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A Means of Grace
Emmy Marryat is determined to go home. Her English friends think she's crazy to go back after what happened, crazy to expect to find the same country, the same city, the same people. But she is still receiving letters from the ghosts of that country and so return to it - and them - she does.
- GenresFiction
312 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1956
35 people want to read
About the author
Edith Pargeter
48 books194 followersaka Peter Benedict, Jolyon Carr, Ellis Peters (later editions of her work are sometimes published under this pseudonym), and John Redfern
West Midlands Literary Heritage website biography
Novelist. Born September 1913 at Horsehay, Shropshire. Her father was a clerk at a local ironworks. Edith attended Dawley Church of England School and the Coalbrookdale High School for Girls. Through her mother, she grew to love the history and countryside of Shropshire, her home for all of her life.
Before World War II she worked as a chemist's assistant at Dawley. During this time she started writing seriously for publication while gathering useful information on medicines that she would draw upon later when tackling crime stories. Her first published novel was Hortensius, friend of Nero (1936), a rather dry tale of martyrdom that was not a great success but she persevered and The city lies foursquare (1939) was much more warmly received.
During the war she worked in an administrative role with the Women's Royal Navy Service in Liverpool, a relatively brief period away from Shropshire, and for her devotion to duty she received the British Empire Medal. Many more novels appeared at this time, including Ordinary people (1941) and She goes to war (1942), the latter based on her own wartime experiences. The eighth champion of Christendom appeared in 1945 and from now on she was able to devote all her time to writing. She was particularly proud of her Heaven tree trilogy, which appeared between 1961 and 1963, which had as a backdrop the English Welsh borderlands in the twelfth century.
It was not until 1951 that she tackled a mystery story with Fallen into the pit, the first appearance of Sergeant George Felse as the investigating police officer. Her other great character, and the one for which the author will continue to be known the world over, Brother Cadfael, was to follow many years later. The first appearance of this monk at Shrewsbury Abbey was in A morbid taste for bones (1977) and he mixed his herbs and unravelled mysteries in this atmospheric setting for a further nineteen novels. This kept the author very busy for the remaining 18 years of her life, to the virtual exclusion of all other work.
The name "Ellis Peters" was adopted by Edith Pargeter to clearly mark a division between her mystery stories and her other work. Her brother was Ellis and Petra was a friend from Czechoslovakia. A frequent visitor to the country, Edith Pargeter had begun her association and deep interest in their culture after meeting Czechoslovakian soldiers during the war. This was to lead to her learning the language translating several books into English.
She won awards for her writing from both the British Crime Writers Association and the Mystery Writers of America. She was also awarded an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire), an honorary Masters Degree from Birmingham University and the Gold Medal of the Czechoslovak Society for Foreign Relations. There is a memorial to her in Shrewsbury Abbey.
After her death in October 1995, The Times published a full obituary that declared that here was "a deeply sensitive and perceptive woman....an intensely private and modest person " whose writing was "direct, even a little stilted, matching a self-contained personality".
West Midlands Literary Heritage website biography
Novelist. Born September 1913 at Horsehay, Shropshire. Her father was a clerk at a local ironworks. Edith attended Dawley Church of England School and the Coalbrookdale High School for Girls. Through her mother, she grew to love the history and countryside of Shropshire, her home for all of her life.
Before World War II she worked as a chemist's assistant at Dawley. During this time she started writing seriously for publication while gathering useful information on medicines that she would draw upon later when tackling crime stories. Her first published novel was Hortensius, friend of Nero (1936), a rather dry tale of martyrdom that was not a great success but she persevered and The city lies foursquare (1939) was much more warmly received.
During the war she worked in an administrative role with the Women's Royal Navy Service in Liverpool, a relatively brief period away from Shropshire, and for her devotion to duty she received the British Empire Medal. Many more novels appeared at this time, including Ordinary people (1941) and She goes to war (1942), the latter based on her own wartime experiences. The eighth champion of Christendom appeared in 1945 and from now on she was able to devote all her time to writing. She was particularly proud of her Heaven tree trilogy, which appeared between 1961 and 1963, which had as a backdrop the English Welsh borderlands in the twelfth century.
It was not until 1951 that she tackled a mystery story with Fallen into the pit, the first appearance of Sergeant George Felse as the investigating police officer. Her other great character, and the one for which the author will continue to be known the world over, Brother Cadfael, was to follow many years later. The first appearance of this monk at Shrewsbury Abbey was in A morbid taste for bones (1977) and he mixed his herbs and unravelled mysteries in this atmospheric setting for a further nineteen novels. This kept the author very busy for the remaining 18 years of her life, to the virtual exclusion of all other work.
The name "Ellis Peters" was adopted by Edith Pargeter to clearly mark a division between her mystery stories and her other work. Her brother was Ellis and Petra was a friend from Czechoslovakia. A frequent visitor to the country, Edith Pargeter had begun her association and deep interest in their culture after meeting Czechoslovakian soldiers during the war. This was to lead to her learning the language translating several books into English.
She won awards for her writing from both the British Crime Writers Association and the Mystery Writers of America. She was also awarded an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire), an honorary Masters Degree from Birmingham University and the Gold Medal of the Czechoslovak Society for Foreign Relations. There is a memorial to her in Shrewsbury Abbey.
After her death in October 1995, The Times published a full obituary that declared that here was "a deeply sensitive and perceptive woman....an intensely private and modest person " whose writing was "direct, even a little stilted, matching a self-contained personality".
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 31, 2022
Deep breath. It was very hard to know how I'd rate this book. Honestly I'd never heard of the author but seeing her hefty ouvre I was prepared to love a "new" author.
For the first third of the book, I honestly had little clue of what was happening. The language was wordy as in utilizing way more words than needed to portray a scene, idea, or thought, but obscured and obfuscatory , and very internal to the main character.
One gathered a vague clue in the second third of the book, and there was a love story and denouement of sorts in the last third. In it's way, the book was lovely. But I think it tried perhaps too earnestly and hard to convey it's central idea, which was:
Know who you are and what you stand for so when nationalism, religion, political parties, tribalism, etc. comes calling, you will maintain an honest neutrality. This is a great lesson ,which then was about communism and now could be oh so many things, but it wasn't compelling reading.
Also I spend way more time and words writing about books I don't love than ones I do apparently 🤣.
For the first third of the book, I honestly had little clue of what was happening. The language was wordy as in utilizing way more words than needed to portray a scene, idea, or thought, but obscured and obfuscatory , and very internal to the main character.
One gathered a vague clue in the second third of the book, and there was a love story and denouement of sorts in the last third. In it's way, the book was lovely. But I think it tried perhaps too earnestly and hard to convey it's central idea, which was:
Know who you are and what you stand for so when nationalism, religion, political parties, tribalism, etc. comes calling, you will maintain an honest neutrality. This is a great lesson ,which then was about communism and now could be oh so many things, but it wasn't compelling reading.
Also I spend way more time and words writing about books I don't love than ones I do apparently 🤣.
September 24, 2013
I got to perhaps page 60, and could not get further. It failed for me both on the sentence level and structurally, although there were moments of dialogue I enjoyed. The sentences were mostly all right, but some were tangled so that I had to stop and read two or three times to understand what she tried to say, and I prefer my prose either lyrical or transparent, depending upon the needs of the story. This felt an attempt at lyrical too clumsy to succeed.
Structurally, Pargeter wants the reader to feel as Emmy does, about this place she returns to and the people she reunites there, but because the book begins with the *re* -- reunite, return -- she cannot manage it, for she must introduce all of the characters to the reader while simultaneously writing the 'again' for the character. Perhaps a more skilled author might have done it, or perhaps Pargeter might have written a prologue or a first part which showed the time they all knew each other before, so that the meeting again under new circumstances had some weight to it.
Structurally, Pargeter wants the reader to feel as Emmy does, about this place she returns to and the people she reunites there, but because the book begins with the *re* -- reunite, return -- she cannot manage it, for she must introduce all of the characters to the reader while simultaneously writing the 'again' for the character. Perhaps a more skilled author might have done it, or perhaps Pargeter might have written a prologue or a first part which showed the time they all knew each other before, so that the meeting again under new circumstances had some weight to it.
November 8, 2014
Ehhh...it was fine, an effort to discuss neutrality or non-partiality, the ability to love all and see the good in everything, but I found it a little tedious. Seemed to have too many words for what it said.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews