I haven't strictly finished this yet - I have about 40 pages to go. I have been drawing it out as much as possible today as I love this book and I don't want it to end. One passage got to me today and I almost had to "do a Joey" and put it in the fridge for a while! It's the only one of my Persephone Books that I hadn't read yet - now I wonder why I waited so long. Although, as I am off on holiday tomorrow maybe I should have waited to take it with me
It's a simple story of Mr and Mrs Stevens and their children Mary, Dick and Ernie. They live in Dulwich - South London and every year they go to Bognor Regis for their holiday and stay at Mrs Huggett's guest house. It was published in 1931 and shortly afterwards the author went to Hollywood where he co-wrote the scripts for Goodbye Mr Chips, Mrs Miniver and The Dam Busters. He writes in such a charming way of days gone by - it made me long to go back in time and live in this simpler time where people appreciated things so much more. I know I am a soppy old so and so - but I challenge someone with a much harder heart not to be moved when the family bump into one of Mr Stevens' biggest clients on the beach and are invited to his huge house for tea. Mr Montgomery, the client, "talks down" to Mr Stevens and Dick examines this rude man and then his beloved father...
"He saw how carefully his father had brushed his thin brown hair - the crease in his flannel trousers her he had pressed them last night - his cheap grey socks, an the old canvas shoes he had carefully pipecleaned in the garden that morning. His father had done everything in his power to look nice for the afternoon and suddenly his anger turned to a pride that was fiercer and stronger than anything he had ever felt before. It blazed up and filled him with a sudden thankfulness. ...... When he looked across at his father's sunburnt face he thought of the sea and the sands; a bounding cricket ball and shouts of laughter - walking sticks and fishing rods and fluttering kites; absorbing games and hobbies - the books he read aloud to them on winter evenings. ..... He would not exchange his father for a thousand fat Mongomeries."
It brought me to tears. Mr Stevens reminds me a bit of my lovely Dad - a real hardworking, family man.
Nothing huge happens to the Stevens family .... they do say less is more! They splurge and rent a bathing hut, they buy Mrs Haykin - who is minding their budgie a china toast rack, Mary has her first mini romance and Dick decides he has had enough of his stationery shop apprenticeship and wants to be an architect. But Sherriff's descriptions and language just enchant the reader.
Anyhow, I thoroughly recommend the book - of course - it's a Persephone!!! It will certainly be one that I will read again!
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