to take their toll on his children.
While the romance in the novel may be a little weak – to say nothing of Maggie’s poetry – what Mary Hocking does do brilliantly is to recreate the atmosphere of the education offices, committees and the small self-important officials that could be found there.
“Mr Crocker, fretting over the report on capitation allowances, pushed the attendance book across the table as Wicks entered the room and the same time tried to signal to Malcolm Punter that more chairs would be required. Punter, who considered himself too important to act as porter, contrived not to notice and began to talk to County Councillor Mrs. Pritchard about his twins”
As Miss Cathcart’s fury becomes more aggressively neurotic, ensuring more and more attention is directed toward her and her son, the men and women of the various official bodies involved become more frighteningly ridiculous in their selfish buck-passing. Hocking shines a satirical light on the county council and education offices, making great nonsense of their practices and vanities.
Even with the few weaknesses in this novel I still really enjoyed it – a novel firmly rooted in the municipal offices of English towns, Mary Hocking knew her subject well from the inside, and it shows.
My second read for Mary Hocking week, but my first read for June was The Hopeful Traveller, a sequel to A Time of War.
The Hopeful Traveller takes place a short time after the end of the Second World War, Kerren, Cath, Robin and Adam each need to adjust to the new world of peacetime following the strictures and structures of war time service. Having left the peace of West Country woodland behind and the camaraderie of the hut they shared with their Wren colleagues, Cath and Kerren are now living in London. These early days of peace are far from idyllic, rationing still as strict as during war time, adjustments have to be made in a world of bomb damage, where work and affordable accommodation can be hard to come by. london 1946
Kerren has taken a job as a librarian and Cath is living an easy life in her parent’s home in Holland Park. Life is not all roses in peacetime, Kerren, refusing to touch the money left to her by her husband, is practically starving while living in a horrible room in a noisy street of terraced houses. Meanwhile Robin is living the life in Cheltenham she never wanted, with her baby Terrence and the husband she doesn’t love. Robin had married Clyde for convenience, to avert a scandal – because she couldn’t quite face being unconventional. Her child isn’t her husband’s; Clyde had offered her a way out of a difficult situation. Now Robin snaps at her husband, feels guilty for her irritation – and judges herself to be a poor mother. During a child free visit to see Kerren in London Robin meets Jan a Yugoslav refugee (who reminded me a little of Jacov my favourite character in the Fairly family trilogy). Inevitably Robin embarks on an ill-thought out affair with Jan who is something of a thoughtless cynic.
Mary Hocking does distance herself a little from her characters – this is something I often quite like, it sort of allows me to develop my own relationship with the characters. It is a style similar to that of Elizabeth Taylor and Barbara Pym (although I do think all three are quite different as writers). Here, while Kerren is a proud, intelligent dreamer, Robin has become a cool, selfish young woman shielded by a mask of respectability. Adam, a few years their senior feels like the world weary grown up – recovering from his losses and starting again with a new venture.
“Kerren told herself that it was Bach with whom she was concerned. It was Bach about whom she thought as she walked along the streets, watching the green shoots pierce the soil, seeing the green finger tips of trees gently exploring the more temperate air. She began to feel a certain greenness within herself, an inexplicable, restless hope. During the winter she had at times been deeply lonely. She wanted so desperately to communicate; what it was she wanted to communicate she was never quite sure, there was a dancing light that threaded its way in and out of conversations and encounters and eventually eluded her.”
When Kerren finds sanctuary from her room and rumbling stomach in Covent Garden – with a free ticket for Wagner – the last person she expects to run into is Adam. Kerren had begun to develop an attachment to Adam after her husband’s death, before Adam was posted away from her. Now, she feels drawn to him again, but unsure exactly where she stands. Adam never speaks to her of the wife and children he lost, she feels he is keeping a big part of himself hidden from her. Kerren has made one other friend in London; Dilys, who she introduces Cath and Robin to, so when Cath sees Adam in the window of Dilys’s house one day she is a little too quick to draw conclusions. Yet Kerren can’t help but allow Adam to take charge in the midst of her misery and he helps Kerren find a much better place to live.
“She had reached the stage where she no longer cared what happened provided she could be alone with her wretchedness. But Adam must have been very decisive because almost without her realizing how it had happened she found herself walking down the street with him, clutching a hold-all containing nightdress and sponge bag. It was difficult to get a room at this time of night and her tear-blotched face did not help matters. ‘I’ve no doubt that by now the police have my description in several different languages,’ Adam said resignedly when they had been turned away from a dingy boarding house by an indignant Italian woman in a stained floral dressing gown. Eventually a room was found in an expensive Bayswater hotel which had ceased to ask questions with the advent of the first G.I. Adam paid and Kerren experienced all the humiliation of the kept woman without any of the pleasure.”
Adam has entered into a partnership in London, a small publishing house, and Adam introduces Kerren to his business partner’s son John Hughes. John like so many young men after the war is at a loss at what to do now that he is demobilised, he’s considering going to Cambridge to study medicine even though he feels too old to do so. It seems the the war took his best years. John is drawn to Kerren, but soon realises he is wasting his time. In the company of John and Adam Kerren goes on something of a peculiar adventure in Brecon, which sees them unwittingly (and rather naively) getting themselves mixed up in the black market. This peculiar episode heralds a much more frightening and dramatic one, which finally allow Kerren and Adam to come to an understanding.
That dramatic ending to the novel jarred a tiny bit – it’s not a big criticism, overall I really enjoyed The Hopeful Traveller, I had really wanted to know what happened to characters I already got to know so well in A Time of War.
“A little snow fell during the week, but did not settle. The fields remained covered with frost like a fine crumble of pastry and the trees were faintly blurred, their stark outlines clotted by frost. In the daytime the sky was cloudless, at night it had a faint reddish tinge. It was very pretty, like an old fashioned Christmas card. Only the water in the millpond, mirroring the trees with razor-sharp precision, seemed to admit the reality of winter.”
A Time of War gives a Wren’s eye view of war and the first tastes of freedom that it brings. A group of young women come together in hut 8 of Guillemot; a Fleet Air Arm training station in the West Country. These young women are not very long out of school, away from home for the first time, learning new skills while becoming a part of the services world. Kerren, newly arrived from Northern Ireland sees the war as a romantic dream; she is one of a couple of meteorological Wrens. The weather information they provide vital to the safety of the pilots that fly out of Guillemot. Along a cedar path through the woods is cabin 8 which Kerren shares with the women who will become so important to her, and with whom she will share so much. Flame haired Robin, who wishes to escape a conventional life in Cheltenham, Hazel obsessed with her brother’s brilliance, Beatie a beautiful, popular man magnet, homely Jessie who envies the confidence and experience of some of her friends and air mechanic Cath destined to fall for a married man.
“I don’t think anything is nice in Civvy Street. It’s so meagre and grey and anxious. It’s made Mother that way, too, scrabbling about after food like a worn old chicken. And Father practically lives at the office because he can’t get any staff.”
The met.office where Kerren and Robin both work is commanded by Lieutenant Commander Hunter, a haunted man whose behaviour begins to cause concern. Lieutenant Adam Grieve, a widower still suffering from the loss of his family, is in day to day charge. Kerren is confident in her ability to plot a chart accurately, and she is keen to show off her ability. Life in the met. office is a round of tension, tea-making and petty bickering, quiet lulls replaced by sudden and frantic action.
On her first day in the met.office, Kerren meets pilot Peter Shaw; Kerren thinks she dislikes Peter at once with his slightly longer hair and suggestion of sideburns. Peter’s name has been linked with Beatie, yet at a party, Peter makes his preference for Kerren obvious, and Kerren is soon spending more and more time with him. Kerren’s success with Peter raises a few eyebrows, but Kerren isn’t too worried what others might think. Feigning nonchalance Beatie shrugs off the loss of Peter’s interest, and moves on seamlessly to the next man on the horizon. Robin becomes involved with the care free American; Con, a relationship which ironically will take her back to just the kind of life she was so anxious to escape.
Kerren marries Peter after a whirlwind affair, while the reality of war is brought starkly home to the women who live together in cabin 8 when sudden and irrevocable losses come out of the blue. Their lives are a round of tedium and waiting for things to happen, interspersed with gossip, bitchiness and the usual agonies of very young women over their latest boyfriends. The women share cold and hunger as they crouch over the cabin stove each evening. Kerren’s head is firmly in the clouds as she seems stubbornly unaware of her young husband’s mood swings.
“Con was astonished at how much Peter had changed. His face had become the most vivid Con had ever seen, not by virtue of personality but because it betrayed so nakedly the forces which tore at him. The eyes were bright as though a thin protective skin had peeled away and every tiny particle of light stabbed, producing an unbearable pain; this pain jerked open the mouth and laughter gushed out inconsequently and as inconsequently died away. The face knew no repose; a nerve throbbed at the temple and the left eyelid was weak and twitched continuously. The limbs moved jerkily as though the co-ordination of mind and muscle was breaking down. To Con it seemed that this man’s own body had turned against him and was gradually destroying him.”
A Time of War is a wonderfully engaging novel which plunges the reader into the world of the Fleet-Air Arm as it works hard and plays hard. I particularly liked how Hocking’s women are portrayed realistically, they aren’t all heroic little angels, nor are they presented as silly little tarts – they each have their own foibles, and concerns, but first and foremost they are normal young women, away from home for the first time, caught up in unusual times.
The Hopeful Traveller which continues the story of several of these characters in peacetime was published two years later, a book I am so glad I already had, as I have been able to move straight on to it.
(no proper touchstones for the book)
no review, just my thoughts & comments:
I loved this story of a young woman who returns to a family of friends that she, as a child growing up, thought nearly perfect. As she spends more time with them and helps to bring comfort and stability to the daughter who had a nervous breakdown, she comes to realize that there is no such thing as familial perfection.
I didn't want this one to end. Very, very good.
(no proper touchstones for the book)
no review, just my thoughts & comments:
I loved this story of a young woman who returns to a family of friends that she, as a child growing up, thought nearly perfect. As she spends more time with them and helps to bring comfort and stability to the daughter who had a nervous breakdown, she comes to realize that there is no such thing as familial perfection.
I didn't want this one to end. Very, very good.
Ruth is a young woman – actually about thirty – who having left school determined not to go to university – has spent the time since then at the remote home she grew up in with her parents. Ruth’s mother has just died, the novel opens at her funeral, for which Ruth has chosen not to dress in black.
March House the psychiatric clinic where Ruth works as a secretary seems to have lost its way. It is now little more than a disparate group of professionals clinging to the debris of its former glory. The clinic having undergone reductions in their staffing levels, now await the arrival of a new psychiatrist, Dr Laver. Mrs Libnitz, a former refugee is the receptionist, she hates the clinical psychologist Iris Bailey – simply because she needs someone to hate – Di Brady the voluptuous part-time nurse has her own troubles, two kids by one man, her most recent boyfriend has just left her, while Douglas the Psychiatric nurse has dumped his wife and kids for Eddie, who he has moved into the accommodation suite above the clinic. Suddenly into their midst arrives Dr Laver, almost out of nowhere, he appears, flamboyant, rather crass and unethical. From the first there is something very definitely disturbing about Dr Laver, and the way he hones in on Ruth and her colleagues, determined to prove the genius of which he is convinced.
“A voice now proclaimed dramatically, ‘Oh, to be in England now that April’s there!’
He was standing in the doorway, a short, square man with bright ginger hair and beard. He was wearing a striped blue suit with a hectic pink shirt and reminded me of the buskers who used to entertain the queues at the county agricultural show. All he needed was a straw hat. Mrs Libnitz eyed him with disfavour and said ‘This is March.’ “
Ruth’s world is rocked by Dr Laver’s arrival, suddenly swamped by memories of the past, she is faced with truth of her parents as individuals her mother’s dissatisfaction, and the memory of her own fear that her mother might disappear one day. Now the memories of her happy childhood become skewed, revealing a world that only now she begins to see for what it was. Meanwhile, Ruth’s father is drawing closer to Eleanor, Ruth’s mother’s sister, Ruth’s new altered vision of her father as being more than merely her father, leading her to re-evaluate her own life.
Here Mary Hocking has created a group of interesting characters, from Ruth herself and her clinic colleagues, to the mysterious, sinister Dr Laver, Miss Maud a local old lady whose eccentricities intrigue Ruth. Miss Maud, the owner of Mill House, was my favourite character, a seemingly slightly dotty old woman whose family had lived in the area for a long time; she has her own memories of Ruth’s mother –walking across the fields with a local farmer.
As Dr Laver wheedles his way further into Ruth’s fragile mind, there are moments when she is unsure of what is real and what is a product of her own imagination. In the exploration of these characters Mary Hocking shows that she had a quite deep understanding of some aspects of psychology as she deftly explores their motivations.
“Nowadays, people don’t have private lives, they just sit in front of television congratulating themselves that, since they don’t do anything, nothing can ever happen to them. “Where did it get him?” they ask, looking at a man who has lost an empire.’ She was silent for a moment, and then she said, ‘I have written to the Shah and told him that if he would like to stay here he would be welcome.’
‘Do you think he will come?’ I asked nervously trying to keep my eyes from the big double bed with its lace coverlet and faded silk cushions.
‘I hope so, He would be safe; no one would ever know that he was here’”
There is wry humour here too, the world of March House feels very authentic, even in its strangeness, with the petty anxieties of the people working there and the small delusions of the people who come as patients. As Ruth’s world changes, she reaches out to her cousin, an independent woman living in London, and finally it begins to appear that Ruth might have choices in life after all.
Look, Stranger is a novel about change, changes in people, lives, and landscape and the challenges these changes bring to the people of a fictional island community. The arrival of a stranger shines a light on this odd little community and its problems. Widowed Matthew Vereker arrives on Helmsley Island from the American mid-west on a year’s exchange as vicar of All Hallows. Vereker brings his own brand of religion with him as well as his own baggage, and both he and the community must start to get to know one another. There are naturally pre-conceptions on both sides – Vereker arrives at the vicarage to hear himself being discussed by two parishioners who are getting the house ready for his arrival, and Vereker himself thinks he knows what kind of people he will be living among.
“In Virginia Close, the trial was over and the case had been lost. They were polite, they poured sherry and gave donations, one or two offered him a day ‘s sailing; but as far as they were concerned, the Church had outlived its purpose. They were sophisticated people, moderate and sceptical, and they had outgrown religion. If there had ever been a voice inside them that cried out for help, they had rationalised it away. When he left, they would turn on the television and settle down to watch a play about the struggle of the working classes, written by a member of the middle-class. Class. Class. Always class. There weren’t any people in England, only members of classes dying behind their stockades. England had no breadth; he felt it crowding in on him, over-peopled and cramped, bedevilled with intricate, baffling complexities which can only ravel up existence when people are closely confined. Yet there were depths. Suddenly, without warning, they were there at your feet, black, bottomless, terrifying; you skimmed along on the surface thinking you were managing pretty well, then suddenly the ground had shifted and you had stepped into a well.”
Once a haven for smugglers, now Helmsley Island is crowded with smart modern bungalows, dilapidated old cottages and holiday day trippers and space is at a premium. Vereker finds the community rather more complicated than he had expected; conventional Christians vie with the Ancient People – who dance naked at night, while political agitators, archaeologists, and homeless squatters squabble over land. Living close by at Carrick Farm are cousins and former lovers Zoe and Tudor Lindsay, Tudor a volatile tortured soul, and Zoe who sees the ghosts of nuns in the priory ruins.
Vereker and his daughter Nancy living in the large vicarage, consent to house one of the squatter families in their basement; Mrs Anguilos and her son Milo, one of the Ancient People – who looking for gods finds one in himself. Following her recent sexual awakening aboard the ship that brought her to England Nancy finds herself infatuated with rather unsuitable Tudor, while Zoe gradually becomes closer to Vereker as she works alongside him at the vicarage each day. Over the long scorching summer of drought – tempers flare over future use of the priory site, fires break out on scorched ground and a window and altar at All Hallows are damaged in the continuing conflict between Christianity and the Ancient People. As summer draws out Vereker sets the cat among the pigeons from the pulpit, following a surprising battle at the summer fair.
“ ‘I can’t pretend that I am in sympathy with the charismatics, but neither can I bring myself to dismiss them. We have pared down our faith until there is nothing in it which could be objectionable to anyone or of much interest, either. Can we be surprised that people cry out for something more?’ ”
As winter comes to Helmsley Island Vereker, Zoe and Nancy all face changes – and as the time for him to go back to America draws closer Vereker realises that his life will never be the same.
Look, Stranger is a very good novel I enjoyed it enormously although it may not ever be a favourite Hocking, I enjoyed the mix of eccentric characters and peculiarly English disputes. This has the feeling of a fairly ambitious novel, melding questions of faith and religion with that of people’s sense of themselves and where they belong. For me there were one or two moments of mild confusion – but overall I enjoyed Look, Stranger and you can be sure I will continue to read Mary Hocking novels.
1 Heaven-Ali | Jun 27, 2014 |
Heaven-Ali | Jun 27, 2014 | 
“The house stood high above the village and a sufficient distance to discourage those whose pleasure it is to drop in on neighbours. An untidy hedge overhung the narrow lane so that passage was not easy and the chance passer-by was afforded only a limited view of ancient chimneys and mossy, tiled roof. To anyone sufficiently determined – and prepared to brazen disapproval – to push hard at the dilapidated wooden gate, a curve in the rough drive would still deprive him of full view of the house. If such an intruder were to venture on, he would soon come upon a rambling sixteenth-century house which, though plainly habitable, did not appear to have suffered much in the way of modernisation”
Janet Saunders is the irrelevant woman of the title; a woman who for years has successfully managed her household, of four children - now grown up and left home -while allowing time and space for her gifted writer husband to work. Now Janet is not so sure what her role is, her children have left, two of them have their own children, they each visit frequently, expecting things to remain just as they always were. Janet’s children all have ideas for what Janet should do now, she is only fifty after all – ideas they discuss in her hearing as the family gather for an Easter Sunday lunch. Hocking portrays a busy vibrant family, who fail to understand the changes that naturally occur as people grow away and leave home. Janet no longer knows who she is, her children assume they know who she is and that they can keep her exactly where she always has been, doing what she has always done, by finding something to occupy her when they aren’t around. “Janet was lying on the kitchen floor weeping, attended by Murdoch and Humphrey, each ineffectual after his own fashion. Hugh said, ‘she had better lie down in the sitting room’ and Stephanie said, ‘Get her out into the garden. She needs fresh air.’ This being what most of them needed, they moved Janet into the fresh air. They propped her once more on the bench beneath the apple tree where she slumped, looking uncomfortably like a straw figure. ‘She looks so pale,’ Katrina said. ‘Not a bit like my little nut brown Mum.’
With her husband, Murdoch secreting himself away all morning writing, Janet a little isolated by living outside the village is often thrown together with her daughter-in-law Patsy and an elderly distant relative Deutzia. Janet’s daughter in law (ex-daughter–in law strictly speaking) has taken to visiting Greenham Common a cause that begins to interest Janet and Deutzia. However none of this is enough to prevent Janet’s fragile sense of herself breaking down. Suddenly Murdoch has to do things he has never done before, cook, clean, shop, all while caring for a Janet he doesn’t entirely recognise, he is confused and out of his depth. Janet’s breakdown is brilliantly re-created with real compassion and a deep understanding – Hocking’s characters are often intelligently introspective, deeply questioning and very much a part of the landscape in which they live. The more of Hocking I read the more I see why people have likened her writing to that of Elizabeth Taylor. Just as with Taylor, Hocking’s peripheral characters are as strong as her central characters. Her observations of people and places so sharp and exact, that she can’t help but bring them to life. In this novel for instance we have Patsy so brilliantly described when we first meet her:
“The kitchen door opened to admit a woman who wore clothes which proclaimed that she would not wish to be seen dead in anything which fitted her. The purple skirt was too wide across the hips and the uneven hem trailed about her ankles, as muddied as her boots. The pink shirt sloped, shoulder seams just above the elbows, cuffs at finger-tip level. Both shirt and skirt were generously creased. Cleanliness, however seemed to be important and had obviously preceded the creasing process.”
Janet’s eldest daughter; psychologist Stephanie, capable and rather bossy, angered that her father’s brilliant creativity has been upset, vies with Janet’s psychiatrist and has still not entirely forgiven her husband for leaving the church. Local vicar Hector Beaney is rather alarmed that now that Janet is so obviously unwell he may actually have to do something for her, feeling rather unequal to the task. “Deutzia feels that I should be doing something more for Janet Saunders now that she is so ill,’ Hector Beaney said to his wife over breakfast. Breakfast in the Beaney household usually had something of the confessional about it, the hour when Mr Beaney unloaded upon his wife those cares which the night had failed to dispel”
Surrounded by people who seem incapable of properly helping Janet in her hour of need, it seems as if it is only Janet herself that can bring herself back. Everyone will face changes and challenges as Janet slowly comes back to herself, her breakdown having shown her how she should live the rest of her life.
Sixty nine year old former headmistress and artist; Clarice Mitchell arrives at an isolated moorland farmhouse to join an amateur theatre production of Pericles, one of the Beacon theatre company is Alan a quiet, gentle man she has been having a relationship with. Clarice is staying in the old farmhouse – a place where many years earlier her own headmistress’ grandmother had lived, a house filled with old furniture, diaries, and ghosts. This is a place that Roberta Wilcox – the headmistress who inspired much of her life had talked about, and Clarice is instantly affected by it. The farm is standing on land once occupied by a priory in the time of the War of the Roses, a place now long gone, but whose shadow still falls over the farm.
“Immediately in front of her, blown grass on the hillside and the moving shadows of cloud. Far below, land laid out in patterns of activity; marshy levels that were ancient, the lay-out of fields that was medieval, intersected by roads and bridges, farm and hamlet, river and estuary; she observed how tracks, thin as veins, allowed passage through the marshes, and her eyes followed the line of a disused railway that had been superseded by a motorway serving the industrial needs of the distant city to the north. She saw the remains of an old fort sticking out of a field like a broken tooth, the restored water-mill that she had inspected only yesterday, and far on the horizon the chimneys of a power station.”
On the day of her arrival Clarice, sees a woman watching her, a woman in Victorian costume who seems to appear and disappear without anyone else seeing her. As the Pericles company rehearse in one barn, another amateur company rehearse The Crucible in the adjacent barn. At first Clarice thinks the woman is one of the actors from the other company – whose costume leaves something to be desired. As she starts to suffer dizzy spells Clarice starts to wonder if coming accepting the invitation by the theatre company was a good idea, along with the woman in Victorian dress, Clarice catches sight of a wild haired woman up on the moors. Clarice comes to realise she is seeing Rhoda Tresham – her headmistress Miss Wilcox’s grandmother - from the mid nineteen hundreds. In the 1850’s Rhoda is stifled by the strictures of her Victorian family, attracted to a local clergyman, while the community is horrified by the death of a local child, and the hunt for her killer. Along with the stories of Clarice – recovering from the errors and consequences of her own past, - and Rhoda, is woven the story of Joan, a woman from the fifteenth century – labelled a mad woman and caught up in the superstitious and turbulent times around the years of the Wars of the Roses, taken in by the nuns at the priory.
“The peasants were in a desperate plight and in their despair they turned once more against the priory, claiming that witches were harboured there had not the mad-woman been sent to them with food and medicine, had she not nursed some of the sick, yet she herself remained untouched by the sickness? “
The interweaving of these women’s stories gradually help Clarice to make sense of her own disturbing past, the memories of which seem to overwhelm her again while she is staying at the farm. Clarice feels a strange connection with these women, who only she seems aware of. The lives of these three different women, living in very different times comes together beautifully and poignantly at the end. The scope of this lovely time shift novel belies its 212 pages – and is testament to Hocking’s skill as a writer. Mary Hocking has skilfully woven the stories of these women together within a landscape recognisably English, recreating the dramatic ancient country that has changed little in generations.
I am so enjoying my Mary Hocking reading month – how sad that she seems so little known and talked about. Please remember to let me know if you are reading Mary Hocking this month, and please feel free to leave links to reviews in the comments so I don’t miss them.
1 Heaven-Ali | otra reseña | Jun 11, 2014 |
Heaven-Ali | otra reseña | Jun 11, 2014 | 
The novel is written entirely in letters, letters sent from Constance to her girlhood friend Sheila. In 1939 as Constance and Sheila leave school they promise each other to keep in touch, Sheila is bound for University, Constance to begin work at the education office. The letters, warm, affectionate, always thoughtful and intelligent, occasionally angry – are sent at irregular intervals over the next forty seven years, until the two are inevitably separated. Sheila had always been the brilliant one, the prize winner, the one bound for Cambridge, and Constance is happy to bask a little in her reflected glory.
“This was your day. My mother had come to see old Addiscombe. I never can persuade her to give up hoping for academic success for me. She feels she owes it to Daddy’s memory to squeeze every opportunity dry. According to her, she said – I squirm as I write this – ‘If Sheila Douglas can get into Cambridge, I can’t understand why Constance shouldn’t be accepted. After all her father was a doctor.’
The reply, which I hope pleases you, was ‘Sheila Douglas is a quite exceptionally gifted girl for whom we have great hopes. One of her poems has been commended by Walter de la Mare, who is a friend of the chairman of the Governors.’ Later in the conversation she said, and one can imagine the glacial smile which accompanied the words, ‘Constance is amusing, but she has no mind. She will get married.’
The lives the two women live differ somewhat, although the connection between them remains strong, they can say almost anything to one another by letter, although they find talking on the telephone harder. Posted to Ireland with the WRNS, Constance marries Irish Catholic Fergus; with whom she is soon mired down in motherhood and domesticity. Settled in a miserable little Ealing flat, Fergus must contend with a job he doesn’t really like much, while Constance juggles with tiny children. Meanwhile Sheila marries a brilliant musician, the ambitiously creative Miles; theirs is a less conventional household, in a large enviable home in Richmond. Constance comes to envy rather, Sheila’s poetry writing and bohemian dinners. Later Constance, Fergus and their children manage to move out to Sussex where they settle much more contentedly. The two families visit one another from time to time and as the years pass, the children of each household become almost as at home in the house of the other, the families drawing together automatically at times of crisis. For nothing goes entirely to plan in life, as Constance and Sheila find, not everything quite living up to their girlhood dreams, and so often the realities of everyday life get in the way of friendship. The two women promise each other a holiday together as young newly married women, a holiday they never quite manage to take.
“Fergus explained to Mr Buggins (this is not his real name, but I have taken to referring to him in this way in case I should say something slanderous) that we had one or two things which we wished to talk over with him. While these things were under discussion, I stood beside Fergus, holding my new-born baby in my arms, my other children tugging at my skirts, and contrived to look both defiant and ill used, the way the gypsy women did when they were turned off the campsite near Western Avenue. Dominic, who felt it all very undignified, sulked, Kathleen glowered and Cuillane cried. It would have contributed much had Stephen cried too, but he is a cheerful baby and groped with pudgy fingers in Mr Buggin’s direction, his eyes full of delight as if another wonder of the world had revealed itself to him”
Both Sheila and Constance have to contend with troubles and tragedies – but it is in the small everyday concerns with which they mainly concern themselves. Constance is a wonderfully intelligent woman, completely underestimating her own abilities as she manages her growing family with intuition and wry humour. Constance worries for her husband, his happiness and how he truly views her something she can’t help but wonder about in her letters to her oldest friend. She watches each of her children, detecting early their differing and unique personalities, worrying for them, agonising over their education, or pious Catholicism, their explosive angers and young loves.
In Constance, Mary Hocking has created a wonderfully wry and intelligent voice that put me very much in mind of some of Elizabeth Taylor’s characters. Hocking re-creates family life with breath-taking accuracy her astute observations very much in that Taylor tradition. Through Constance, we get to know Sheila too, and feel her confusion when her life takes an unexpected turn, but it is Constance who is the star of the show, I loved her. This is a truly delightful book, which can only be fully appreciated by reading it – I gulped it down within about twenty-four hours and was sad when there was no more, a very definite five star read, which has me anticipating more Mary Hocking eagerly.
1 Heaven-Ali | otra reseña | Jun 5, 2014 |
Heaven-Ali | otra reseña | Jun 5, 2014 | 
3 sibylline | 2 reseñas más. | Feb 6, 2014 |
sibylline | 2 reseñas más. | Feb 6, 2014 | 
One of Hocking's gifts is to switch easily and clearly from one mind to another in this close third person narrative, even in the same paragraph there can be a switch and only once or twice have I needed to stop and check. This is because the way each character thinks and perceives the world is sufficiently different to be distinguishable. Louise, the eldest daughter, lives through her senses and emotions; Alice tends to stand back and watch; Claire, with the most nervous disposition, tends to either panic or intellectualize - she's the 'smartest' but also the least reliable and most difficult of the three. Hocking doesn't judge at all, but approaches these three women and their differing ways of apprehending and being in the world with such clear eyes and so much compassion without turning sappy. We also follow the parents' experiences, I have become very very attached to Judith, the girls' mother, and will simply say, I am so happy for her capacity for happiness! There is Ben, another of my favorites, who enlists as a soldier and becomes a pow of the Japanese. I can't think what I've read, but I have some vivid memories of scenes from some novel or other about this, and Hocking does an excellent job conveying the isolated hopelessness and futility of it.
An aside, having read Coventry I was fascinated by the scene in which Alice and friend are driven by a mad Major through the burning city - it's a still point in the novel, a core around which everything else turns, I think. One of the themes of the book, emerging more strongly now, is about.... steadfastness? I suppose you could trivialize it to the 'keep calm and carry on' theme, so weirdly popular nowadays, but it goes a lot deeper than that here.
Certainly I am curious how everyone will adjust to the post-war period - even the usually light Angela Thirkell's novels had an exhausted aura about them during this time - a let-down, but with so many things still not available, housing shortages, endless rationing, damaged soldiers emotionally and physically to care for - no respite - but the messy business of recuperation. ****1/2
6 sibylline | 2 reseñas más. | Jan 28, 2014 |
sibylline | 2 reseñas más. | Jan 28, 2014 | 2 sibylline | 5 reseñas más. | Jan 19, 2014 |
sibylline | 5 reseñas más. | Jan 19, 2014 | 
“The beginning of the journey had been enchanting. Porcelain blue sky and the sparkling white canopy transformed dingy streets into fantasies of unimagined purity and, passing out of the town, they came to broad fields where sunlight reflected a trellis of branches like veins across the snow.”
With the countryside and surrounding woodland deep in snow, a fractured family gather for Christmas at a remote country cottage. The cottage is where sisters Sophia and Florence spent childhood holidays and was once owned by their grandmother. Sophia – who now owns the cottage has not seen Florence in years. Florence her dying husband Konrad and their adult children Nick and Anita gather at Sophia’s cottage for the season and to ease Konrad’s passing. While Florence is dominating and confrontational, Sophia used to living alone, is unorthodox, guarding secrets and managing to keep herself somewhat distanced from the turmoil around her. It is only Sophia who is able to face the face that Konrad will die in the next few days. Nick, a traveller and explorer – is already contemplating his next trip, while Anita ten years into a disfunctional relationship seems to delight in going into combat with her mother on a regular basis. Anita’s partner sets out to join the family for Christmas – but running into trouble he ends up injured and marooned in another local house. Upstairs, Konrad is watched over by each member of the family in turn, Konrad originally from Germany is a painter, his painting never tolerated by his wife, who had never enquired where it was he would disappear to when he needed to paint.
“Konrad lay concentrating on his breathing, which required an effort he was less and less inclined to make. He heard the two sisters talking but could not make much sense of what was said. He had always had difficulty piecing things together. Now, lying here in this firelit room, the past came before him vividly, but disjointed.
He had been sent to England in 1937 when he was six years old. He never saw his parents again. He lived in Houndsditch with an aunt and uncle who had not wanted him but had not had the courage to refuse him. The experience had permanently disoriented him and he had great difficulty making a mental map of his environment – one street did not lead to another but existed in isolation. He was always getting lost. When the war came and the bombers broke up the patterns of streets he was cheered by the experience of a shared chaos.”
People from the local woodland community are invited to a party on Christmas Eve – a party that is not a great success, included in the invitation are another fragile family. Thomas Challoner; grieving the death of his wife and son, his damaged young grandson Andrew and Francis – their self-imposed carer and sister to Andrew’s absent mother live in another cottage deep in the woods. Francis is immediately attracted to Nick, whose selfishness doesn’t stop him from telling her she is wasting her life caring for these people she has come to love.
As the snow continues to fall and Christmas comes, Konrad does indeed die –causing the family to face up to certain truths.
The very Dead of Winter is an atmospheric novel about family and different kinds of love. Mary Hocking writes with feeling and deftly explores the emotional upheavals of family life and the conflicts of the past.
This was the first of my Christmas reads – I will probably intersperse them with non-Christmassy books – and although this novel is set at Christmas – it doesn’t ram the season down your throat – making it a great read for anytime of the year. The title is wonderfully apt and adds perfectly to the atmosphere of the novel – and is probably why I saved it to read now – and I must admit to rather loving the cover art.
2 Heaven-Ali | otra reseña | Dec 16, 2013 |
Heaven-Ali | otra reseña | Dec 16, 2013 | 
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This is the first part of a trilogy. I look forward to the next one. Highly recommended.½