Chatterton Square

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After her parent's death she moves in next door to the Blacketts, headed up by Herbert Blackett, one of the best-drawn and most annoying men I have ever encountered in literature, a self-absorbed, snobbish, judgmental narcissist, and never have I wanted to much to jump into a book and verbally slap someone. Anyway, Herbert is aghast and at the same time titillated he is living next to a woman with loose morals because she is separated/divorced from her husband and it must have been her fault since her husband left her, right? They fortunately were happy but not all their friends were so lucky and I remember my father's disquiet when a couple of old friends divorced. He domineers and ruins the lives of those in his family simply by expecting his needs to be more important than theirs, and respectability to be more important than freedom.

While many Britons – Mr Blackett included – consider the avoidance of war as a victory, others – including the Frasers, Piers and Miss Spanner – see Chamberlain’s actions as treacherous. While the Derdons are very different individuals to the Blacketts, there is a similarity in their marriage – a kind of stasis and lack of communication that has prevented them from reaching out to one another to address their situation. There's a lot that's implied and unsaid, especially about current events in the novel, and I often found myself rereading passages to figure out what was going on. She was born the daughter of a shipbroker and attended Gateshead Secondary School (a higher grade school later renamed Gateshead Grammar School) and Penrhos College, Colwyn Bay, Wales.I was just thinking about her the other day — she was always recommending interesting midcentury books that I’d never heard of before.

Although the book is as fragrantly fresh and bittersweet with revelations and confirmations as any of E. And then there was a World War I veteran, Piers Lindsay, who had a facial disfigurement from a war wound who was a second cousin of Bertha.

The feminist publishing house Virago reprinted several of her books in the 1980s, and the Clifton and Hotwells Improvement Society has marked her Clifton home with a plaque. With the predictable exception of Mr B, all the main characters in the book are highly critical of Chamberlain's actions at this point. Consequently, Bertha, Rhoda and Mary are free to come and go as they please, to enjoy picnics with Cousin Piers, and to cement their connections with the Frasers, whose spirit and vitality prove a breath of fresh air. I was sailing along and quite pleased with this book, and then it got bogged down starting in the middle of the 378-page tome (it seemed like a tome to me) so that by the end it was not an enjoyable read for me. It’s rare to find this degree of depth and complexity in the creation of four key characters in the same book – Rosamund, Mrs Blackett, Miss Spanner and Mr Blackett (perhaps the most flawed of them all).