Nervous about this because the story sounds interesting but I didn't like Tyneford

(19 November 2016, from Luci)

Set (or starting) in the 1960s, we follow the story of Juliet Montague, a woman both married and not married living in a conservative Jewish community which holds conforming in the highest regard. Her husband left here a few years ago, but having a husband who’s disappears brings with it an embarrassing and awkward half-status and Juliet feels half-alive as a consequence. Accidentally falling in with a group of artists, she forges her own way in life – daring to be different and even going on a road trip in the US. But can she ever really escape her origins? She remains slightly outside the riotous 60s life, allowing us to observe it from the outside and the inside, and her community, where she still returns to lay her head, sums her up thus: “She was polite but there was pertness in her gaze”.

This was a good read, but I felt that the author was maybe slightly too keen on her subject – unsurprisingly, if you look at the note about her inspiration for her book – she never really comes wholly alive for me, perhaps because she’s a representative cipher and nothing is really allowed to be negative about her. I also felt it suffered a bit in the latter stages from rushing to update us on all the characters. The different tracks of her children’s lives are interesting, as is her daughter’s rebellion in the only way she can find to shock her mother. And I do like the idea of all the portraits of this fairly ordinary woman lining her stairs. Another point in its favour is that it didn’t end as I started to fear it would. ( )

I feel mixed about this. On one hand, I am grateful that Solomons keeps writing about being Jewish in England but her novels really just skim the surface and I never fully invest in her characters. A little too light for me, even when the themes themselves have weight. ( )

This author has a nice style of writing which means subjects I would normally expect to be boring aren't. In this novel we meet Juliet who has been abandoned by her husband who disappeared without a trace one day, but who must still be quite a catch because it seems every artist in town is queueing up to paint her portrait. I liked the fifties/sixties vibe that ran through the novel, and the strong sense of Jewishness - and the sense that things that wouldn't be a problem nowadays (getting remarried or even having another relationship after your husband has absconded) certainly were then. There was a sense of restraint about the whole thing - in terms of the way the plot was resolved - that made it feel both realistic but maybe also a tad disappointing. ( )

A charming mash-up of The Shell Seekers and The Innocents that I probably wouldn't have bought or downloaded but didn't mind borrowing from the library. Juliet Montague - ha, see what she did there - is an aguna, a Jewish woman who is neither widowed nor divorced but shamefully separated from her husband all the same. Set in the suburbs of London during the late 50s and 60s, Juliet is pitied and feared by her conservative parents and the small-minded, middle class community in which the family live. Raising two young children alone, Juliet's new life is kick-started by a chance meeting with a budding artist, who recognises Juliet's artistic eye and paints the first of many portraits. Vanished husband George still manages to shape Juliet's life in absentia, and her quest to free herself from her vows even leads the Montague family to America.

Even though nothing very much happens - a lot like Instructions for a Heatwave, add that one to the list too - I did feel like I came to 'know' if not like the characters. The Jewish community is painted in a very negative light, judging Juliet and forcing her to conform to a very narrow set of rules, and the story could have been set in any twentieth century decade, but Juliet, Leonard and Frieda remain in the foreground throughout. ( )