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A review by kchessrice
Mariana by Monica Dickens
5.0
"It seemed that one had little control over one's own destiny. All one could do was to get on with the one job that nobody else could do, the job of being oneself."
Mariana is the story of Mary, a young English school-girl and we follow her coming of age through balmy summer days spent with cousins at their grandparents' country home, to navigating school and friendships with other girls before falling in love with unsuitable young men (and finding Mr Right!).
This was another 5* selection for the #QuietClassics2022 reading list! I absolutely adored the writing - in some ways of its time (written in the late 1930s) so full of steam trains, Lyons tea shops and making calls in telephone boxes, yet in others feeling absolutely contemporary. Dickens writes so well to encapsulate the feelings of being an adolescent girl emerging into adulthood that it felt as though Mary was a friend, recounting her experiences to me, and me nodding along saying, "Yes, me too!" all the way. The second chapter describes the journey taken by Mary and her mother from London to the grandparents' house in the Somerset countryside, and it evoked for me long forgotten memories of being in the back of my parents' car, travelling to visit my aunt and uncle for a weekend, where me and my sister would play secret games with our cousins that only we knew the rules to (mostly involving 'locking' my sister in a cupboard, perils of being the youngest) and the days being seemingly always sunny and never ending.
I liked how Dickens captured various small moments but notices how they can have big impacts on a person - the first time that Mary has to work out how to get home on the Tube by herself at the age of 10 (at night!); Mary's excruciating humiliation of discovering on stage that she's a terrible actor - but also that delightful feeling of falling in love and wondering if the person you like, likes you back ("He had noticed her eyes! ... He had been interested enough in them to think that they sometimes changed colour. He had remembered them.")
The thing I liked best was the sense of humour that runs all through Mariana. I laughed at this passage:
"Mary didn't mind at all about not being clever. Some of the girls at Manton House were, as Mrs Linney said of Aunt Winifred, 'not quite the thing,' and Cicely Barnard couldn't even write her own name and was not allowed to lock the door of the lavatory."
I just adored this book and can't wait to read it again. Highly recommend to fans of Mollie Panter-Downes.
Mariana is the story of Mary, a young English school-girl and we follow her coming of age through balmy summer days spent with cousins at their grandparents' country home, to navigating school and friendships with other girls before falling in love with unsuitable young men (and finding Mr Right!).
This was another 5* selection for the #QuietClassics2022 reading list! I absolutely adored the writing - in some ways of its time (written in the late 1930s) so full of steam trains, Lyons tea shops and making calls in telephone boxes, yet in others feeling absolutely contemporary. Dickens writes so well to encapsulate the feelings of being an adolescent girl emerging into adulthood that it felt as though Mary was a friend, recounting her experiences to me, and me nodding along saying, "Yes, me too!" all the way. The second chapter describes the journey taken by Mary and her mother from London to the grandparents' house in the Somerset countryside, and it evoked for me long forgotten memories of being in the back of my parents' car, travelling to visit my aunt and uncle for a weekend, where me and my sister would play secret games with our cousins that only we knew the rules to (mostly involving 'locking' my sister in a cupboard, perils of being the youngest) and the days being seemingly always sunny and never ending.
I liked how Dickens captured various small moments but notices how they can have big impacts on a person - the first time that Mary has to work out how to get home on the Tube by herself at the age of 10 (at night!); Mary's excruciating humiliation of discovering on stage that she's a terrible actor - but also that delightful feeling of falling in love and wondering if the person you like, likes you back ("He had noticed her eyes! ... He had been interested enough in them to think that they sometimes changed colour. He had remembered them.")
The thing I liked best was the sense of humour that runs all through Mariana. I laughed at this passage:
"Mary didn't mind at all about not being clever. Some of the girls at Manton House were, as Mrs Linney said of Aunt Winifred, 'not quite the thing,' and Cicely Barnard couldn't even write her own name and was not allowed to lock the door of the lavatory."
I just adored this book and can't wait to read it again. Highly recommend to fans of Mollie Panter-Downes.