📚The Mumsnet 'Rather Dated' Book Group - All welcome to join📚

[Antarcticant]

Welcome to the Mumsnet 'Rather Dated' Book Group, where we will be reading and discussing fiction from the 1930s to the 1990s that would have been described as 'contemporary' in its day.

The best introduction to the 'rather dated' concept would be to read the wonderful thread which inspired this group:

www.mumsnet.com/talk/what_were_reading/4596284-rather-dated?reply=119670989

To summarise, a number of posters expressed disappointment that literature of the 20th Century is often dismissed as 'rather dated' because society has moved on from many of the values and lifestyles described.

We decided to create a reading group where the literary merits of such fiction can be appreciated, with any 'rather dated' elements being a point of interest rather than a reason to dismiss a novel.

We will be reading one book a month. Our first book, for September, will be the book that inspired the original thread:

The Road to Lichfield by Penelope Lively

Please do join the thread whether you want to take part in the discussion or just place mark to follow it.

Fellow Rather Dated people, please add anything important I might have missed!

(With huge thanks to ImJustMadAboutSaffron for the original thread and idea )

Don was awful. And Anne was strangely passive, much more passive than she ought to have been, in my view - but am I seeing that from a 2022 point of view? Events carried her along, and she let them. The affair just….happened to her, she drifted into it without much volition. She lost her job and didn’t really protest, or seem all that upset, on the whole. She was bulldozed into trying to save the cottage. And yes, she and Don seemed more like housemates than husband and wife.

But was that what would have been expected at the time, from a woman of her background and class?

That's her life and her life choice - and the different roads she drives past on her way up and down to see her father also represent the choices that she could have taken in her life.

It's interesting that she doesn't deviate from that road, though, isn't it?
The breakdown and the trip (to Gloucester I think it was) with David could be seen as a metaphor for her summer affair. But she ultimately goes back to the routine of her life with Don.

Yes, a maddening choice for us perhaps, but probably realistic for her situation.

That was a turning point for the affair, when they went to Gloucester. They met up at the cathedral after she met Mrs. Barron and he seemed to her like a stranger. Also the irritation over him going into the fishing shop. It was only ever going to be a brief affair.

@Terpsichore to me that was one of the things about the book that did feel dated. It seemed to be saying a good marriage was one where the children were happy and the husband was successful in his work. There was a sense in which Anne's fulfilment didn't matter, even to her. I agree she came across as very passive.

I wasn't meaning the nature of what Anne learnt but the fact it was a lump of information @ChannelLightVessel. Obviously it was meant to be like that but most other parts were more gradually revealed. Hmm can't put it into words quite but the weighting shifted.

I thought it was an excellent scene in many ways with the distracting daughter.

I really enjoyed the depiction of Sandra and the save the historic building people. Very amusing.

I thought relationship with David was masterful. How he appeared so attractive to her, how she became like a schoolgirl in love, how he wasn't particularly deceitful or any other stock affair revelations but it just became apparent that he wasn't anything more than what she needed at the time.

It annoyed me a lot that edition I read mentioned about the affair on the back cover. I just thought it was unnecessary and detracted from my enjoyment, waiting for it to happen. But then I prefer to have barely anything on the cover. Blurb or review quotes.

I also think Anne was passive. Sort of as if it absolved her from the affair.

I don't mean that as a criticism btw. A criticism of Anne maybe.

I agree that Anne seemed passive. I wondered whether her potentially redemptive moment was getting a new (and seemingly more stable) job? I sort of read it that perhaps she would now have the chance to seek personal fulfilment through her work, if not through her marriage, with all its compromises and limitations.

I’ve read a few Penelope Lively books/short stories now and I think one thing that she’s good at is telling stories that are perhaps a short glimpse at part of a long life. Many modern novels are told in a rush, a sort of frenzied burst of activity and emotion, but in the Road to Lichfield it’s the opposite. Long drives, the slow turn of the seasons, and a deep, long burn of a passion that turns into an affair. Which is why Anne seems passive, I think. It’s like she sees it coming like the seasons changing and doesn’t care to stop it. One thing we’re also never really invited to do is judge anyone. It’s as if Lively is saying, life is long, people behave in all sorts of ways, if you scratch the surface you’ll see why.

I'm on holiday and have been browsing about in a bookshop today and bought myself Black Narcissus so I hope it's our next read! 😉😀

I have downloaded it on my Kindle but first need to finish the book I'm currently reading (Back Trouble by Clare Chambers).

I like the post by AtomicBlondeRose, which captures the essence of the book for me.

There was a lot of reflection about making important life decisions and living with the consequences
I really enjoyed this although there seemed to be a lot of visiting cathedrals! Maybe that was a more common past time. Actually, come to think of it, my parents did take us to see lots of cathedrals and do lots of brass rubbings in the 80s...

I agree with @IceandIndigo that the male characters were rather disappointing.

I've already read Black Narcissus and loved it!

I think I'll wait a little bit before reading Black Narcissus because if I read it too soon before our discussion it won't be fresh in my mind and I'll end up reading it twice!

I've enjoyed hearing everyone's perspectives on TRTL. Thanks all!

Yes, thanks all for an interesting inaugural discussion.

Just a reminder for anyone who hasn’t got a copy of Black Narcissus and plans to read it - it’s currently 99p on Kindle but that’s in the current monthly deals so possibly goes back to full price on Saturday….?

I bought it. Thanks Terpsichore.
Now the temptation not to read it straight* *away😁

I agree, Atomic, there is no authorial judgement on Anne, or indeed any other characters. It unfolded, like life really - people not really changing who they are, unsatisfactory endings and people making life changing decisions without really thinking about them . I don't know if Anne's passivity was more of its time for women - I kind of suspect it was. Anne even gets offered a job she hasn't applied for - and maybe there's an implication there that she will find her true metier.

I loved the evocative details of the 70s. People like Sandra and the couple with the farming implements seemed like people I remember my parents knowing in the 70s.

I also found the ending of Anne's father's life very poignant and the way Penelope Lively renders his confusion seemed very realistic. Strange though that nobody expected Anne to be there at the end - that tends to be the case these days.

The staff at the care home sounded so calm and caring, not stressed and overworked as seems to happen now.

Yes it was all so colloquial like the way Anne met the planner in town and he tipped her off about the house for sale and then she was head hunted for a job, no competition or CV writing

I really enjoyed rereading this, though some of the criticisms above resonated with me.

Some thoughts: I didn't find Anne passive. On the contrary, she was taking hold of some independence through the spells away from home. Look at her dealing with the car breaking down, for one, let alone sorting out her father's house and garden. I think she used it as an opportunity to reflect on her life so far, hence the affair, hence being almost glad to be let go from her job (ghastly man though).

I thought the brother was a good foil, letting us see her past through different eyes. I certainly was relieved he wasn't too ill!

I thought the revelation that her father had engaged her in debate about Coventry Cathedral to bring her spark back to life revelatory: clearly she was a bright young thing who'd somehow got sucked into marrying someone quite unsuited to her.

Lastly, the theme of time, so common to Lively's work, beautifully captured in this passage:

"I begin to see how
slippery the past is. It is not, as Farrer would have it, that chronology is
a difficult idea to grasp. The problem is the shadows it throws. This
happened, and then this, and then this. But if you keep your eyes only
on that, you miss another dimension and end up with something that is
not the truth at all, or only part of it."

Brilliant passage.

I didn't think Anne was passive either. I thought she acted on impulse when it came to her affair with David. She felt the attraction (the thrill of feeling his hand on her arm) and she went for it. She brought the affair to an end too whereas he would have gone on with it. In a way, the affair was an act of self-assertion, although one she would have preferred to keep quiet.

I really liked the fact that David was a bit of a letdown. But he wasn’t really deceitful about it.

I also thought it was great that her brother wasn’t really ill. So many other writers would have been tempted to do that. Especially after all the description of his procedure!

I thought that the revelation with Don at the end was brilliant. Quite a shocker; quite a contrast to the rest of the book.

I’m really enjoying reading posters’ comments. It’s making me think even more.

I’m really enjoying reading posters’ comments. It’s making me think even more.

Me too. The comments and discussion on here has given me new insights and perspectives. I've always wanted to join a book club in RL, but haven't really had the time, so this is a good way of doing it.

Hoping also to be introduced to things I wouldn't have thought of reading/have heard of.

Yes, me too, @tobee. I’d never read any Penelope Lively adult fiction before and I loved The Road to Lichfield, so happy to have found her.