A review by sarahmatthews
Marking Time by Elizabeth Jane Howard

emotional hopeful tense medium-paced

Marking Time by Elizabeth Jane Howard

Read in Braille

Pub. 1991, 617pp

___

This second instalment in the Cazalet Chronicle had me just as gripped as the first and I flew through it! It kept me company during some nights when I slept badly and kept me from settling down to sleep at other times as I was enjoying it so much. It’s a brilliant epic family drama set in 1941, mainly in East Sussex and London. 

I’m not going to go into the story as this is part of a series but here’s a lovely snapshot of the writing; a great diary entry from one of the children, Clary, capturing the randomness of what we include in our journals:

“They are getting people back from France now, but there are thousands to collect and quite a lot of them are wounded, which must make it terribly difficult.they are clearing out the people who are convalescent from Mill Farm in case the beds are wanted for soldiers. M R James is rather good: he writes as though he always wears a dark suit. One cannot imagine him in shirtsleeves. The stories frighten me just the right amount. Goodness, I hate knitting!”

Elizabeth Jane Howard is just so skilled at making you care about her characters and I’ve got the third book ready to dive into now…