11/04/2019
In her splendid debut, Anstruther portrays an aristocratic woman’s abandonment of her husband and three young children in the 1920s for life in a British Christian Science retreat, and the subsequent custody battle that followed. That this story is based on the author’s grandmother, Enid Campbell Anstruther, brings veracity to a complex tale. After nearly two years of no communication, Enid writes her husband from the retreat, intending to return to being a mother but wanting a divorce. He agrees with the proviso that he has full custody of their children. The ensuing, dragged-out court case places Enid at odds with her older sister, Joan, who not only holds the family fortune, but has made Enid’s son, Ian (the author’s father), her heir, having taken care of Enid’s two other children during her absence. The story unfolds primarily through Enid’s daughter, Finetta, bemoaning the weekly visits to her mother in a nursing home in 1964, and Enid, who has just learned she’s about to see the son she hasn’t laid eyes on in 25 years, and whom she essentially gave to her sister for £500. This robust story provides insight into aristocratic duties, sibling revenge, and the convoluted feelings that can arise between mothers and their children. This lush family saga will appeal to fans of Ann Patchett. (Feb.)
Finalist for the Desmond Elliott Prize Publisher’s Marketplace’s Buzz Books/Debut Fiction "Ms. Anstruther powerfully complicates these characters; all are unnervingly real in their mixture of confusion and self-justification...memorable."—The Wall Street Journal "Splendid...this robust story provides insight into aristocratic duties, sibling revenge, and the convoluted feelings that can arise between mothers and their children. This lush family saga will appeal to fans of Ann Patchett."—Publishers Weekly "Anuanced exploration of family jealousies, mental illness, and repercussions that reverberate throughout generations. Anstruther has given us complex characters who do not bow to formula or reader expectations. Instead, she offers a wholly believable glimpse into the harshness that can come with rank and privilege."—The New York Journal of Books “Exquisitely written debut...this heart-wrenching tale provides an inside look at the inner workings of a privileged, aristocratic family that values money over everything else. Readers who follow Enid's anguished journey will be left raw with emotion. This immersive story about family, inheritance, and motherhood is a good read-alike for Paula McLain's historical fiction.”—Booklist “[A] superb debut.” —Guardian “Superbly structured and told with such conviction and in such a direct, honest, and engaging voice, this first novel is full of splendid surprises taking us into the privileged world and inner life of a woman who is both so familiar and so wonderfully strange.” —Sheila Kohler, author of Becoming Jane Eyre “Haunting . . . Eleanor Anstruther never met [her grandmother], but she recreates her with empathy and compassion in this novel. . . Elegant and intelligent.” —The Times “Impressive…[Anstruther] has used her imagination to bring her family vividly back to life through a novel that is both beautifully written and transfixing.” –Country Life “[A] dark story of close relationships gone awry…elegantly told.” —Kirkus “An extraordinary literary debut novel…Gripping, insightful and written with a breathtaking elegance and eloquence that makes this first novel doubly impressive, Anstruther’s beautifully crafted story sets out to examine and understand how the intolerable weight of expectation and responsibility can damage and destroy lives... An exquisite and powerful portrait of a broken family.” –Lancashire Post —
Emma Gregory gives a subtle yet masterful performance of this decade-spanning story of intergenerational conflict and miscommunication. After her brother’s death in WWI, Enid Campbell succumbs to her aristocratic family’s pressure to produce heirs. Her unhappiness as a mother makes Enid the eye of the storm as relationships between parents, children, and siblings break down catastrophically. Gregory’s portrayal of Enid throughout her life strikes the perfect balance between infuriating arrogance and raw vulnerability. It feels almost inevitable to both hate and pity Enid. Those mixed emotions come through most clearly when the narrative voice belongs to Joan, Enid’s unconventional and unsympathetic sister, and to Enid’s brittle daughter, Finetta. The listener begins the story expecting heroes and villains—but finds only misunderstood victims of circumstance. N.M. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
Emma Gregory gives a subtle yet masterful performance of this decade-spanning story of intergenerational conflict and miscommunication. After her brother’s death in WWI, Enid Campbell succumbs to her aristocratic family’s pressure to produce heirs. Her unhappiness as a mother makes Enid the eye of the storm as relationships between parents, children, and siblings break down catastrophically. Gregory’s portrayal of Enid throughout her life strikes the perfect balance between infuriating arrogance and raw vulnerability. It feels almost inevitable to both hate and pity Enid. Those mixed emotions come through most clearly when the narrative voice belongs to Joan, Enid’s unconventional and unsympathetic sister, and to Enid’s brittle daughter, Finetta. The listener begins the story expecting heroes and villains—but finds only misunderstood victims of circumstance. N.M. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
2019-11-11
Enid Campbell never wanted to marry, but her aristocratic family needs an heir—and after her brother is killed in World War I, it falls to Enid to produce one. This pressure will lead to cascades of unhappiness down the generations.
Poisoned, splintered relationships characterize this saga of upper-class life in 1920s Britain, radiating outward from the fallible Enid, whose discomfort as a daughter, sister, and mother dominates events. Favored by her father, who also died early, Enid makes a questionable marriage to Douglas, "a nobody, a nothing," and then has a son, Fagus, who's "born with something wrong with him" and becomes an invalid after falling down the stairs, turning the child into "the living breathing embodiment of everything she'd done wrong." Loveless though her marriage is, Enid stays in it to provide a fully able heir, although she would rather be a nun or devote herself to her Christian Science beliefs. Two more children are born, but the pressure and postnatal depression are too much, and Enid flees, leaving her sister, Joan, and Joan's "companion," Pat, to step in. Anstruther's debut, a fictionalized version of her own family's history, is a dark story of close relationships gone awry. Enid's stony, withering mother, Sybil, was always closer to Joan; Enid believes Joan hates her; Enid's daughter, Finetta, believes her mother hates her and neglects her own daughter in turn while feeling crushing love for her son. For all the sophistication of tone and expression to be found in the book, the familial relationships emerge naked, brutal—and gender biased. Anstruther depicts a privileged world that offers little in the way of human warmth and a group of characters almost uniformly miserable despite their material comfort. It makes for a chilly read, its gloom only deepened by a running 1964 episode in which an elderly Enid is confronted by the measure of her failure.
A stifling, dismaying tale of upper-class dysfunction elegantly told.
