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7th out of 26 books
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One Fine Day
It's a summer's day in 1946. The English village of Wealding is no longer troubled by distant sirens, yet the rustling coils of barbed wire are a reminder that something, some quality of life, has evaporated. Together again after years of separation, Laura and Stephen Marshall and their daughter Victoria are forced to manage without "those anonymous caps and aprons wh...more
Paperback, 192 pages
Published
June 1st 2003
by Virago UK
(first published October 1947)
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In this beautiful and lyrically told novel Mollie Panter-Downes chronicles a day in the life of the Marshall family, a middle class family living in post World War II England.
While Britain has come out of the war victorious, life has not returned to what it once was and for most, it never will.
The change the Marshall family feels most keenly is domestic. They have been left to manage a house and garden without the servants that they once had.
"And it suddenly struck him as ...more
While Britain has come out of the war victorious, life has not returned to what it once was and for most, it never will.
The change the Marshall family feels most keenly is domestic. They have been left to manage a house and garden without the servants that they once had.
"And it suddenly struck him as ...more
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A tone poem of a summer day in 1946 in a village in England. Nothing much happens, so don't read this if you want plot. Instead, Panter-Downes gives a word painting from the perspective of a wife, her returned husband, and their young daughter. Everyone thought life would return to normal after the end of the war, but you can't roll back seven years. The big houses can't be kept up because the domestic help went off to war or to factories and never came back. Even middle class women have to do w...more
Spotted this on Overbylass' site, it sounded like my kind of book - and was. Couldn't get a more fitting title - one day in the life of Laura Marshall. Every so often I crave a book like this, quiet, where nothing much happens (except life as it really is) but where I am given moments and thoughts that rush up from the past or loom in from the future. I found the reflective description superb, and could relate to the main character in so many ways.
"All those windows, she thought ...more
"All those windows, she thought ...more
WWII has ended, and in the English countryside, Laura is trying to run her deteriorating house and garden in the upper-class manner to which she and her just-returned husband had been accustomed before the war, but, she's not skilled at any of these chores, she's not well-organized, servants are no longer available. While her husband was away, she and her daughter picked up meals any old way, but now, she wants to return to candlelit dinners with a bit of old pomp. It's all too much for her, as ...more
Someone said, "It's like Virginia Woolf!" and I ordered it. But no one's like Virginia Woolf. It's more like Barbara Pym, but without her wit, irony, clarity, or eye for the perfect single detail--leaving only Pym's choice of character type and setting. A very thin Pym.
One of the best short novels I have read in a long time. Exceptional writing.
Read for my postal book group. Will write a review later.
I think I just wasn't in the mood for a book written in such a hushed tone. I will come back to it and try it again another time. I just found it boring.
This was the first book by this author that I really had difficulty getting through. Despite being beautiful and intriguing on a psychological and sociological level, it felt rather dull to me most of the time. It isn't really my kind of book at all, I'm afraid. I'm not sorry I read it, but would not wish to read it again or recommend it to anyone with a brief attention span.
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