'Summer Before the War': Plenty of ambience, but slow

The Summer
Before the War

nolead begins By Helen Simonson

Random House.

473 pp. $28

nolead ends nolead begins

Reviewed by

Katherine Bailey

nolead ends Fans of Helen Simonson's 2010 debut novel, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, and readers who enjoy fiction steeped in Downton Abbey ambience will delight in The Summer Before the War. Set in the small coastal town of Rye in Sussex during the Great War, the book offers vivid description of town and country as well as a narrative laced throughout with quirky wit.

The first sentences draw us into the world of Simonson's comedy of manners:

The town of Rye rose from the flat marshes like an island, its tumbled pyramid of red-tiled roofs glowing in the slanting evening light. The high Sussex bluffs were a massive, unbroken line of shadow from east to west, the fields breathed out the heat of the day, and the sea was a sheet of hammered pewter.

Forty-five-year-old Agatha Kent, one of Rye's most prominent people, is "a handsome woman . . . inclined to stoutness." Her husband, John, is a senior official in the Foreign Office. Agatha has raised two nephews: Hugh, who has become the primary assistant surgeon to Sir Alex Ramsey, and Daniel, a published poet intent on launching a literary magazine.

On Agatha's recommendation, the school board has hired 23-year-old Beatrice Nash to teach Latin. It is Beatrice who becomes the novel's central character. A distant relative to Agatha, Beatrice is alone in the world, having recently lost her beloved father. When she arrives in Rye, she is unquestionably more assertive and more beautiful than a spinster Latin teacher should be.

Hugh, who plans to marry Sir Alex's beguiling daughter, Lucy, falls in love with Beatrice. She, however, because she aspires to write books in addition to teaching Latin, has vowed not to marry.

The narrative becomes more compelling with Germany's invasion of Belgium. Rye welcomes Belgian refugees. One of the novel's accomplishments is the depiction of war as a tragedy that affects everyone, not just soldiers in the trenches. Another is its portrayal of Beatrice as she embarks with gusto on her dream career: "As she descended the hill, skirted the busy railway yard, and approached the neat school with its red-tiled gables and bright window boxes, a hope swelled in her that the innocence of schoolchildren might sweep the war from her eyes on this bright September day, and from the earth tomorrow."

The book has many strong points but cannot quite conquer a first half in which virtually nothing happens.

Katherine Bailey also reviews for the Minneapolis Star Tribune.