Family Ties

by Celia Buckmaster

Mrs Rockaby was pleased . . . “Not such a bad old thing really,” she told her husband on getting home, “and not frightening, really, once you get to know him. You know, Donald, in a way, shooting their daughters-in-law and so on, the Monsoons are rather fun.” The “hero” of Family Ties is the eccentric, elderly Mr. Monsoon, living in comfortable squalor with his wife, two sons, and two daughters-in-law, including bored, restless Amy, whom he shoots (only wings, really, and that accidentally). The Monsoons are indeed rather fun, as are the other unusual inhabitants of the village, from Mrs. Tyce, widow of the former lord of the manor, who can “look back on a long life more than half of which she has spent being horribly bored,” to the well-meaning but ridiculous Mrs Rockaby, who hopes one day to return to a bustling life in London and look just as young and lovely as before. There’s the Monsoon gardener, who enjoys telling “little children about the Devil and idle hands,” and the pretentious Mr. Swan, current resident of the manor, who sets out to marry the Rockabys’ daughter as if it’s a task on his to do list. And of course there’s poor frustrated Amy, who wants to be herself as well as a wife and mother. Furrowed Middlebrow and Dean Street Press are proud to make available for the first time since the 1950s the underrated fiction of Celia Buckmaster, combining incomparable characters and a sharp, biting wit.

Genres: Fiction

214 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1952

Reviews

[Tania · Rating 4 out of 5]

Entertaining village drama.

I am very grateful that Furrowed Middlebrow have managed to unearth so many treasures. There is no way I'd have come across this one of they hadn't re-published it, and I did very much enjoy it.

[Dominika]

This was an odd read. There were some flashes of really great writing but then I felt other sections needed better editing.

However, there was a tea party scene that was SO well written and agonizingly cringey. It was worth it to read the whole book just for that scene.

[Adrienne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very slow going for the first half, but it became more engrossing as it continued. Many of the characters were thoroughly unlikeable.

[Ruthiella · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a plotless novel about the middle to upper class inhabitants of an English village in the midcentury. There are the shabby Monsoons who are formerly landed gentry, the Rockabys who had to give up their London home and move permanently to the country, Mr. Swan, the eccentric bachelor back from the East, and looney Lady Tyce, living in the Dowager House since the manor was sold to become a girls school. It was quite funny in parts. It did also have a slight feminist edge in its portrayal of female characters and the challenges they faced during this period regarding marriage and motherhood.