The Camomile Lawn – Mary Wesley
We stopped in Capel on the way home from Dunsborough and the library was selling books for a $1 – I bought this one and A Common Loss by Kirsten Tranter.
Here is the blurb …
Behind the large house, the fragrant camomile lawn stretches down to the Cornish cliffs. Here, in the dizzying heat of August 1939, five cousins have gathered at their aunt’s house for their annual ritual of a holiday. For most of them it is the last summer of their youth, with the heady exhilarations and freedoms of lost innocence, as well as the fears of the coming war.
The Camomile Lawn moves from Cornwall to London and back again, over the years, telling the stories of the cousins, their family and their friends, united by shared losses and lovers, by family ties and the absurd conditions imposed by war as their paths cross and recross over the years. Mary Wesley presents an extraordinarily vivid and lively picture of wartime London: the rationing, imaginatively circumvented; the fallen houses; the parties, the new-found comforts of sex, the desperate humour of survival – all of it evoked with warmth, clarity and stunning wit. And through it all, the cousins and their friends try to hold on to the part of themselves that laughed and played dangerous games on that camomile lawn.
I have been on a 1930s/1940s thing lately – The Light Years and then Marking Time. This period is definitely growing on me – although both Mary Wesley and Elizabeth Jane Howard wrote about the 40s much later, so maybe I wouldn’t like contemporary authors.
This novel starts in the summer of 1939 war is brewing but has yet to break out. The cousins come every summer to Cornwall to stay with their uncle. Oliver has returned from Spain – altered by his experiences, but still in love with Calypso. Calypso is determined to marry a rich man. Then there is Polly and Walter – both overshadowed by Calypso and Oliver, and finally Sophie much younger than the others and she lives with Richard and Helena (the uncle and aunt everyone is visiting). There is also the rectory twins.
The novel then follows their adventures during the war – although Sophie ‘sees something nasty in the woodshed’ and deals with that early on. Everyone lives like each day might be their last – Helena finds love or at least sex, Calypso marries her rich man (and may indeed love him), Oliver continues on his cynical and selfish path, Polly finds love, Walter never finds his sea legs and remains a bit of a shadowy character and Sophie watches it all and wishes to be older. There are bombs, rationing and lots of drinking – all of the characters are more alive during the war years than before or after.
It is a beautifully written novel – witty, lively and at times brutally honest.
I am now going to watch the 1992 adaptation – As it is rated MA15+, I need to wait for my girls to be back at school.
More reviews …
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/jun/03/featuresreviews.guardianreview2
http://www.nytimes.com/1984/07/08/books/oliver-worshipped-calypso.html