The Return (1945 revised edition) by Walter de la Mare

Book Review by Sylvia D: Walter de la Mare is probably best known as a writer of children’s stories and for his poem, The Listeners, but he also published a number of psychological horror stories. One of these, The Return, was first published in 1910 and then revised in 1922. The slim edition I read … Continue reading →

Four-Part Setting by Ann Bridge (1939)

This novel is set in China in the late 1920s and has a plot similar to that of Ann Bridge’s first novel, Peking Picnic. A small group from the European colony in Peking take a trip into the interior. They face various adversities: someone falls ill; gangs of soldier-bandits terrorize the countryside; allegiances within the … Continue reading →

There were no Windows by Norah Hoult (1946)

This is by turns a moving and unsettling tale of an elderly woman, Claire Temple – once a revered literary hostess and author – now facing the onset of dementia against the background of the London blitz. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this is a rather claustrophobic read at times, as (like Claire herself) the setting of the … Continue reading →

Cloudless May (1943) by Storm Jameson

Review by Sylvia D For our women writers and World Wars One and Two session I read Storm Jameson’s Cloudless May (Macmillan, 1943 and still in print) which is a political and psychological exploration of the fall of France in the Second World War. The writing reveals a considerable knowledge of French landscape, culture and … Continue reading →

Now Voyager (1941), by Olive Higgins Prouty

“Oh Jerry, don’t let’s ask for the moon!  We have the stars!” (Hodder and Stoughton edition, 1943, p.222). If you love classic movies, these words will resonate.  Bette Davis says them to Paul Henreid at the end of Now Voyager (1942), as he puts two cigarettes in his mouth, lights both and hands one to … Continue reading →

Little Boy Lost by Marghanita Laski (1949)

From the political comedy of Tory Heaven, to a very different kind of novel indeed…. Review by Margaret B: Hilary Wainwright, emotionally repressed English poet and intellectual, returns after the second world war to a blasted and impoverished France in order to find his young son who had gone missing during the war. He is … Continue reading →

Chatterton Square by E. H. Young (1947)

Review by Thecla: This is the story of two contrasting families, the Blacketts and the Frasers, who live in adjacent houses in Chatterton Square, Upper Radstowe (Bristol). The Blackett family consists of Herbert and Bertha and their three daughters Flora, Rhoda and Mary; the Fraser family of Rosamund and her children James, Felix, Chloe, Sandra … Continue reading →

Yonder by E. H. Young (1912)

Review by Jane V: Alexander is a country boy living in a remote place with his mother, a strong, capable character, and his father, a weak failure of a man whose heredity has made him so. Theresa is a lively, highly imaginative girl who lives in a port town with her father who is a … Continue reading →

The Woman in the Back Seat by Marguerite Steen (1959)

 Review by George Simmers The Woman in the Back Seat is the story of a second marriage. It begins in 1946, and the central character, Ellen, is the widow of an artist whom she never really loved. A friend suggests that she gets away from her life to work as secretary to a highbrow novelist … Continue reading →

Paths of Judgment by Anne Douglas Sedgwick (1904)

Hurrah! Another review of an Anne Douglas Sedgwick novel! Her novels stimulated a heated debate at our reading group; some felt she was simply sub-standard Henry James or Edith Wharton and not worth reading – others firmly disagreed. I suspect that the book I read, Tante, was the best of the bunch. Review by Thecla … Continue reading →