Many thanks to Wendy for hosting our group on what turned out to be a lovely fall evening. The weather was perfect for the deck and we all enjoyed ourselves. Our fun was enhanced by Susan Victoria's gift of shortbread cookies, yum yum and thank you!
Barbara deserves credit for the book selection. One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes was such a good read! And since it was nice and short (160 pages or so) and so beautifully written, it was easy to read in just one day if you so chose.
War and its impact on the bucolic English countryside was thread running throughout the story, in the past but with its devastation on a way of life very much in the present. Gone were the servants who made country house life possible, the gardeners, the cooks, the ladies maids that oiled the mechanisms of daily routines and made it possible to be part of the gentry. The plants themselves were at war with each other, vying to take over the garden, taking away what had been lovely leisure time now devoted to weeding and mowing.
Laura Marshall was now acutely aware of her family's house and the demands it made to be kept up. Her husband Stephen looks out over the tangled garden and mourns the loss of his lifestyle, feeling that somehow he has been deficient in proving while not knowing how he could have succeeded. Laura, bohemian, disorganized, prone to long expensive phone calls with her disapproving mother, feels the stress of filling all the roles lost to the war, but cannot stop herself from spending the beautiful summer day walking to the top of their local hill and surveying the lovely view of their village.
The story centers on Laura and her struggle to accept the changes in herself and in her way of life. She sees them and mourns them but also is happy and able to enjoy the life she has. She recognizes that she is aging and no longer an object of consideration for young men. But she also sees that these young men and others have new opportunity and offer a new approach to life. And the day is fine and she enjoys it.
The writing in this little novel is just lovely, I so enjoyed reading it and discussing it with everyone! On we go to a vastly different book, if also set largely in England. We are reading Dracula by Bram Stoker, just in time for Halloween. Our meeting will be a bit different too - we are going to the VMFA! We have been invited for a private tour (just us) of the Sunken Cities exhibit (it is great), then we will have a reception under a tent on the Pauley Center patio. I am waiting for confirmation of the date but have targeted Oct. 14 around 5.
If you can't bring yourself to read Dracula, I listened to it on "Phoebe Reads a Mystery" which is an easily available podcast You will have to go into the older episodes to find it.
See you all then!
