A question about Mary Wesley

[Chamomileteaplease]

I am just finishing "Part of the Furniture". I think it was recommended here and I hadn't read Mary Wesley since The Chamomile Lawn a very long time ago so I thought I would give it a go.

Spoiler alert.

So, it looks like Juno is going to get together with Robert Copplestone.

However, Juno is 17 and this guy must be about 57+. I don't think it is mentioned in exact terms.

I thought it was bad enough even if it was written years ago but I have looked it up and it was published in 1997!!! I now feel even more nauseous!

I have enjoyed the novel and the language etc etc but can someone please tell me that if I try any of her other books that it won't be with the theme of teenagers getting together with much, much older men???

Thank you.

The treatment of child molesting in the camomile Lawn was a bit disturbing.. In the Television series the implication was that a well adjusted child wouldn’t be worried. I can’t remember how exactly it’s handled in the book. Also domestic violence.
I seem to remember a lot of incest in one of her other books. It’s not approved of but I don’t think it’s resolved or punished.

I haven’t answered the question. I don’t know.

To be honest I can't remember the story of the Chamomile Lawn Wharwould, but your contribution isn't looking optimistic. I really hope someone can come along and say she has some less worrying books 😮.

I thought the Chamomile Lawn dealt with issues well - bad stuff happens in that book, including a war, and there aren’t any sermons about any of it but it certainly isn’t condoned. It’s just all shown within complex contexts, and the characters are certainly trapped by the rules of their time.

Awful stuff happens in An Imaginative Experience too, but that book just felt unrelentingly depressing to me. No one has any nice fun. Whereas in Chamomile Lawn at least there’s a lot of pages of people having a good time as well as a bad time.

Age gap and other unconventional relationships are certainly a common theme in Mary Wesley's adult novels. Not That Sort of Girl and Second Fiddle are the ones that feature the incestuous situation that nobody in the narrative seems all that concerned about. The Vacillations of Poppy Carew and Harnessing Peacocks both include young woman/older man relationships and the latter also presents a very glamorised view of prostitution. Jumping the Queue has different but also troubling themes.

Patricia Angadi, similar age and writing around the same time, also presented themes intended to shock us a little, although I loved The Highly Flavoured Ladies.

I suppose there must be quite an age gap between Calypso and Hector in the Chamomile Lawn. She marries him for his money, he gets drunk and hits her and she almost leaves him then she falls in love with him and they live happily ever after.

There are certainly some relationships and events that are uncomfortable or unusual but these books aren't meant to be chick lit romcoms, they introduce and examine all kinds of situations. Thats what makes them interesting

Thanks all. I do think there is quite a gap though between "chicklit" and a 57 year old lusting after a 17 year old and thinking that that's ok.

It has put me off reading any more of her novels which is a shame as I know she has a huge catalogue.

Other answers to this thread have reinforced me feeling that perhaps she isn't for me after all!

I know what you mean but I read them all with the feeling that they were about the mores of the day rather than how we would see things now. I have a soft spot for Poppy Carew in particular although what happens to her ex boyfriend in that book is pretty homophobic (if funny).