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Not That Sort of Girl
Rose, who gave up her lover, Mylo, for a life with Ned--complete with an inherited house in the country and a shroud of security--looks back fifty years later, after Ned's death, on the years she spent after her marriage devoted to both men
279 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
70 people are currently reading
770 people want to read
About the author
Mary Wesley
62 books181 followersMary Wesley, CBE was an English novelist. She reportedly worked in MI5 during World War II. During her career, she became one of Britain's most successful novelists, selling three million copies of her books, including 10 best-sellers in the last 20 years of her life.
She wrote three children's books, Speaking Terms and The Sixth Seal (both 1969) and Haphazard House (1983), before publishing adult fiction. Since her first adult novel was published only in 1983, when she was 71, she may be regarded as a late bloomer. The publication of Jumping the Queue in 1983 was the beginning of an intensely creative period of Wesley's life. From 1982 to 1991, she wrote and delivered seven novels. While she aged from 70 to 79 she still showed the focus and drive of a young person.
Her best known book, The Camomile Lawn, set on the Roseland Peninsula in Cornwall, was turned into a television series, and is an account of the intertwining lives of three families in rural England during World War II. After The Camomile Lawn (1984) came Harnessing Peacocks (1985 and as TV film in 1992), The Vacillations of Poppy Carew (1986 and filmed in 1995), Not That Sort of Girl (1987), Second Fiddle (1988), A Sensible Life (1990), A Dubious Legacy (1993), An Imaginative Experience (1994) and Part of the Furniture (1997). A book about the West Country with photographer Kim Sayer, Part of the Scenery, was published in 2001. Asked why she had stopped writing fiction at the age of 84, she replied: "If you haven't got anything to say, don't say it.
From Mary Wesley
She wrote three children's books, Speaking Terms and The Sixth Seal (both 1969) and Haphazard House (1983), before publishing adult fiction. Since her first adult novel was published only in 1983, when she was 71, she may be regarded as a late bloomer. The publication of Jumping the Queue in 1983 was the beginning of an intensely creative period of Wesley's life. From 1982 to 1991, she wrote and delivered seven novels. While she aged from 70 to 79 she still showed the focus and drive of a young person.
Her best known book, The Camomile Lawn, set on the Roseland Peninsula in Cornwall, was turned into a television series, and is an account of the intertwining lives of three families in rural England during World War II. After The Camomile Lawn (1984) came Harnessing Peacocks (1985 and as TV film in 1992), The Vacillations of Poppy Carew (1986 and filmed in 1995), Not That Sort of Girl (1987), Second Fiddle (1988), A Sensible Life (1990), A Dubious Legacy (1993), An Imaginative Experience (1994) and Part of the Furniture (1997). A book about the West Country with photographer Kim Sayer, Part of the Scenery, was published in 2001. Asked why she had stopped writing fiction at the age of 84, she replied: "If you haven't got anything to say, don't say it.
From Mary Wesley
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 96 reviews
August 8, 2021
Another enjoyable entry in her long list of novels about British people wanting to have sex.
August 13, 2023
More people behaving badly during the war. Mary Wesley is a writer like no other I have come across.
April 24, 2014
I will always love this book. Partly because it reminds me of my mother. Partly because it reminds me of being a teenager (I think I was that young when I first read it? not far off anyway. But mostly because I love Mary Wesley's writing. Her characters are fascinating (if not always likeable) and their relationships are wonderfully complicated and messy and real.
I particularly like Wesley's female characters. Love them or hate them, Wesley writes strong, rounded, three dimensional women - and I love her novels for this, because good female characters are hard to find. Emily Thornby is a great example of this, as is Rose the protagonist. Both of them are flawed characters with complex motivations. Emily certainly is less than likeable but you can't help admiring her and finding her fascinating.
I also enjoy the historical context. Wesley's writing about WW2 is always fascinating to me, because I know she lived through it so it resonates in a way that historical fiction often doesn't when the author is relying on second hand sources. This book is a wonderfully rich slice of history as well as an entertaining love story.
Wesley's take on love is interesting too. This is definitely a romantic story but it's far from being a typical romance. Instalove and UST, realism and pain, denial, betrayal and separation. This story is about life on an epic scale, but love prevails.
I particularly like Wesley's female characters. Love them or hate them, Wesley writes strong, rounded, three dimensional women - and I love her novels for this, because good female characters are hard to find. Emily Thornby is a great example of this, as is Rose the protagonist. Both of them are flawed characters with complex motivations. Emily certainly is less than likeable but you can't help admiring her and finding her fascinating.
I also enjoy the historical context. Wesley's writing about WW2 is always fascinating to me, because I know she lived through it so it resonates in a way that historical fiction often doesn't when the author is relying on second hand sources. This book is a wonderfully rich slice of history as well as an entertaining love story.
Wesley's take on love is interesting too. This is definitely a romantic story but it's far from being a typical romance. Instalove and UST, realism and pain, denial, betrayal and separation. This story is about life on an epic scale, but love prevails.
June 4, 2020
It's perverse of me perhaps to make my first review of a Mary Wesley novel - of her 10 novels for adults, 3 for young readers, and other works, almost all engrossing, even fascinating - this one. The one I probably still like the least.
But bear with me, there are reasons for this, which I'll try to explain.
At first reading, this was the only Wesley novel I gave up on, part-through. At p79, to be exact ( I even made a note, surprised also at myself - I'd enjoyed all four novels I'd read previously, either a lot, with a few qualifications, or immensely.) This one seemed a dreary read, to put it mildly ... and the fact that the storyline and its "staging" seemed ideally suited to a filmscript, were no consolation.
Stifling, smothering pages of a woman, the central character, subjected to protractedtorment. A torment that transmits itself also to readers (correction: to this reader. I should never seek to speak for other readers!)
Rose seems for so long to be a lifelong sacrificial lamb, caught up in a net of constricting parental expectations, and the demands first of them, then of men, some seeming kind, but all demanding she please them, and must fit in with them. To switch my metaphor, a bird with clipped wings, trapped in a cage of exploitative convention, esp. by a mother who appears determined - a very Wesleyan theme here! - to take vengeance for her own disappointments in life on her own daughter, replicating and imposing on that victim, her own flesh and blood, her own feelings and life of slavery. But also selfishly seeking her own release through a joyless, hopeless financial security acquired via a daughter she cruelly dominates.
Mylo, the love interest of sorts, the illicit rebellion of sorts, develops as a moody, capricious free spirit pleasing only himself, expecting to turn up ad lib and find Rose immediately ready to drop everything and fit in with his desires, to his own satisfaction.
Wesley's fiction abounds with cunning manipulators, often deluding themselves that they are doing nothing wrong - a strong satirical, puckish and socially critical element common to her fiction, I believe one of its great features - but for many pages, this novel seemed to present a world of dessicated, life-squashing snobs as well as rank hypocrites, exploiters and creeps. With no prospect of escape or release - not even the tantalisation of Rose with a shocking elopement (the first sense of "Not That Sort of Girl"- that she could not bring herself to abandon her decent but deadly boring husband) looked a good choice, Mylo too being a self-centred, exploitative me-me creep.
There are many such cases in Wesley's fiction of girls and young women who are trapped in one way or another by convention, expectation, parents, men, by women friends too in some cases: some rebel (often by sexual means of one sort or another); some not able, or not willing.
Those who are awake enough, value themselves enough (and refuse to let their own self-esteem be crushed) and find courage, spirit enough to take the bold steps - risking financial indigence and social shunning (social outlaw status), risking wasting their own lives in a different way - of fighting a smothered, exploited existence, or simply slipping away from it all and trying their luck, however they can, under their own steam, on their own terms, and at their own hazard ... these young women gain much credit with Wesley, and the plots show them more likely to find a measure of fortune than those who comply, conform and submit. They - the fully-fledged heroines of these novels, no longer merely central characters - are the most likely to achieve some measure of happiness finally.
Wesley can be very cruel to her central characters. She may appear to move them around like pieces in a game, and wantonly make them suffer horrible slings and arrows (see "Jumping The Queue"!).
But then, a novel IS a game, not real life! And I imagine that Wesley would have thought that the cruelties in her novels are not half as savage as the cruelties of real life - or the cruelties that real people (especially selfish, exploitative, vengeful people) can subject others to.
Not for here, but I would suggest that Wesley uses certain "disidentification techniques", to separate her characters from her readers, to make the latter feel affronted, outraged, insulted by what the central characters are put through, and NOT to accept a similar fate, but to rage against the dying of a light that others switch off for them ....
Which brings me back to why I broke off from this novel at p79. It was just too much. I wasn't so much enraged at Rose, I was dispirited by her lack of fight, dismayed by the constant crushing of that fair Rose, that seemed to go on and on without respite (Mylo being - as suggested above - a false solution, a flatterer to deceive, to dismay even more wholly).
And now the good news, and the irony in the title of the novel. Because at last, at long last, Rose emerges as Not That Sort of Girl in a different sense. Not the sort who turns down illicit affairs she emotionally needs because that would not be proper (Stage I); not the sort who abandons her husband for a chancer lover, because that would be unfair (and would be a high risk, given Mylo) - Stage II; but finally - Stage III - "Not The Sort of Girl" to be everybody's trodden-on doormat for ever and a day. Rose finally comes into her own and is - her own sort of girl - and hallelujah for that!
It took so long, and I gave up on Rose, and her book (reader, I even threw it into the corner, and started "Second Fiddle" - immediately a more vital, crackling book, a 4.5 stars! - before deciding to give Not That Sort of Girl another chance. And I am glad I did. But still, for Mary Wesley's - for so very long - least satisfying novel for me - only 3 stars. My vengeance, if you like, for all that torment! :D
Reader, persevere if you can. The ending may not be sweetly happy. But it redeems a great deal!
But bear with me, there are reasons for this, which I'll try to explain.
At first reading, this was the only Wesley novel I gave up on, part-through. At p79, to be exact ( I even made a note, surprised also at myself - I'd enjoyed all four novels I'd read previously, either a lot, with a few qualifications, or immensely.) This one seemed a dreary read, to put it mildly ... and the fact that the storyline and its "staging" seemed ideally suited to a filmscript, were no consolation.
Stifling, smothering pages of a woman, the central character, subjected to protractedtorment. A torment that transmits itself also to readers (correction: to this reader. I should never seek to speak for other readers!)
Rose seems for so long to be a lifelong sacrificial lamb, caught up in a net of constricting parental expectations, and the demands first of them, then of men, some seeming kind, but all demanding she please them, and must fit in with them. To switch my metaphor, a bird with clipped wings, trapped in a cage of exploitative convention, esp. by a mother who appears determined - a very Wesleyan theme here! - to take vengeance for her own disappointments in life on her own daughter, replicating and imposing on that victim, her own flesh and blood, her own feelings and life of slavery. But also selfishly seeking her own release through a joyless, hopeless financial security acquired via a daughter she cruelly dominates.
Mylo, the love interest of sorts, the illicit rebellion of sorts, develops as a moody, capricious free spirit pleasing only himself, expecting to turn up ad lib and find Rose immediately ready to drop everything and fit in with his desires, to his own satisfaction.
Wesley's fiction abounds with cunning manipulators, often deluding themselves that they are doing nothing wrong - a strong satirical, puckish and socially critical element common to her fiction, I believe one of its great features - but for many pages, this novel seemed to present a world of dessicated, life-squashing snobs as well as rank hypocrites, exploiters and creeps. With no prospect of escape or release - not even the tantalisation of Rose with a shocking elopement (the first sense of "Not That Sort of Girl"- that she could not bring herself to abandon her decent but deadly boring husband) looked a good choice, Mylo too being a self-centred, exploitative me-me creep.
There are many such cases in Wesley's fiction of girls and young women who are trapped in one way or another by convention, expectation, parents, men, by women friends too in some cases: some rebel (often by sexual means of one sort or another); some not able, or not willing.
Those who are awake enough, value themselves enough (and refuse to let their own self-esteem be crushed) and find courage, spirit enough to take the bold steps - risking financial indigence and social shunning (social outlaw status), risking wasting their own lives in a different way - of fighting a smothered, exploited existence, or simply slipping away from it all and trying their luck, however they can, under their own steam, on their own terms, and at their own hazard ... these young women gain much credit with Wesley, and the plots show them more likely to find a measure of fortune than those who comply, conform and submit. They - the fully-fledged heroines of these novels, no longer merely central characters - are the most likely to achieve some measure of happiness finally.
Wesley can be very cruel to her central characters. She may appear to move them around like pieces in a game, and wantonly make them suffer horrible slings and arrows (see "Jumping The Queue"!).
But then, a novel IS a game, not real life! And I imagine that Wesley would have thought that the cruelties in her novels are not half as savage as the cruelties of real life - or the cruelties that real people (especially selfish, exploitative, vengeful people) can subject others to.
Not for here, but I would suggest that Wesley uses certain "disidentification techniques", to separate her characters from her readers, to make the latter feel affronted, outraged, insulted by what the central characters are put through, and NOT to accept a similar fate, but to rage against the dying of a light that others switch off for them ....
Which brings me back to why I broke off from this novel at p79. It was just too much. I wasn't so much enraged at Rose, I was dispirited by her lack of fight, dismayed by the constant crushing of that fair Rose, that seemed to go on and on without respite (Mylo being - as suggested above - a false solution, a flatterer to deceive, to dismay even more wholly).
And now the good news, and the irony in the title of the novel. Because at last, at long last, Rose emerges as Not That Sort of Girl in a different sense. Not the sort who turns down illicit affairs she emotionally needs because that would not be proper (Stage I); not the sort who abandons her husband for a chancer lover, because that would be unfair (and would be a high risk, given Mylo) - Stage II; but finally - Stage III - "Not The Sort of Girl" to be everybody's trodden-on doormat for ever and a day. Rose finally comes into her own and is - her own sort of girl - and hallelujah for that!
It took so long, and I gave up on Rose, and her book (reader, I even threw it into the corner, and started "Second Fiddle" - immediately a more vital, crackling book, a 4.5 stars! - before deciding to give Not That Sort of Girl another chance. And I am glad I did. But still, for Mary Wesley's - for so very long - least satisfying novel for me - only 3 stars. My vengeance, if you like, for all that torment! :D
Reader, persevere if you can. The ending may not be sweetly happy. But it redeems a great deal!
October 11, 2013
I received this book as a gift from a friend with good taste and a sly wit (well, actually from a couple, my one wonderful and improbable experiment in matchmaking) for my birthday.
I don't know if you have to be in your 60's to enjoy this. I hope not, for it is witty and passionate and wonderful and thoughtful; a dance back through time and then forward for an apparently conventional woman of 67 years.
I loved it. How little we know of the undercurrents of each others lives, how little of what might really be sustaining someone through the decades of playing our careful roles.
And now on to another Mary Wesley.
If you like Iris Murdoch you'll probably enjoy Mary Wesley.
I don't know if you have to be in your 60's to enjoy this. I hope not, for it is witty and passionate and wonderful and thoughtful; a dance back through time and then forward for an apparently conventional woman of 67 years.
I loved it. How little we know of the undercurrents of each others lives, how little of what might really be sustaining someone through the decades of playing our careful roles.
And now on to another Mary Wesley.
If you like Iris Murdoch you'll probably enjoy Mary Wesley.
August 17, 2016
Trite. Not for me. Dialogue is awful, peculiar. An example ...
Are you certain?’
‘Yes, yes, yes. Come and eat.’
‘Then I can pretend I arrived as I dreamed I would and we’ll carry on where we left off?’
‘Is that what you thought?’
‘Yes, stupid of me. What was all that laughter I overheard in the kitchen? You and Emily …’ (Suspicion creeping back.)
Are you certain?’
‘Yes, yes, yes. Come and eat.’
‘Then I can pretend I arrived as I dreamed I would and we’ll carry on where we left off?’
‘Is that what you thought?’
‘Yes, stupid of me. What was all that laughter I overheard in the kitchen? You and Emily …’ (Suspicion creeping back.)
October 4, 2017
I read this book years ago and couldn't remember the title, yet couldn't forget the story. When I finally found the title written on an old lists of books I'd read, I was overjoyed. It's safe to say I really loved this book and all its subtleties.
October 25, 2019
I have grown quite fond of Mary Wesley's novels. This, being my second novel I've read by her. I love the fact that she uses Anna Massey to narrate them. 'Not That Sort Of girl" was immensely enjoyable from beginning to ending.
October 12, 2010
Interesting and well-written book about relationships, but not a single likeable character.
July 26, 2017
Mostly boring. I couldn't relate to any of the characters.
February 17, 2022
Listened to this book based on a mention by Cathy Rentzenbrink in Dear Reader and was very disappointed with both the characters and story line - not helped by the plummy narration of Anna Massey.
April 20, 2020
I'd liked Mary Wesley when I first read her some years ago but I found this one fairly tedious. To make matters worse I didn't really like any of the characters either. The book was set through WW2 and described the fairly questionable behaviour of almost everyone of the main characters. It may have been more risque in its day or perhaps it's just me getting old and boring!
November 11, 2023
I read a couple of Mary Wesley’s novels in the early 1980s, just as she was being published for the first time at the age of 70. I found this used at the Midlothian Book Exchange, and I’m happy to find that this witty, charming love story has stood the test of time!
February 28, 2025
2,25 ⭐️ rose is reflecting on her life. not only did she have a husband, she was also having an affair throughout her whole relationship.
to be honest, i couldn’t really be bothered by the characters. i didn’t really care. i didn’t like them either. the writing style was captivating though, but because the plot moved very slowly i just had a hard time with this.
rose is in her sixties so maybe it’s just the age gap, maybe i’m just too young to read this and enjoy it? i don’t know.
i did love the “british”ness about this!
to be honest, i couldn’t really be bothered by the characters. i didn’t really care. i didn’t like them either. the writing style was captivating though, but because the plot moved very slowly i just had a hard time with this.
rose is in her sixties so maybe it’s just the age gap, maybe i’m just too young to read this and enjoy it? i don’t know.
i did love the “british”ness about this!
December 24, 2021
Well it started off really slowly but I stuck with as was advised it would improve and it did the author seems to pull no punches where detail is call for and the descriptions of the relationships are very revealing I recommend the book.
September 16, 2017
Not that likeable for a writing. Quite dragged and looses its grip as the story unfolds.
August 29, 2021
DNF ed at about 50%. I just didn't care.
July 28, 2018
There are all sorts of awkward ways to start a book, and this one is certainly in the top 5% of books that began badly but which I finished anyway. Some books start awkwardly because there's a necessity to lay down a sort of armature upon which the flesh of the story will be built (Iris Murdoch is often awkward in this way), and a number of modern novels, clearly desperate to grasp the reader's multimedia-educated attention, manufacture a sense of in medias res that doesn't really work...you know the sort of thing; the opening scene shows the protagonist dismembering the neighbor with a paper-knife, and then the rest of the book laboriously strives to connect this scene with a story that has just as ponderous an armature as ever Iris Murdoch invented, but there's a hope that your morbid curiosity has been piqued to such an extent that you'll stay with it despite whatever siren song might be beckoning to you from Twitter in 280-character snippets.
This book really scales a new height of awkwardness, with the world's creakiest retrospective, and I kept reading because I was curious how bad it would get before it ever hit what I was sure would be its egregiously awful stride. But my patience--however grudgingly given--was rewarded, and yours will be too, if you manage to tolerate the part of the book that reads like Barbara Pym got drunk and borrowed Georgette Heyer's style, but not in a good way. If you get past that, you will instead be inside a surprisingly well observed story about what I might call the civilized emotional violence of the English upper-middle-class during World War II. This is the story of a rather ordinary young woman--or at least, that's how she's perceived by the people around her--who marries the heir to a notable estate. Ned, her husband, has a rather Pygmalionesque idea that because she is unsophisticated, he can mold her into an appropriate country squire's wife.
But what Ned doesn't know is that directly before Rose married him, she met the great love of her life, whom circumstances forbade her to pursue. "Not That Sort of Girl" is about the ways in which Rose navigates her life with Ned and her affair with Mylo Cooper, but it's also about how the war liberates her to become the person her undistinguished upbringing never allowed anyone to see. It's about the curious ways that people betray and conspire with one another, and--perhaps not surprisingly, given that Mary Wesley began publishing at the age of 70--it's a splendid example of the fact that older people are still themselves, red in tooth and claw, they're just...older.
Recommended, though with the caveat that you must be willing to chew through the first 20% and ignore the taste. It's the opposite of an amuse-bouche, but once you reach the actual meal, you'll be glad you stayed.
This book really scales a new height of awkwardness, with the world's creakiest retrospective, and I kept reading because I was curious how bad it would get before it ever hit what I was sure would be its egregiously awful stride. But my patience--however grudgingly given--was rewarded, and yours will be too, if you manage to tolerate the part of the book that reads like Barbara Pym got drunk and borrowed Georgette Heyer's style, but not in a good way. If you get past that, you will instead be inside a surprisingly well observed story about what I might call the civilized emotional violence of the English upper-middle-class during World War II. This is the story of a rather ordinary young woman--or at least, that's how she's perceived by the people around her--who marries the heir to a notable estate. Ned, her husband, has a rather Pygmalionesque idea that because she is unsophisticated, he can mold her into an appropriate country squire's wife.
But what Ned doesn't know is that directly before Rose married him, she met the great love of her life, whom circumstances forbade her to pursue. "Not That Sort of Girl" is about the ways in which Rose navigates her life with Ned and her affair with Mylo Cooper, but it's also about how the war liberates her to become the person her undistinguished upbringing never allowed anyone to see. It's about the curious ways that people betray and conspire with one another, and--perhaps not surprisingly, given that Mary Wesley began publishing at the age of 70--it's a splendid example of the fact that older people are still themselves, red in tooth and claw, they're just...older.
Recommended, though with the caveat that you must be willing to chew through the first 20% and ignore the taste. It's the opposite of an amuse-bouche, but once you reach the actual meal, you'll be glad you stayed.
January 9, 2023
Another Mary Wesley, and another book about complex, mostly unlikeable, characters wanting to escape their English oppression let alone the threat of Nazi oppression. The main character Rose becomes trapped in a marriage that seemed to creep up on her and before she knows it she's promising never to leave dull, dependable, rich, Ned. All very unfortunate when, just before this, she'd met the impetuous, spontaneous and, apparently, irresitable Mylo. But Mylo was poor, so Rose marries Ned and then spends the rest of her marriage waiting for the almost always unnannounced liaisons with Mylo to fulfil her in all the ways that Ned couldn't. As this unfolds you can't help feeling angry with Rose (just be honest and leave Ned), sorry for Ned (blissfully unaware of Mylo but then he was also playing away) and raging with Mylo who just seems to be the sort of self-satisfied irresponsible romantic that so many women (no doubt Wesley among them) go weak at the knees for. For years Mylo's treatment of Rose is so shabby that it stretches credulity that she would take so much shit and still come over all dewy eyed at his unexpected appearance. More believable was Rose's transformation from shy nineteen year old bride to wartime lady of the manor while Ned was away at war - even if he was mostly behind a desk. Decades later, after Ned dies, Rose finally gets together with Mylo and I couldn't help thinking they'd just be helping eachother with their incontinence pads.
For all my lack of belief, Wesley writes well, with acidic turns of phrase and a spartan but page turning style. However, I might think twice before reading another, as her books seem to be based on the formula of old woman looking back at their eventful life and there's only so many times I can read about sex during wartime and care less.
For all my lack of belief, Wesley writes well, with acidic turns of phrase and a spartan but page turning style. However, I might think twice before reading another, as her books seem to be based on the formula of old woman looking back at their eventful life and there's only so many times I can read about sex during wartime and care less.
February 23, 2024
Rounded up to 3.5* as I enjoyed the arch British passive-aggressiveness and commentary on the idle upper class.
I know the book is set in different times but it's disappointing to read a main female character who has no personality outside of the men in her life and is so passive. There were women, especially those like this character with wealth and freedom, who did achieve things and engage with the world and pursue other activities in the early 20th century so it's no excuse.
I'm not sure Mylo, having had the varied experiences he had, would have still been interested 50 years later in someone who never left her village her whole life. Them ending up together at the end just seemed especially unrealistic considering they didn't have much of a relationship to begin with. I'm not sure how someone who had suffered so much trauma and loss could find common ground with someone who led a privileged existence whose life was barely touched by anything bad happening (the couple of times something sad happened to her she barely seemed to care).
For an entire book focused on Rose, as readers we didn't find out much about her or watch her develop as a person over a period of 50 years. I personally didn't even much care about her and wanted more focus on the other, more interesting characters of the book.
I know the book is set in different times but it's disappointing to read a main female character who has no personality outside of the men in her life and is so passive. There were women, especially those like this character with wealth and freedom, who did achieve things and engage with the world and pursue other activities in the early 20th century so it's no excuse.
I'm not sure Mylo, having had the varied experiences he had, would have still been interested 50 years later in someone who never left her village her whole life. Them ending up together at the end just seemed especially unrealistic considering they didn't have much of a relationship to begin with. I'm not sure how someone who had suffered so much trauma and loss could find common ground with someone who led a privileged existence whose life was barely touched by anything bad happening (the couple of times something sad happened to her she barely seemed to care).
For an entire book focused on Rose, as readers we didn't find out much about her or watch her develop as a person over a period of 50 years. I personally didn't even much care about her and wanted more focus on the other, more interesting characters of the book.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 13, 2025
Brilliant ending typical wonderful Mary Wesley il be bereft when Iv caught up and read all of her works , so many authors compared to Jane Austen getting to grips with human natures the various forms it takes , family drama petty squabbles lovers and marriages but Wesley wins hands down . Loved it . One thing I have noticed how much free and easy everyone was not being tied down with babies and animals just throwing everyone into the car / bus and heading off taking sandwich’s and thermos everyone is so overly cautious now everything planned babies / toddlers /kids restricted playing at home indoors dogs on leads and not being allowed to roam as is there nature , everyone would be so much happier I think if they headed off on the spur of the moment , people moan about h money being tight etc but nobody had anything during wartime we seem to have forgotten that , Wev simply become too comfortable to lazy since covid and lock down . Right I’m off to throw the dogs into the car with a thermos of hot chocolate and all go wandering 🤣
April 27, 2025
I wasn't expecting to love this story when I heard the plummy accent of the narrator and realised that much of it was to be set on a country estate. I didn't think I'd relate to the characters. However, I ended up loving it! it reminded me of a more modern Pride and Prejudice, with the involvement of family to find the best match for their heirs, whilst perhaps genuine romantic love lay elsewhere The central characters were multi-faceted and interesting, as they somewhat muddled through life against the backdrop of war. Concerns on the domestic scene juxtaposed well with the experience of military service of the men, which marked them whilst making the comforts and nurturing of home all the more important. The story really carried me along and I was very interested in how things would develop over the years of the characters lives.
January 17, 2019
Re-reading after some thirty years or so and it was as wonderful as I remembered. Only this time, I am around the age that Rose is at the start of the novel and sometimes, like her, find myself reminiscing about my life when I was a younger woman. Wesley captures that heady, urgent phase of a love affair and how it ultimately transforms into something more steady. She also explores making compromises and keeping secrets within relationships. Many, make that most, of the characters are infuriating but I kept turning the pages and wanted to find out how it all panned out, because I couldn’t remember. I know I read all the Wesley novels available at the time and I may seek some of them out to re-read.
January 18, 2021
Whilst published in 1987 this book is an upper middle class take on love/marriage/expectation/primogeniture/womens social place in the mid twentieth century. All a rather pantry and parlour social comedy.
Except it is not all comedic, it centres on a lifelong extramarital affair in the context of throwing a brick at convention and the tradition "marrying well" and trying to make the best of the emotional desert of an unhappy marriage.
I found it alternately delicious and irritating but did enjoy revisiting Mary Wesley.
Except it is not all comedic, it centres on a lifelong extramarital affair in the context of throwing a brick at convention and the tradition "marrying well" and trying to make the best of the emotional desert of an unhappy marriage.
I found it alternately delicious and irritating but did enjoy revisiting Mary Wesley.
August 8, 2025
The book started well and kept you wanting to progress and find out what happened to the characters, but it stalled a bit after the middle when it just seemed a bit repetitive, as if Mary had run out of steam.
It has the usual themes of black humour, death, pets drowning or being run over... and characters behaving badly that are in all of Mary's books.
I like her writing but I always find her novels a bit depressing and sad at times, you never exactly get the book you want, but enjoyable at the same time.
It has the usual themes of black humour, death, pets drowning or being run over... and characters behaving badly that are in all of Mary's books.
I like her writing but I always find her novels a bit depressing and sad at times, you never exactly get the book you want, but enjoyable at the same time.
July 20, 2022
A good story but dated of course. It was interesting to read about a different time and place, most of the story is set in rural England during World War II. This is a bit of a Daisy Buchanan story, about a girl who marries for money and stability while all the time being in love with another, more exciting, but poorer man. Some strange characters are thrown in. I couldn't relate to the characters but I enjoyed the story, the ending was satisfying.
May 4, 2017
Ho hum.... Having read the book many years ago on its first release, I had forgotten how unlikable and selfish most of the characters were. The reading was good - Anna Massey always delivers although in this reading her voice might not have been the best used. A minor criticism. Mary Wesley can write but this book seems rather trite.
September 29, 2020
What an absolute find. I was compelled to read this gem after a couple of recommendations (one being from Cathy Rentzenbrink in her fabulous Dear Reader. The structure (remembrance of things past-y) and detail (the complex life of Rose Peel) are beautifully mid century, but the detail is modern in tone and wry in style. A cracker.
September 28, 2023
Absolutely loved this. The first fiction book in a while that I’ve sunk into and savoured. I know Mary Wesley from the tv adaption of The Chamomile Lawn but hadn’t read anything. This is WWII, love, animals, and dots around in time. Perfect. Will look out for more!
October 4, 2024
Entertaining enough. Somewhat annoying parts to read with the constant squabbles about the same topic. It was interesting to read a book that took place during the time of WWII, and it has peaked my interest in reading more books from this time and perhaps more books from Mary Wesley.
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