The new update is horrible, I can't see Watched or "on" threads on my app. Seems ok on my browser.
.30. South Riding by Winifred Holtby
I have been so slow at reading - so distracted by life and social media. This was just what I wanted over Easter as I lost myself completely in the world of local politics and government in the 1930s. It's hard to believe a novel about this could be quite so gripping but it's an absolute masterpiece and deserves to be much more widely read. It's sat on my shelf for years, and I wish I'd read it earlier so I could have re-read it many times.
It's set in a lightly fictionalised area around Hull and I loved the sense of a place - the wide open skies, the sea and the port, and the villages - that is very special to me personally. And Holtby's progressive politics shine through on every page - the book predates the welfare state but the case for it is made implicitly on every page and the gender politics are way ahead of the book's time.
Sarah Burton comes to the girls' grammar school as the new Head with a desire to make a difference to girls' lives but gets caught up in staff recalcitrance, governor resistance and local government funding battles. Robert Carne is a remnant of the older way of doing things, with a strong sense of duty to family and community but resistant to change. Lydia Holly is brilliantly clever but has to leave school to look after her many siblings when her mother dies. Snaith is an amoral councillor with ambitions and an interest in seeing what motivates people, for good and ill. The cast of characters is long, and they are all drawn clearly and precisely. People fall in love, get sick, die, make sacrifices, make poor and good choices.
I would urge anyone who has even a vague interest in neglected classics to pick this up. It's got character, plot, landscape and a strong amount of procedural detail on standing committees and government budgeting, if that's what floats your boat. Possibly my read of the year so far.