A review by teddles317
The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson

1.0

Not sure why this book rubbed me the wrong way. Perhaps it is my projections and assumptions that the author is romanticizing pre-war England. Perhaps it is my personal feelings that class and women's issues have evolved so much and our understanding and current discussions so much beyond how they are presented in this book. Thomas Hardy and Charlotte Bronte explored a similar world, albeit it their novels took place earlier in time but it felt more honest coming for them as contemporaries of the time. Downton Abbey is a current serial fiction I enjoy but the medium of TV makes it easier to show the hypocrisies and class struggles of the time as a commentary. We can laugh at and with the ladies of Downton Abbey. This book feels like a false remembering or a longing for a time that never existed.