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avreereads 's review for:
The Summer Before the War
by Helen Simonson
❧A BOOK THAT CONJURES UP SCENES FROM DOWNTON ABBEY AND A LOVE OF TOMES! ❧
3.5 Stars rounded up.
Take a gander at these 7 highlights and see if this doesn’t pique your interest to delve into Edwardian English life just at the cusp of WWI. So stunningly weaved and though slow at times I believe it’s intended to lull you into a false-sense of peace, ease, and security—in the calm before the storm—that is the dawning of The Great War.
BTW none of these contain spoilers...just proof of the exquisite prose
Only in the early mornings did Agatha use these stairs, and never did she feel more at home in her own house than when she popped her head in the kitchen to ask Cook for a cup of tea from the big brown pot kept fresh all day for the staff. For a brief moment, in the black-and-white-tiled kitchen, with its high, sunny windows and gleaming new gas range, they did not have to be mistress and cook, ruling separate domains on either side of a green baize door, but could come together as two women, up before anyone else in the family, in need of the day’s first cup.(page 27)
❧
The stone terrace already looked older than the house, softened to a pleasant mossy gray under the relentless dripping of English rain, its stone balusters pressed by fat shrubs and draped in twisting vines of honeysuckle, wisteria, and the teacup-sized pale green flowers of a clematis. White roses climbed up the house from beds filled with brilliant blue agapanthus. Beatrice stooped to cup in her hands a waxy blue flower head as large as a hat and to wonder if plants ever sensed how far they were from home: this African lily carried on ships to England in the time of Henry VIII, rhododendrons dug from the rippled flanks of Chinese mountains, the passionflower twining about itself in air so much drier than the South American rain forest. (page 30/31)
❧
“I would settle for being a hermit,” she said. He noticed that her eyes lost some of their light. “After the past year, I crave only to be allowed my work, and my rest, away from the stupidities of society. I shall be like Charlotte Bronte’s Lucy Snowe [of Vilette], content to tend her little school for the children of the merchant classes.” (page 39) [Oddly enough I had just purchased this book the day before reading this. I’m excited to read Vilette because Jane Eyre is my favorite book!]
❧
Beatrice was sorry to lose the tea dress from her adequate but not extensive wardrobe, but understood that the loss meant she had picked correctly—bestowing a gift rather than the abject charity of handing over something only suitable to be discarded. (page 159) [I think this makes a very great point of what equates to generosity vs. simply duty.]
❧
For Beatrice the opening of Mr. Tillingham’s front door was the opening of the temple. Stepping in behind Agatha Kent and Celeste, she could already smell the books, even above the waxy note of wood polish and the hint of recently baked cakes from the unseen kitchen. Leather-bound books, old books with yellowed pages, new books with the sharp scent of printer’s ink and the promise of crisp, uncut pages awaiting a paper knife. (page 167)
❧
Setting aside literature, she spent a pleasant moment choosing between purchasing a straw hat of Agatha Kent quality and buying a three-volume set of the works of Jane Austen, bound in dark blue morocco and hand-tooled gilt, which she coveted at the local bookshop. She was grinning in rueful self-awareness that the books would always win against personal adornment… (page 174) [Don’t you just love scenes that invoke your own feelings of delight when purchasing or delving into a new book…especially the classics!]
❧
Today she wrote that the March winds had died down, and with the days growing lighter and the nights shrinking back from their winter dominance, the snowdrops and early daffodils were defying the frost to bloom in the south-facing beds, she did not draw any conclusion or hopes from these facts, she merely let them blossom across her thin letter paper in the loops of her pen. Despite the bare elm tapping on the glass, she could almost imagine spring in the sharp blue sky and the small sparrows fluffing out their wings and sharpening their beaks on the branches. (page 456) [I feel like I’m at her writing desk, in the dead of winter, with a chill near the glass window but hopeful of the growing length of daylight.]
3.5 Stars rounded up.
Take a gander at these 7 highlights and see if this doesn’t pique your interest to delve into Edwardian English life just at the cusp of WWI. So stunningly weaved and though slow at times I believe it’s intended to lull you into a false-sense of peace, ease, and security—in the calm before the storm—that is the dawning of The Great War.
BTW none of these contain spoilers...just proof of the exquisite prose
Only in the early mornings did Agatha use these stairs, and never did she feel more at home in her own house than when she popped her head in the kitchen to ask Cook for a cup of tea from the big brown pot kept fresh all day for the staff. For a brief moment, in the black-and-white-tiled kitchen, with its high, sunny windows and gleaming new gas range, they did not have to be mistress and cook, ruling separate domains on either side of a green baize door, but could come together as two women, up before anyone else in the family, in need of the day’s first cup.(page 27)
❧
The stone terrace already looked older than the house, softened to a pleasant mossy gray under the relentless dripping of English rain, its stone balusters pressed by fat shrubs and draped in twisting vines of honeysuckle, wisteria, and the teacup-sized pale green flowers of a clematis. White roses climbed up the house from beds filled with brilliant blue agapanthus. Beatrice stooped to cup in her hands a waxy blue flower head as large as a hat and to wonder if plants ever sensed how far they were from home: this African lily carried on ships to England in the time of Henry VIII, rhododendrons dug from the rippled flanks of Chinese mountains, the passionflower twining about itself in air so much drier than the South American rain forest. (page 30/31)
❧
“I would settle for being a hermit,” she said. He noticed that her eyes lost some of their light. “After the past year, I crave only to be allowed my work, and my rest, away from the stupidities of society. I shall be like Charlotte Bronte’s Lucy Snowe [of Vilette], content to tend her little school for the children of the merchant classes.” (page 39) [Oddly enough I had just purchased this book the day before reading this. I’m excited to read Vilette because Jane Eyre is my favorite book!]
❧
Beatrice was sorry to lose the tea dress from her adequate but not extensive wardrobe, but understood that the loss meant she had picked correctly—bestowing a gift rather than the abject charity of handing over something only suitable to be discarded. (page 159) [I think this makes a very great point of what equates to generosity vs. simply duty.]
❧
For Beatrice the opening of Mr. Tillingham’s front door was the opening of the temple. Stepping in behind Agatha Kent and Celeste, she could already smell the books, even above the waxy note of wood polish and the hint of recently baked cakes from the unseen kitchen. Leather-bound books, old books with yellowed pages, new books with the sharp scent of printer’s ink and the promise of crisp, uncut pages awaiting a paper knife. (page 167)
❧
Setting aside literature, she spent a pleasant moment choosing between purchasing a straw hat of Agatha Kent quality and buying a three-volume set of the works of Jane Austen, bound in dark blue morocco and hand-tooled gilt, which she coveted at the local bookshop. She was grinning in rueful self-awareness that the books would always win against personal adornment… (page 174) [Don’t you just love scenes that invoke your own feelings of delight when purchasing or delving into a new book…especially the classics!]
❧
Today she wrote that the March winds had died down, and with the days growing lighter and the nights shrinking back from their winter dominance, the snowdrops and early daffodils were defying the frost to bloom in the south-facing beds, she did not draw any conclusion or hopes from these facts, she merely let them blossom across her thin letter paper in the loops of her pen. Despite the bare elm tapping on the glass, she could almost imagine spring in the sharp blue sky and the small sparrows fluffing out their wings and sharpening their beaks on the branches. (page 456) [I feel like I’m at her writing desk, in the dead of winter, with a chill near the glass window but hopeful of the growing length of daylight.]