Scan barcode
A review by wendoxford
The Rector's Daughter by F.M. Mayor
3.0
I have read many books about the "spare" woman's lot following the First World War into which category I put this.
For me it just missed the mark on every level. There was obviously a lively mind within Mary, our protagonist and yet we were presented layer upon layer of ennui and disappointment. A new curate comes to town, matches her intelligence for a while, then she reverses back into the shadows. The novel had limited plot, limited ways of helping the reader invest in small lives and seemed to take a very long time to say very little.
The same generation moments away from "duty" are with the all show and no substance horsey set - the bright young things and their spurious alter egos - Jim-Jam, Cocky, for example. Then a curious entree into something resembling The Bloomsbury Group. Otherwise it is a caring life, intellectually emotionally retarded superior rector father, disabled sister and a host of older women of the parish.
I thought there were echoes of Mr Rochester (Jane Eyre) and Dorothea/Casaubon (Middlemarch) throughout the book but it never reached the brilliant nuances of those classics. Too relentlessly gruelling for me
For me it just missed the mark on every level. There was obviously a lively mind within Mary, our protagonist and yet we were presented layer upon layer of ennui and disappointment. A new curate comes to town, matches her intelligence for a while, then she reverses back into the shadows. The novel had limited plot, limited ways of helping the reader invest in small lives and seemed to take a very long time to say very little.
The same generation moments away from "duty" are with the all show and no substance horsey set - the bright young things and their spurious alter egos - Jim-Jam, Cocky, for example. Then a curious entree into something resembling The Bloomsbury Group. Otherwise it is a caring life, intellectually emotionally retarded superior rector father, disabled sister and a host of older women of the parish.
I thought there were echoes of Mr Rochester (Jane Eyre) and Dorothea/Casaubon (Middlemarch) throughout the book but it never reached the brilliant nuances of those classics. Too relentlessly gruelling for me