📚 'Rather Dated' August: Jocelyn Playfair’s ‘A House in the Country’📚

[MotherofPearl]

Welcome to the Mumsnet 'Rather Dated' book club. This month we are reading and discussing Jocelyn Playfair’s ‘A House in the Country’. Please do add your thoughts when you are ready.

About the threads:

We are reading and discussing fiction from the 1930s to the 1990s that would have been described as 'contemporary' in its day. We are reading one book a month. Spoilers are permitted!

We started the chat thanks to a thread where we kicked off with a discussion of Penelope Lively, The Road to Lichfield.

Currently we have these separate threads:

November: Anita Brookner, A Start in Life.
December: Margaret Drabble: A Summer Bird-Cage.
January: Elizabeth Jane Howard, The Beautiful Visit.
March: Winifred Watson, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day.
April: R.C. Sheriff, The Fortnight in September.
May: Elizabeth Taylor, Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont.
June: Margaret Kennedy, The Feast.
July: Mollie Panter-Downes, One Fine Day.
August: Elizabeth Von Arnim, The Enchanted April.
September: Barbara Pym, An Academic Question.
October: Dorothy Whipple, High Wages.
November: Elizabeth Bowen, The Last September.
December: Monica Dickens, The Fancy.
January: E.M. Delafield, The Messalina of the Suburbs.
February: F.M. Mayor, The Rector’s Daughter.
March: Penelope Fitzgerald, The Bookshop.
April: Noel Streatfield, Saplings.
May: Lynne Reid Banks, The L-Shaped Room.
June: Barbara Comyns, Our Spoons Came from Woolworths.
July: Nancy Mitford, The Pursuit of Love

Link to the main thread:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/what_were_reading/5029141-the-mumsnet-rather-dated-book-group-all-welcome-to-join?page=4&reply=135696159

Does anyone mind if I kick off? I’m just afraid I’ll forget what I thought about the book, as I read it a while ago and stupidly didn’t make any notes!

I'd been meaning to read it for ages, and in fact I thought I had a copy, but ended up having to borrow it from the library (hence not having it to refer to now). Wartime fiction is a big weakness of mine and at first I thought this was going to be quite a standard kind of narrative, though with a slight mystery (who was Cressida actually married to? Why was she in charge of Brede Manor?). Then it turned into something of a polemic, and to be completely honest, I didn’t find it a complete success. It didn’t seem sure whether to be a novel or a manifesto.

Dare I admit that I also got a teeny bit irritated with the perfect Cressida, who indulgently expected all the impressionable young men to fall in love with her? It was interesting, though, to see the changing social norms in action - meals cooked by her, and eaten in the kitchen, much to the horror of her aunt, who couldn’t understand that the world was changing - something we've seen already in One Fine Day.

So, as a social document written while the war was still in progress, it was very interesting. As a novel, maybe not so much. Funny, too, that Jocelyn Playfair became so violently right-wing in later life!

Hello all! I was going to write something tomorrow, but just read Terpsichore's post so here goes...

I ended up reading the book twice. I don't often do that, but I felt there was a lot in it. Where to begin...I liked it, but there was too much sermonising, to quote the shallow Felicity Brent. I think that Cressida and Tori's discussions were fine as they took place around the kitchen table and the action went on around them, but then adding on Charles's ruminations as he lay waiting to be rescued in the lifeboat was a bit too much. These included some rather obscure arguments about the selflessness of man and how to create a brave new world. I'm not entirely convinced he couldn't have stayed on at Brede and still have been a brave new man?

I loved the aspects that described day to day living in wartime. Many neat rows of cabbages for one thing. I really loved Miss Ambleside's journey on the train. All those American troops with their tin mugs cramping her style in first class! There was good humour in it. The poster with 'Is your journey really necessary?' just as she is fit to burst, is very funny.

Also, the episode where the village experienced its first air raid and Old Northeast and his wife who insisted on sitting in the flimsy shelter. So sad. And the descriptions of the Home Guard hastily attending in their pyjamas seemed true to life.

I feel the book was laden down with Playfair's opinions on nearly everything from war to education and Christianity. Also on kindness, women's role as home-makers...I felt I knew Playfair fairly well by the end of it. I presume she modelled the character of Cressida Chance on herself? Yes, I had to notice how beautiful and kind she was and how she wore trousers. She looked lovely striding around in trousers! Yes of course, everyone fell in love with her!

Overall, a fascinating account of daily life during ww2 delivered with a very large serving of philosophical debate. I liked it. It will go back to the library tomorrow!

I’ve just finished it, and I agree, it was a bit of a curate’s egg. I liked it when Playfair let her characters get on with it. She could clearly write, both humorously eg Felicity Brent’s daffy friend Daff and seriously eg Charles’ feelings of dissociation in the lifeboat.
But as already said, the story keeps being interrupted by Playfair’s editorialising. It’s interesting to get a glimpse of the post-Beveridge report, pre-Labour landslide mood of idealism about building a better future. However, it stops the book working as a novel: it’s a textbook example of telling, not showing.
Cressida (and her Viking brother) were irritatingly perfect, as already mentioned - although by modern standards she, and Madge (her toddler merits a single appearance), seem rather neglectful parents. Thank God for faithful old Nanny. I guess Cressida is an idealised version of the author. I don’t suppose she - or any of us - was so endlessly kind and perceptive and good at setting the table perfectly.
An interesting read though.

Agree completely with the above, there was some really good stuff in there but the constant sermons were too much and Cressida was just to perfect wasnt she.

I liked some of the stuff within the sermons especially given that this was written before the war haf ended but wish these points could have been better weaved into the story.

Some of the conversations around the table were drawn well but I didn't really get to know many of the guests

I hadn't much of a clue who the guests were. They were most definitely in the background because Cressida and Tori talked all the time

😂😂

I've finally managed to get through this one. Sorry it's taken me so long.

I really struggled with this novel. As others have said, the endless sermonising was pretty tedious. It really broke up the narrative thread, and a lot of it insufferably self-righteous. I'm afraid I fairly loathed perfect Cressida, who no man failed to fall in love with.

I suppose it was quite an interesting snapshot of a particular facet of wartime life that I didn't know much about - people in large houses putting up a lot of lodgers who've been displaced. But other than that I'm afraid the story felt pointless in the end. Tori dies. Charles survives his ordeal only to leave both Brede and Cressida (for supposedly lofty aims that I didn't really understand and seemed quite irritating). Dolphin and Rilla don't look as if they're going to make a success of things. I suppose it makes me a lazy reader, but I like a bit of narrative satisfaction at the end of a book and with this I felt like I was reading some trite undergraduate philosophising instead!

I'm sure this is a damning indictment of me, but the only character I rather liked was Cressida's aunt, Miss Ambleside.

She was one of the few characters that didn't do any pop philosophy speeches

All she really wanted was to be wined and dined in Cressida's lovely house in the country! I liked how she persevered in doing what she wanted in spite of the difficulties imposed by the war . I think Cressida and Tori were critical of her for carrying on and called her selfish for doing it. (They would).

I thought those two might have made a success of their relationship following the wise words that came from the Golden One's lips. Dolphin and Rilla. It seemed to me that she fixed it perhaps?

Yes I wasn't quite sure what the fate of Dolphin and Rilla was at the end.

And yes, what I liked and could probably relate to was Miss Ambleside's devotion to physical comfort! I suppose I found her honesty about that a refreshing antidote to the sanctimonious piety of Cressida and Tori.

Miss Ambleside was very funny. She definitely provided some comic relief @MotherofPearl