7. Mariana by Monica Dickens
I thoroughly enjoyed this. It is warm and witty, and people, places, clothes, and food are all delightfully well observed throughout. The book begins with Mary anxiously awaiting news of her husband, whose ship has been sunk by a mine in the early months of the war, we then go back through her childhood and follow her growing up and the past romances and events that led her here. It is a love story, a somewhat rushed, though still extremely satisfying one, but it is primarily the story of how a child becomes an adult, how from birth “you were given a trust of individuality that you were bound to preserve” and of the ways in which your involvement with others informs that individuality until “you became a person”. The descriptions of Mary’s childhood form the strongest parts of the book, her sojourn in Paris as a young woman I found a bit long, but her exploits at drama school were very entertaining and there are lots of funny lines all through it. When she gets an unfavourable school report her Uncle exclaims “These school marms give me the pip. Why can’t they just say: at the moment, she’s a blister, but there’s hope?”. A first night out at a fancy restaurant is described in great detail: ”They took a long time to choose the rest of the meal...It was difficult to know quite where to fit the sardines on toast. “Perhaps at the end” said the waiter, raised his eyebrows, bowed,and withdrew.” She is self absorbed in the manner of young people, sometimes uncharitable and mean towards other girls, and there is a fair bit of snobbery on all sides, but it all tends to make the character and surroundings feel the more real. There is a passing anti Semitic comment near the end by a minor character, and also the (sadistic and disliked) drama school teacher is alluded to in homophobic language, but this was published in 1940, and it is interesting, and sobering, to see the prejudices that were being treated then in a lighthearted, throwaway fashion, knowing what was just on the horizon in Europe. These are small moments in the book, but I feel it is important to acknowledge such things. Overall I really liked it and would recommend it to those who like their escapism to be full of detail, sharp around the edges, but with nothing to scare the horses.