hardback

I forgot I had read this before, and even after I realised that, I didn't really remember anything about it. The focus is on Rebecca's fascination with their neighbour Mrs Jardine, who was a friend of her grandmother. What stood out for me most on this reading was the telling of stories of your life to maintain your sense of self. That's what Sybil Jardine does to Rebecca, but it's also there in the stories Rebecca hears from Sybil's granddaughter Maisie. ( )

This a rather odd book. It's the tale of an English gentlewoman, Sybil Jardine, who left her husband and lost her daughter, Ianthe. She goes on to become rather notorious, not only because of her behavior, but also because of semi-autobiographical novels she wrote. The story is told to a young girl, Rebecca Landon, by three narrators: Tilly, an old nursemaid/retainer, and Sybil herself, when Rebecca is ten-years old, and four years later by Rebecca's friend and Sybil's granddaughter, Maisie.

Basically, it's a character study of a woman who lived by the strength of her own lights, regardless of how her behavior affected others. Set in the years prior to WWI, Sibyl cared little for the moral strictures that bound the lives of women. In some aspects of Sibyl's life the novel reminded me of the biography, Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy although Sibyl was a generation earlier. I found the book both fascinating and fervid. ( )

The narrator is a woman who is recounting events from her childhood--specifically from the age of ten until approximately fourteen years old. While the story line was interesting, and the writing was good, I could not accept the premise that the woman narrator could have had the conversations that she relates as having happened at the age of ten. I don't accept that the ten-year-old child could have understood and processed the conversations with an elderly woman who shares her most intimate thoughts and experiences with a ten-year-old girl. In portions of the beginning of the novel, the narrator makes clear that she really was a normal child, with childish ideas and perceptions. Then suddenly she carries on adults conversations. It's just not plausible. I even went back and reread the first few chapters to make sure that years had not passed.

Compare this to "What Maisie Knew" by Henry James. The point of that excellent novel is that the adults are having mysterious conversations which are at many times incomprehensible to the child Maisie, exactly as the adults want, since they are keeping secrets from her.

I'm not saying that a ten-year-old girl could never have held these conversations, but it so very unlikely that it kept me from accepting the story.

The novel drags in the middle, and then once the children are older teenagers and young adults, there is a long passage where a friend of the narrator tells a compelling story that is worth reading the book in order to reach.

All in all, I'm glad I read the novel. ( )

Rebecca is fascinated by Mrs Jardine who comes to live in the nearby house with her quiet husband Harry and who had been a friend of her grandmother's until something happened. She gradually finds out more as Mrs Jardine, her grand-daughter Maisie and Tilly who had been a maid of Rebecca's grandmother tell their sides of the stories over the years.

I enjoyed this book. ( )