Our narrator, Sarah, looks back on her life, growing up in the period between the two world wars in England, the daughter of a kind, wise Anglican vicar, with two older brothers, Lewis and Willy, and a spoiled younger sister, Lottie. When Lewis brings his friend Charles Reeder home from school, Sarah falls instantly in love with him, and as she grows up, Charles declares his love for her too. But the war intervenes before they can be married, and Charles must return to his home in Austria to try to free his father, who has been taken into custody by the Nazis. Then he too disappears, and Sarah must try to build a new life for herself in London while she waits for the war to end and to learn what happened to Charles...
The book starts slowly, but by the time we got to the war and London, midway through, I was hooked. As usual with DES, the lesser characters in particular are well drawn and add so much to the enjoyment of the book. I particularly loved Sarah's father and Scottish grandparents, and her cynical, mechanically minded brother Willy.
This book was first published in 1966, and there are a few details that set it apart from other DES novels set during the war that were actually written during the 1940s. For example (SPOILER ALERT), when their wedding plans are thwarted, Sarah & Charles decide to (*cough*) pretend they're already married for a night before Charles returns to Europe (although the details are left to our imaginations). And Sarah's spoiled sister Lottie finds herself pregnant and hints at wanting an abortion (although the word itself is not used, and she does not follow through on her threats). As one Goodreads reviewer noted, there's no way DES would have written about these things in the 1940s (even though we know these kinds of things happened then too).
As usual, there are connections here to several other DES books and characters: there are visits to Sarah's grandparents in Ryddelton, in Scotland (the setting for several other DES novels we've covered in recent years). The girls go to school at St. Elizabeth's near Larchester, which also figures in other DES books, most notably "Charlotte Fairlie." Sarah spends time perfecting her French by boarding with the Deslormes family in Nivennes, France, who also make an appearance in "Still Glides the Stream," and Charles is friends with Bob Loudon, whose wife, Elspeth, is a friend of Hester's in the Mrs. Tim books. Thematically, Sarah's spoiled sister, Lottie, follows in similar footsteps of other memorable DES spoiled siblings, including Helen from "Anna & Her Daughters," which we just finished reading, and Kitty from "The Young Clementina." And of course, I was reminded of some of DES's other novels set partly or fully during the war years, in particular "The English Air," whose hero, Frank (similar to Charles), is half German and half British. (I've read all these books and reviewed them here on this blog, all tagged "D.E. Stevenson (author)."
At the moment, the sequel to this book, "Sarah's Cottage," is not (yet?) on our planned list of upcoming reads. I may have to tackle it soon myself!
3.5 stars, rounded up to 4 on Goodreads.
This was Book #36 read to date in 2022 (and Book #5 finished in August), bringing me to 80% of my 2022 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 45 books. I am (for the moment, anyway...!) 7 books ahead of schedule. :) You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2022 tagged as "2022 books."
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