The Saturday Morning Post (No. 205)

THE SATURDAY MORNING BOOK REPORT

I needed an antidote to the dreary grimness of the last book, This Tender Land, so I returned to O Douglas, who I knew would serve up a nice quiet story. One without two killings in the first 40% of the story. I believe this one is one of a set of three set in the same general area, the Border Lands of Scotland, with a few minor cross over characters.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

Love Comes Home by Molly Clavering  C+

To date I've enjoyed all the Molly Clavering novels I've read which include: Susan Settles Down, Touch Not the Nettle, Near Neighbors, Mrs Lorimer’s Quiet Summer, Dear Hugo, and Because of Sam. Like the first two books on the list above this was last of her first four books that she published under the pen name of B. Mollett. It was written in 1937. I think Molly was trying to be hip and modern in this one, unlike her more domestic focused stories later on.

Most of the story takes place in Scotland. The main characters are young people. The title character, Love, is the younger sister of Jane, the point of view character. Love has just returned from a year "finishing" in Paris. With her arrival home their mother summons Jane home as well. Jane had been living with her best friend, Kitty, and her husband, George, a naval officer stationed at Chatham naval base. Just before Jane returns to Scotland, George's best friend, John, corners her and asks her to marry him. These were the days when you had to get the brides father's consent, unless you were black sheep. So they decide to keep their semi-engagement secret for a time. However, once home, Love has other ideas as to whom Jane will marry, and after some mishaps and misunderstanding the occur when John is invited to visit Jane at home - he has a new posting in the navy that took him to Scotland - Love sets out to break up their their attachment by seducing John herself. And so the story plays out. You get a generous helping of the life of the Scottish gentry, roam the scenic Scottish countryside, plus some political observations, as the celebrations around the new king who was just coronated, the civil war in Spain, along with a passing reference to Nazi Germany.

The thing about this story is that it has the hackneyed device of both Jane and John refusing to make any effort to clear up the minor misunderstandings that keep them apart. If they had, the story could've called it a day after chapter four. But, since it is a romance, I'll give Molly a pass on that. What I found interesting, and, as I said above was her trying to hip, or at least modern, by making John and Jane's best friend Kitty morally free and easy. It was clear nearly from the beginning that after Jane left, her love, John, had an affair with Kitty, his best friend's wife. And in it was made clear that Kitty was as much to blame as John. But still, your best friend's wife? She has George, Kitty's husband, seemingly tolerating her affairs, which are not rare. And when Jane and John make up, she intends to tolerate his as well, since she knows that he won't be faithful to her. In short not very good people tolerated by better people, however unwisely in my view.

Miss Clavering as always delivered an entertaining read, but the rather unsavory nature of its characters substantially reduced my enjoyment of the story. I think the characters need not have been so unsavory and it still would've been a good story. But I have to think she wrote this way to attract a young, modern 1937 audience. Oh Well.