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On the Side of the Angels
During World War II, Honor Carmichael and her two young children are uprooted to Linfield, to join Honor s husband Colin, a dapper, small-town doctor stationed at the military hospital. She is visited by her sister Claudia, whose fiance, Andrew, waits to be invalided out of the Army. Whilst Andrew dismisses himself as 'damaged goods', Colin becomes absorbed by the petty feuds and power games of uniformed life - most particularly with the arrival of Captain Herriot, a commando, and the C.O.'s current favourite. Apparently peripheral to this 'male pirouetting' Honor and Claudia are nevertheless deeply affected by this war - for its threat to notions of masculinity forces both women to reassess the roles they re always played. First published in 1945, this exploration of the crushing psychological effects of war was described by Stevie Smith as a sensitively and beautifully told story perfectly drawn. This edition carries a new foreword by Sir Jonathan Miller C.B.E., the author's son"
238 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1945
About the author
Betty Miller
9 books6 followersBetty Miller (1910-65), was born in Ireland to a Lithuanian businessman and a Swedish teacher whose (Polish) family was distantly related to the philosopher Henri Bergson. She went to school in London and did a diploma in journalism at University College before publishing the first of her seven novels. In 1933 she married the psychiatrist Emanuel Miller (1892-1970) and then wrote two more well-received novels and Farewell Leicester Square (unpublished until 1941). During the war she lived in the country with her children, Jonathan (b.1934) and Sarah (b.1937), writing On the Side of the Angels (1945, repr. 1985) and a biography of Robert Browning (1952). Her London circle included Olivia Manning, Stevie Smith, Marghanita Laski and Isaiah Berlin – who remarked on her ‘moral charm’, calling her ‘gentle, acutely sensitive, receptive, infinitely truthful and accurate’.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
July 27, 2023
A really good psychological study of the effects of war on both men and women.
April 6, 2017
The best part about this publisher, Virago Modern Classics, is that I am often finding books and authors that I might not otherwise. In fact, it's the entire purpose of Virago which was founded to do just that - to publish books by women (primarily), new and reissued.
I recently finished reading Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, his 1940 novel about the Spanish Civil War, a book that is often held up as the Great American(-ish) War Novel. I'm not necessarily disagreeing (though I didn't find it as amazing as, say, The Things They Carried). But what Hemingway can't provide is the female perspective. Guess what, guys. War affects everyone! Women included! It's a crazy notion, but it's true.
And that's where Betty Miller steps in. Published in 1945, On the Side of the Angels looks at war from a female perspective. Her sixth novel tells the story of Claudia and Honor, sisters, who live rather different lives. One is married to a doctor at the military hospital and the other engaged to a young man who has been medically discharged from the army. Each women have views and feelings about what is happening in their world which - shock! - goes beyond the front door of their homes. The war does touch their lives through their encounters, and they must deal with the changes that come to their inner worlds as a result.
It's a love story, yes, but there's so much in these pages that meets the initial eye. It was refreshing to read this novel about World War II from the non-male perspective, to have characters who refer to "male pirouetting", possibly the best phrase ever, and one I want to use all of the time now around certain peacocks who just have to strut their shit.
This is what Hemingway couldn't do - he may have been able to write the male perspective pretty well (though that's unfortunate if men are like the characters he always wrote, but that's a topic for another day), but he couldn't write a quality female character with a brain to save his life. So when I read another war novel from a woman who could, I am reminded that war novels have always been written by both men and women. It's just (not surprising) that it's the literature written by men that get the most attention. What's important to remember, also, is that this book was written during the war. It was not her reflection on a time already past. She was living through it, and writing about it. I find something admirable about that.
I recently finished reading Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, his 1940 novel about the Spanish Civil War, a book that is often held up as the Great American(-ish) War Novel. I'm not necessarily disagreeing (though I didn't find it as amazing as, say, The Things They Carried). But what Hemingway can't provide is the female perspective. Guess what, guys. War affects everyone! Women included! It's a crazy notion, but it's true.
And that's where Betty Miller steps in. Published in 1945, On the Side of the Angels looks at war from a female perspective. Her sixth novel tells the story of Claudia and Honor, sisters, who live rather different lives. One is married to a doctor at the military hospital and the other engaged to a young man who has been medically discharged from the army. Each women have views and feelings about what is happening in their world which - shock! - goes beyond the front door of their homes. The war does touch their lives through their encounters, and they must deal with the changes that come to their inner worlds as a result.
It's a love story, yes, but there's so much in these pages that meets the initial eye. It was refreshing to read this novel about World War II from the non-male perspective, to have characters who refer to "male pirouetting", possibly the best phrase ever, and one I want to use all of the time now around certain peacocks who just have to strut their shit.
This is what Hemingway couldn't do - he may have been able to write the male perspective pretty well (though that's unfortunate if men are like the characters he always wrote, but that's a topic for another day), but he couldn't write a quality female character with a brain to save his life. So when I read another war novel from a woman who could, I am reminded that war novels have always been written by both men and women. It's just (not surprising) that it's the literature written by men that get the most attention. What's important to remember, also, is that this book was written during the war. It was not her reflection on a time already past. She was living through it, and writing about it. I find something admirable about that.
Claudia laughed. "That's life," she said, audibly parodying the comment. "You've got to accept it."
"I endure it," Andrew said. "I don't have to accept it."
(p73)
January 29, 2014
During the Second World War Betty Miller’s husband was commissioned as a Major in the RAMC – a war office posting which lead Betty to write On the Side of Angels in 1944 – although due to a paper shortage it wasn’t published until 1945. The novel looks at how the lives of men were changed with the coming of war, and how the women in their lives had to change and re-assess their roles. The balance between civilian and non-civilian is a delicate one in this story of the psychological effects of war on both men and women.
“Along the main road, where a row of telegraph-poles with white china florets looked like giant hyacinths, came a group of men in khaki. They walked at a leisurely pace, talking together, the smallest on the far side leading a bicycle by the handle-bars. “There they are, now,” Claudia said. ‘ And coming from the hospital too, like good boys…’ she grinned ‘it seems we misjudged them’ ‘Oh’ Honor said ‘but – look-look- look who’s –‘ Her voice seemed to retract in her throat: it was extinguished. Foolishly (for of course it was mere foolishness, Colin always said so), every sense in her body seemed to shrink. She looked about her, as if seeking a way of retreat, some cover that would mitigate the enormity of her presence on the bridge at that moment. Claudia too had seen. The gold braid, the tabs: more unmistakeable, the characteristic stooping gait. ‘The C.O’ she said in a startled voice.”
In Betty Miller’s novel the RAMC hospital in the village of Linfield occupies a unique position, much against the village’s wishes the hospital dictates everything that goes on. The war has changed people, by the mere donning of a bit of khaki personalities are altered. Honor Carmichael and her two young sons have been uprooted to Linfield, living in rented accommodation, while Honor’s husband Colin; a former small town doctor, is stationed at the RAMC hospital. “Don’t forget the Prisoners of Peace – the people who’ve had to live battened down, all their lives, pretending to conform, pretending to be what they aren’t. And that applies to most of us”
The hospital has become the focus of the whole village, uniformed officers to dance with and gossip over – the post office girl nicknamed Ginger Rogers (real name Ivy) a particular favourite with some. The hospital is also the scene for various power games and petty feuds, directed, in part at least by the C O Colonel Mayne – a manipulative man who barely tolerates the wives and children of his men. Colin is a little too enamoured of his C O putting his concerns above those of his family, desperate to impress. Along with many other men, Colin is able to almost live the life of a bachelor in this new uniformed society. At home Honor quietly submits to this way of life, running the house and caring for her little boys, while trying not to irritate Colin’s C O with her presence. A new favourite at the hospital is commando Captain Herriot who’s green beret turns the heads of both men and women. Honor Carmichael’s sister, Claudia, arrives to stay, as the school where she teaches has been relocated from London. Claudia is engaged to Andrew, a solicitor recently invalided out of the army. Andrew’s discharge threatens to rock the already delicate balance of their relationship, as a man out of uniform is invisible – and Claudia has engaged herself to the uniform as Andrew cynically reminds her. As I have already stated I think Betty Miller’s writing is superb, and although I really loved Farewell Leicester Square, I think I liked this one even more. I really need to locate more of Betty Miller's work, although I am not supposed to be buying books at the moment. Thank you Jane for sending me this as part of my Librarything Virago group secret santa parcel.
“Along the main road, where a row of telegraph-poles with white china florets looked like giant hyacinths, came a group of men in khaki. They walked at a leisurely pace, talking together, the smallest on the far side leading a bicycle by the handle-bars. “There they are, now,” Claudia said. ‘ And coming from the hospital too, like good boys…’ she grinned ‘it seems we misjudged them’ ‘Oh’ Honor said ‘but – look-look- look who’s –‘ Her voice seemed to retract in her throat: it was extinguished. Foolishly (for of course it was mere foolishness, Colin always said so), every sense in her body seemed to shrink. She looked about her, as if seeking a way of retreat, some cover that would mitigate the enormity of her presence on the bridge at that moment. Claudia too had seen. The gold braid, the tabs: more unmistakeable, the characteristic stooping gait. ‘The C.O’ she said in a startled voice.”
In Betty Miller’s novel the RAMC hospital in the village of Linfield occupies a unique position, much against the village’s wishes the hospital dictates everything that goes on. The war has changed people, by the mere donning of a bit of khaki personalities are altered. Honor Carmichael and her two young sons have been uprooted to Linfield, living in rented accommodation, while Honor’s husband Colin; a former small town doctor, is stationed at the RAMC hospital. “Don’t forget the Prisoners of Peace – the people who’ve had to live battened down, all their lives, pretending to conform, pretending to be what they aren’t. And that applies to most of us”
The hospital has become the focus of the whole village, uniformed officers to dance with and gossip over – the post office girl nicknamed Ginger Rogers (real name Ivy) a particular favourite with some. The hospital is also the scene for various power games and petty feuds, directed, in part at least by the C O Colonel Mayne – a manipulative man who barely tolerates the wives and children of his men. Colin is a little too enamoured of his C O putting his concerns above those of his family, desperate to impress. Along with many other men, Colin is able to almost live the life of a bachelor in this new uniformed society. At home Honor quietly submits to this way of life, running the house and caring for her little boys, while trying not to irritate Colin’s C O with her presence. A new favourite at the hospital is commando Captain Herriot who’s green beret turns the heads of both men and women. Honor Carmichael’s sister, Claudia, arrives to stay, as the school where she teaches has been relocated from London. Claudia is engaged to Andrew, a solicitor recently invalided out of the army. Andrew’s discharge threatens to rock the already delicate balance of their relationship, as a man out of uniform is invisible – and Claudia has engaged herself to the uniform as Andrew cynically reminds her. As I have already stated I think Betty Miller’s writing is superb, and although I really loved Farewell Leicester Square, I think I liked this one even more. I really need to locate more of Betty Miller's work, although I am not supposed to be buying books at the moment. Thank you Jane for sending me this as part of my Librarything Virago group secret santa parcel.
June 6, 2015
Virago Modern Classics: A Love Story
The year: 1997.
The setting: my Australian study abroad semester in this dry-tropical, eucalypt-y place, where exams tended to be shunted off to the end of the semester.
The effect: Lots of time to read fiction on the balcony with the fruit bats. Whoooooeee!
Early that semester, I checked out a book from the university library by an unfamiliar female author, a book with a white-on-pine-green spine. Embarrassingly, I don’t remember the title or the author’s name, but I do remember the book was…different. Maybe not the world’s greatest literature, but it was written well and featured intriguingly imagined women. Next library trip, I found another with a similar spine and read it too. Struck me the same way.
Pretty soon, I’d check out a few of these green books at a time, and the closest I ever came to disappointment was the overblown foxhunting one. But even that book was partly redeemed by the qualities it shared with all its little green brethren: female authors who seemed to respect the intelligence of their readers, but whose names I had never heard before; solid, though not earthshaking, writing; the shifted-kaleidoscope feeling of familiar literary worlds made unfamiliar by a focus on the lives of women. The very craziest commonality, though, was that, in book after book after book, the female characters weren’t portrayed as Object or Archetype or Stereotype or Fantasy or Madonna or Whore or Madwoman or Manic Pixie Dream Girl even, but women. You know, as like humans and stuff.
Now I don’t know about you, but for me, that last item holding true for an unbroken series of books is quite an unusual experience. Turns out, these were all Virago Modern Classics,* and bully for that team for hunting down such a valuable and forgotten collection of titles. The ones I read tended towards profound Britishness, but I would recommend almost all of them, and not just to women.
I haven’t run acrossmany Virago Modern Classics since leaving the Commonwealth, so when I found Betty Miller’s On the Side of the Angels in a particularly labyrinthine used book store last month, I pounced.
It’s classic Virago Modern Classic: two couples in a WWII English village. The women are sisters, a mother and a teacher. The husband of one is a doctor stationed in the village military hospital, and the fiancé of the other is dealing with medical discharge from the army. With these four characters as a center, Miller examines the distance between real and pretended selves, desired and conformed selves, which, yes, at least half of all fiction ever is about. This is a competent rendition of that theme, with the added twist of war playing merry hell with social roles, masculine and feminine. Now, I’ve read some WWII fiction before, but the depiction of the effects of war on the homefront in this book is unique in my reading experience, and the characters are vivid.
The book’s weaknesses? Well, Miller tosses adjectives around with an unusually liberal hand, which comes off as clunky but evocative. And there’s a bit of a guru character thing going on, that one who says the Important Things. All in all, though, I quite enjoyed it.
I don’t usually grab books by unknown authors off the shelf; I’m a little too research-prone for that. But I’ll try one of my beloved VMCs, author unknown, background unresearched, anytime.
_____________
* “The First Virago Modern Classic was published in London in 1978, launching a list dedicated to the celebration of women writers and to the rediscovery and reprinting of their works. While the series is called “Modern Classics” it is not true that these works of fiction are universally and equally considered “great,” although that is often the case…books appear in the series for different reasons: sometimes for their importance in literary history; sometimes because they illuminate particular aspects of women’s lives, both personal and public. They may be classics of comedy or storytelling; their interest can be historical, feminist, political or literary. In any case, in their variety and richness, they promise to confuse forever the question of what women’s fiction is about, while at the same time affirming a true female tradition in literature.”
The year: 1997.
The setting: my Australian study abroad semester in this dry-tropical, eucalypt-y place, where exams tended to be shunted off to the end of the semester.
The effect: Lots of time to read fiction on the balcony with the fruit bats. Whoooooeee!
Early that semester, I checked out a book from the university library by an unfamiliar female author, a book with a white-on-pine-green spine. Embarrassingly, I don’t remember the title or the author’s name, but I do remember the book was…different. Maybe not the world’s greatest literature, but it was written well and featured intriguingly imagined women. Next library trip, I found another with a similar spine and read it too. Struck me the same way.
Pretty soon, I’d check out a few of these green books at a time, and the closest I ever came to disappointment was the overblown foxhunting one. But even that book was partly redeemed by the qualities it shared with all its little green brethren: female authors who seemed to respect the intelligence of their readers, but whose names I had never heard before; solid, though not earthshaking, writing; the shifted-kaleidoscope feeling of familiar literary worlds made unfamiliar by a focus on the lives of women. The very craziest commonality, though, was that, in book after book after book, the female characters weren’t portrayed as Object or Archetype or Stereotype or Fantasy or Madonna or Whore or Madwoman or Manic Pixie Dream Girl even, but women. You know, as like humans and stuff.
Now I don’t know about you, but for me, that last item holding true for an unbroken series of books is quite an unusual experience. Turns out, these were all Virago Modern Classics,* and bully for that team for hunting down such a valuable and forgotten collection of titles. The ones I read tended towards profound Britishness, but I would recommend almost all of them, and not just to women.
I haven’t run across
It’s classic Virago Modern Classic: two couples in a WWII English village. The women are sisters, a mother and a teacher. The husband of one is a doctor stationed in the village military hospital, and the fiancé of the other is dealing with medical discharge from the army. With these four characters as a center, Miller examines the distance between real and pretended selves, desired and conformed selves, which, yes, at least half of all fiction ever is about. This is a competent rendition of that theme, with the added twist of war playing merry hell with social roles, masculine and feminine. Now, I’ve read some WWII fiction before, but the depiction of the effects of war on the homefront in this book is unique in my reading experience, and the characters are vivid.
The book’s weaknesses? Well, Miller tosses adjectives around with an unusually liberal hand, which comes off as clunky but evocative. And there’s a bit of a guru character thing going on, that one who says the Important Things. All in all, though, I quite enjoyed it.
I don’t usually grab books by unknown authors off the shelf; I’m a little too research-prone for that. But I’ll try one of my beloved VMCs, author unknown, background unresearched, anytime.
_____________
* “The First Virago Modern Classic was published in London in 1978, launching a list dedicated to the celebration of women writers and to the rediscovery and reprinting of their works. While the series is called “Modern Classics” it is not true that these works of fiction are universally and equally considered “great,” although that is often the case…books appear in the series for different reasons: sometimes for their importance in literary history; sometimes because they illuminate particular aspects of women’s lives, both personal and public. They may be classics of comedy or storytelling; their interest can be historical, feminist, political or literary. In any case, in their variety and richness, they promise to confuse forever the question of what women’s fiction is about, while at the same time affirming a true female tradition in literature.”
June 8, 2015
Very well written, with some great exploration of masculinity/homo-social dynamics within the military.
April 8, 2008
The best books are written by people I've never heard of.
April 28, 2021
I don't think you can go wrong with any Virago Modern Classic -- that's been my experience so far, anyway. This intimate look at a few weeks during the village lives of two sisters during World War II had me turning the pages like it was a thriller, although it was far from that. It was an introspective, detail-laden view of a wife and mother with a husband entranced with his new bachelor-like military life in a village hospital and her sister, who is engaged to a man whose life has abruptly changed after being invalided out of the army. The theme of contrasts and opposites was deftly woven throughout the book with only a small cast of characters. Miller's long sentences tied loosely together with semicolons and ellipses took a little getting used to, but her perceptions and turns of phrase were worth the close reading required. One of my favorite aspects of her descriptions involved unglamorous details that made the characters so relatable -- the awkwardness of poor makeup, stained clothes, unshaven armpits, and the discomforts of breastfeeding. So refreshing! Persephone has one of Miller's other titles in print, but to find the other handful of her novels I will have to luck into them secondhand. Here's hoping I do!
Read
July 6, 2022Well, that was ...something. Very modern-feeling, mostly, for a book written and published during WW2. It leaves me feeling... uh... something. Ennui, perhaps. It reminds me, strangely, of My Year of Rest and Relaxation: you get a real up-close nasty look at the inner workings (and some outer workings) of some people who aren't especially lovable, per se, and you walk away feeling different. Neither different-good nor different-bad, but different-neutral seems like an oxymoron.
Not much happens. The one central kind-of-plot point conspicuously fails to happen. Everything kind of resets, slightly for the better (?), but mostly it's just the same. There's such an air of... resignation hanging over everyone. Very mild misery. Well, but there's a war on, you know! Except... The war is strangely distant for all that a couple characters have to jump into a ditch to avoid a nearby bomb during a raid at one point. There's small mentions here and there -- painted legs (instead of stockings), a whole week's meat ration for a half-leg of lamb. But I suppose that's what happens when reading something contemporary to an era: assumptions are made about what the reader knows and understands.
So it's more of a character study kind of book than a plot-based one, and yet... there are so many moments of characters suddenly inferring or suspecting or realizing something (or the omniscient narrator pointing out that on a different day someone would have noticed something, but...). Do any of the characters develop at all? Well, yes, I suppose, but without much change -- developing negatives coming into focus. A tiny bit lazy -- these folks can suddenly intuit a LOT of detail.
A bunch of intellectual navel-gazing conversations about war and man's propensity and love of it that didn't convince (if it was supposed to) between a couple intelligentsia characters.
I've got that feeling of having been on public transportation a good while. You're mildly embarrassed, trying to keep yourself to yourself, and maybe sometimes you're embarrassed for other people doing the same. You debark, and you're not dirty but you still feel a bit grubby and a quick handwash is as much a mental comfort as a physical one.
People who Like Prose will enjoy all the ~Prose~ herein. (I'm mildly snarky because while I enjoy evocative descriptions and all, there's a time and a place, and I can't agree with those who think it's the most important part of a story.) Those who have Feelings About Grammar will go mad from the heavy and wild uses of dashes and ellipses everywhere.
--
The Capuchin Classics edition seems to have a lot of typos in it -- mostly of the sort that were probably unchecked OCR errors, which is unfortunate.
Not much happens. The one central kind-of-plot point conspicuously fails to happen. Everything kind of resets, slightly for the better (?), but mostly it's just the same. There's such an air of... resignation hanging over everyone. Very mild misery. Well, but there's a war on, you know! Except... The war is strangely distant for all that a couple characters have to jump into a ditch to avoid a nearby bomb during a raid at one point. There's small mentions here and there -- painted legs (instead of stockings), a whole week's meat ration for a half-leg of lamb. But I suppose that's what happens when reading something contemporary to an era: assumptions are made about what the reader knows and understands.
So it's more of a character study kind of book than a plot-based one, and yet... there are so many moments of characters suddenly inferring or suspecting or realizing something (or the omniscient narrator pointing out that on a different day someone would have noticed something, but...). Do any of the characters develop at all? Well, yes, I suppose, but without much change -- developing negatives coming into focus. A tiny bit lazy -- these folks can suddenly intuit a LOT of detail.
A bunch of intellectual navel-gazing conversations about war and man's propensity and love of it that didn't convince (if it was supposed to) between a couple intelligentsia characters.
I've got that feeling of having been on public transportation a good while. You're mildly embarrassed, trying to keep yourself to yourself, and maybe sometimes you're embarrassed for other people doing the same. You debark, and you're not dirty but you still feel a bit grubby and a quick handwash is as much a mental comfort as a physical one.
People who Like Prose will enjoy all the ~Prose~ herein. (I'm mildly snarky because while I enjoy evocative descriptions and all, there's a time and a place, and I can't agree with those who think it's the most important part of a story.) Those who have Feelings About Grammar will go mad from the heavy and wild uses of dashes and ellipses everywhere.
--
The Capuchin Classics edition seems to have a lot of typos in it -- mostly of the sort that were probably unchecked OCR errors, which is unfortunate.
June 14, 2023
I read this in one sitting. Well in one day, does that count as one sitting?
I read from a Virago Modern Classics re-issue, and I love them and spend a good deal of my time reading them instead of more recent best-sellers. For the full list of Virago Modern Classics here they are: https://www.virago.co.uk/imprint/lbbg... .
I never heard of this woman and if not for the list above, I would have remained ignorant of this novel. But I have read it, the ending was totally totally totally not what I expected and high marks to Betty Miller for that plot twist!
This was a Goodread! 4.5 stars! And I want to pursue more works by this author. Sadly, she died at age 55 of Alzheimer’s disease. Doubly sad of her five or so other works, it looks like the only other one available is ‘Farewell Leicester Square’ (Persephone Books).
Anyhoo, ‘On the Side of the Angels’ was written in 1945 right after World War II had ended. The setting is a Gloucestershire village of Linfield in England. Here is the synopsis from the back cover of the Virago re-issue:
• Honor Carmichael and her two young children are uprooted to Linfield, where her husband Colin, a dapper, small-town doctor, is stationed at the Royal Army Medical Corps hospital. She is visited by her sister Claudia, whose fiancé, Andrew, waits to be invalided out of the Army. Whilst Andrew dismisses himself as ‘damaged goods”, Colin becomes absorbed by the petty feuds and power games of uniformed life — most particularly with the arrival of Captain Herriot, a commando, and the C.O.’s (Commanding Officer’s) current favorite. Apparently peripheral to this “male pirouetting” Honor and Claudia are nevertheless deeply affected by this war. For its threat to notions of masculinity forces both women to reassess the roles they’ve always played, First published in 1945, this exploration of the crushing psychological effects of war is “a sensitively and beautifully told story... perfectly drawn”.
Reviews:
• I really like HeavenAli’s reviews and am very happy that they reviewed the book and feels like me that this is long-neglected author who should be better known with a work such as this: https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2014/...
• Wow, a PhD dissertation on Betty Miller with a whole chapter devoted to this book (Ch. 7)! https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/41994...
I read from a Virago Modern Classics re-issue, and I love them and spend a good deal of my time reading them instead of more recent best-sellers. For the full list of Virago Modern Classics here they are: https://www.virago.co.uk/imprint/lbbg... .
I never heard of this woman and if not for the list above, I would have remained ignorant of this novel. But I have read it, the ending was totally totally totally not what I expected and high marks to Betty Miller for that plot twist!
This was a Goodread! 4.5 stars! And I want to pursue more works by this author. Sadly, she died at age 55 of Alzheimer’s disease. Doubly sad of her five or so other works, it looks like the only other one available is ‘Farewell Leicester Square’ (Persephone Books).
Anyhoo, ‘On the Side of the Angels’ was written in 1945 right after World War II had ended. The setting is a Gloucestershire village of Linfield in England. Here is the synopsis from the back cover of the Virago re-issue:
• Honor Carmichael and her two young children are uprooted to Linfield, where her husband Colin, a dapper, small-town doctor, is stationed at the Royal Army Medical Corps hospital. She is visited by her sister Claudia, whose fiancé, Andrew, waits to be invalided out of the Army. Whilst Andrew dismisses himself as ‘damaged goods”, Colin becomes absorbed by the petty feuds and power games of uniformed life — most particularly with the arrival of Captain Herriot, a commando, and the C.O.’s (Commanding Officer’s) current favorite. Apparently peripheral to this “male pirouetting” Honor and Claudia are nevertheless deeply affected by this war. For its threat to notions of masculinity forces both women to reassess the roles they’ve always played, First published in 1945, this exploration of the crushing psychological effects of war is “a sensitively and beautifully told story... perfectly drawn”.
Reviews:
• I really like HeavenAli’s reviews and am very happy that they reviewed the book and feels like me that this is long-neglected author who should be better known with a work such as this: https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2014/...
• Wow, a PhD dissertation on Betty Miller with a whole chapter devoted to this book (Ch. 7)! https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/41994...
June 6, 2022
Overall I found this WWII novel to be interesting and engaging. It wasn’t a “can’t put it down” book, but neither did I have any trouble finishing it. Ms. Miller goes into a lot more detail in her descriptions of people places and things than I do in my novels. That isn’t my style, but still I can appreciate the power of description by others.
Parts of the plot were predictable for me. For example, I knew once lovely, smart Claudia recognized the commando captain as an arrogant gof’d gift to women type, she was doomed to be pulled into his orbit. Even her fiancé seemed to encourage her wandering into the narcissist’s arms. Of course, the author did throw us a curve where the captain was concerned, but the less said here about that the better,
The main characters pass along a lot of wisdom to us about the nature of war and relationships and how the former affects the latter. They sound very erudite like they have all the answers — never mind that I believe sometimes they were talking through their hats. They should have spent more time just listening to each other.
Parts of the plot were predictable for me. For example, I knew once lovely, smart Claudia recognized the commando captain as an arrogant gof’d gift to women type, she was doomed to be pulled into his orbit. Even her fiancé seemed to encourage her wandering into the narcissist’s arms. Of course, the author did throw us a curve where the captain was concerned, but the less said here about that the better,
The main characters pass along a lot of wisdom to us about the nature of war and relationships and how the former affects the latter. They sound very erudite like they have all the answers — never mind that I believe sometimes they were talking through their hats. They should have spent more time just listening to each other.
August 7, 2023
It’s pretty common to come across books that, in our far past , we have already read .
We might not not remember at first ,
but as we read , suddenly passages or described images become familiar .
So yeah , I’d read this and I can see why I picked it up again . Loved it so much . I’m not one to completely recount the plot but it was completely engrossing and will definitely be read again .
We might not not remember at first ,
but as we read , suddenly passages or described images become familiar .
So yeah , I’d read this and I can see why I picked it up again . Loved it so much . I’m not one to completely recount the plot but it was completely engrossing and will definitely be read again .
February 17, 2026
It's a family saga (500 pages!) that is interesting but drags a bit.
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