Second book in my challenge to read all the Persephone Books publications is this 1940 novel. Titled after a Tennyson poem which main character Mary recites aloud at one point within her fledgling acting career it features Mary looking back at her life up to the point where she is alone in an isolated cottage awaiting news about her husband who she fears may have become a wartime casualty.
Childhood holidays meant an escape from London to the Somerset home of her dead father's family and is conveyed in an endearing bluster of enthusiasm, an obsession with a cousin proves an early highlight. It's reminiscent of the type of writing led by Dodie Smith's 1949 all-time classic "I Capture The Castle" but never quite reaches that book's heights. The Preface by Harriet Lane makes comparisons to a 1940s version of Bridget Jones – waiting for the right man to come along and Mary is certainly doing this, in Somerset, London and France.
I did come close to awarding this five stars. There are some lovely set pieces- I particularly enjoyed her actor Uncle taking her out for a slap-up meal when she was a child and then neglecting her and Mary's own forays into the acting world are entertaining. She's not always likeable and her odd Anti-Semitic aside will rankle with modern readers but I think the novel works very well. I might actually prefer it when she is still seeking a man rather than when she finds one but that might just be the cynic in me.
Monica Dickens (1915-92) was the great-grandaughter of Charles and at her commercial peak was second only to Daphne Du Maurier in her popularity as a woman writer. I remember her from my childhood with her fiction aimed at younger readers. We had a copy of her novel at home, which I certainly read, from the series that the 1970s ITV series "Follyfoot" was based on. I very much relished reading her apparently largely autobiographical work here and it has certainly confirmed my appetite for more Perspehone titles.
Mariana was first published in 1940. I read the Persephone Books republication.
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