A review by sarahmatthews
Casting Off by Elizabeth Jane Howard

medium-paced

Casting Off by Elizabeth Jane Howard

Read in Braille

Simon & Schuster

Pub. 1997, 496pp

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The fourth in the Cazalet Chronicles series covers the years 1945 to 1947 as the family adjust to peacetime living in a changed England. We follow the innermost thoughts of all the characters including those who are on the edges of the family. The Cazalets have been very well off in the past, accustomed to running large London houses with many servants, and they are now leaving the safety and comfort of the big family home in Sussex where they spent most of the war, returning to London and having to make difficult choices about how they live now. Notably the younger children struggle to settle as they miss the country house full of others their own age to play with, having never known a different way of living.

I’m not going to go into detail for fear of spoilers as this book is part of a series, but here’s a small example of the writing:

“It was a windy evening. Blossom was being tossed off the trees to join the browning petals on the ground— it had rained earlier. A small child was listlessly kicking a large rubber ball down one of the straight gravel paths. Square gardens, he thought, were an adult’s view of a place for children. They had the appearance of being verdant—grassy lawns, shrubs, trees and a few flowers— but they were so ordered and confined that they contained no sense of adventure, of mystery: it was hard to enjoy something if you could see all of it at once.”

The three older cousins, Louise, Polly and Clary, are the heart of this novel and they all face tough decisions in their lives which are expertly explored with Elizabeth Jane Howard’s usual balanced and compassionate writing. You find yourself totally immersed in the intertwining storylines and I didn’t care at all that I saw several plot points coming as the storytelling is just so smart and compelling.

This series was originally going to conclude with this novel so the main characters get a resolution to their stories, some more definitively than others. I’m so glad she decided to write a fifth novel, All Change, many years later, set in the 1950s, as I’m not done with this family yet!

With transatlantic marriages, the harsh reality for newly disabled servicemen,messy divorces, unexpected pregnancies, navigating old age and many infidelities this book doesn’t shy away from the big issues of the time, and consequences of the war for one family.

So obsessed with these books that I’ve already decided that after I’ve finished them I’ll read Slipstream, Elizabeth Jane Howard’s autobiography, to see how closely Louise’s story matches her experiences.