“When the winds of heaven blow, men are inclined to throw back their heads like horses, and stride ruggedly into the gusts, pretending to be much healthier than they really are; but women tend to creep about, shrunk into their clothes and clutching miserably at their hats and hair.”

Louise Bickford had felt the force of the wind of heaven. In her early fifties in the early fifties, she found herself widowed, penniless and homeless after the death of her brutish husband.

Her daughters, three very different women, knew that they had to their duty and so she spent part of the year with each and the winter months in a run-down hotel owned by an old school friend.

It’s a far from ideal arrangement, but there seems to be no alternative. Louise’s suggestion that she earn a living is swiftly dismissed by her family. She is unskilled and it is not what women of her class do.

And so she tries to help out, to be unobtrusive, but sadly it is unappreciated. Louise’ daughters are wrapped up in their own lives their own concerns and give not one thought to how their mother might feel, what she might want.

The lack of understanding, the lack of communication, is horrible but it is utterly believable. That made this an uncomfortable read at times, but it was always compelling.

And if Louise could hold on then so could I.

She finds support from two of the more sensitive members of her family. And from a salesman who become a friend after a chance encounter in a cafe.

Monica Dickens writes such lovely prose and she is a fine storyteller. Characters, settings, and scenarios are all utterly believable. And she picks up exactly the right details to bring the story to life, to make it utterly real.

Eventually, inevitably arrangements break down and Louise finds herself in trouble …

More than that I am not going to say.

I will say that this is a book to engage both emotions and social consciences.

The world may have changed since the fifties, but this is still a book with a lot to say about relationships and social conventions.

Yes, a fine novel that stands the test of time. ( )

I was surprised by the ending of this book. I didn't quite understand how the action reached the point of the fire, and I thought that the marriage with Gordon Disher was very sudden. I had hoped that Louise would become more independent, and she definitely showed signs of it as the novel progressed, but then it turned out to be a book of it's generation in that the woman got married at it's close. I couldn't tell if perhaps Monica Dickens had intended this one as a sort of satire on a traditional comedy, where you have a series of characters blundering their way through marriage. It was a successful read and I did enjoy it, but I think I will both have to read more of her work and reread this book before I fully understand where she was going with this one. ( )

In The Winds of Heaven, a woman in late middle age is left nearly destitute when her husband dies. Forced to live off her three daughters, Louise spends her time going back and forth between the three of them. One is married to a successful attorney; another to a rural farmer; and the third works as an actress in London, having an affair with a married man.

It’s a bittersweet little story; Louise is treated as elderly, although she’s only 57, and treated as though she’s yesterday’s trash by her daughters and their husbands. On the other hand, she begins a friendship with a man who works in the mattress section of a large department store, offering her some kind of companionship in her “old age.” Dudley is the only one who treats Louise really well, not expecting anything back from her, but it’s not until it’s nearly too late that she realizes what a good friend he is. The other touching part of the story is Louise’s relationship with her young granddaughter, another person who doesn’t expect much from her.

I love Monica Dickens’s descriptions of the characters; although everyone seems to blend together at first, each of the three daughters quickly becomes delineated. They are all completely different, but similar in their indifference towards their mother. This book reminds me a lot of Vita Sackville-West’s All Passion Spent, a novel about a widow’s struggle to assert her own independence after her children have grown up and her husband has passed away. The story also reminds me a lot of Dorothy Whipple’s They Were Sisters, a story that’s mostly about the relationship between three sisters, but similar in describing the lives of very different people. ( )

21 Jan 2011

Louise, widow of a horrible bully in a perilous financial state of his own overweening making, is thrown upon the mercies of their three very different daughters. He only allies are one grand-daughter, a lovely cat and dog, a caravan (yes, it's a character in its own right!) and a potboiler-writing, portly, bed salesman. Reminiscent of Whipple's "They Were Sisters", the family relationships and characters are beautifully drawn and the plot pulls you along in the firm hopes that something good will come to dear Louise ...

Although some of the characters are sweet, the situation they are in, and the lesson for women about (not) relying solely on men and marriage for emotional sustenance is sharp, even if the ending is conventional in some ways. An excellent read. ( )

Oh if only there were more Monica Dickens novels! This one is delightful, one of her best. Beautiful characterisation and description. You need to make allowances for a few non PC bits as it is written in the 1950s. Louise Bickford is the main character, mother of three daughters who she lives with in turn after her husband dies leaving her without home and money. Socially constrained and long suffering Louise soldiers on through her limited life trying not to be a burden or interfere in her daughters lives. I wish fervently that there was a sequel. ( )