Rob Price
Gutbrain Records
rob + gutbrain.com = email

2011 September 09 • Friday

This book was really great.

It's tone isn't too far away from Barbara Pym's novels, but it's quite earlier, published 1926. The introduction by Alison Lurie—very good and very informative, but best read after, not before, the book—notes that it was an international bestseller at the time and that it anticipated Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own.

Laura Willowes spends the first half of her life submerged in family. (She's a bit like an Ozu heroine, say the main character in Late Spring.) In middle age she manages to break free from her "Aunt Lolly" identity and start a new, independent life in a small town outside of London.

Her freedom and autonomy come under threat, and Laura's response is, to put it mildly, startling and unexpected (if you haven't read the introduction).

The unconventional direction the novel takes is foreshadowed early in the book, in this rare glimpse behind Laura's mask.

[Mr. Arbuthnot] felt that being thirty-five he owed himself a wife, and he also felt that Laura would do very nicely.…

Laura's thoughts ranged over a wide field, even now. Sometimes she said rather amusing things, and displayed unexpected stores (General Stores) of knowledge. But her remarks were as a rule so disconnected from the conversation that no one paid much attention to them. Mr. Arbuthnot certainly was not prepared for her response to his statement that February was a dangerous month. "It is," answered Laura with almost violent agreement. "If you are a were-wolf, and very likely you may be, for lots of people are without knowing, February, of all months, is the month when you are most likely to go out on a dark windy night and worry sheep."

So much for Mr. Arbuthnot or any other suitors.

This is nowhere near as startling as what happens in the third part of the book, though.

Lolly Willowes was excellent, a real surprise, perfectly written. It was Warner's first novel and, according to the author bio, "the first ever Book-of-the-Month Club selection".

The first line is "When her father died, Laura Willowes went to live in London with her elder brother and his family".