The Dreaming Suburb

The Avenue #1

by R.F. Delderfield

The lives of four families intersect in the first novel of master storyteller R. F. Delderfield’s Avenue saga, set in an English suburb between 1919 when one war has just ended and 1940 when another has just begun

In the spring of 1919, his wife’s death brings Sergeant Jim Carver home from the front. He returns to be a single parent to his seven children in a place he has never lived: Number Twenty, Manor Park Avenue. The Carvers’ neighbor Eunice Fraser, at Number Twenty-Two, has also known tragedy. Her soldier husband was killed, leaving her and her eight-year-old son Esme to fend for themselves. At Number Four, Edith Clegg takes in lodgers and looks after her sister, Becky, whose mind has been shattered by a past trauma. No one knows much about the Friths, at Number Seventeen, who moved to the Avenue before the war.

The Dreaming Suburb, the first novel in the Avenue saga that also includes The Avenue Goes to War, takes readers into the lives of these families as their hopes, dreams, and struggles are played out against a radically changing world.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Historical, British Literature, 20th Century, World War I, War

Paperback

First published January 1, 1958

About the author

Ronald Frederick Delderfield was a popular English novelist and dramatist, many of whose works have been adapted for television and are still widely read.

Several of Delderfield's historical novels and series involve young men who return from war and lead lives in England that allow the author to portray the sweep of English history and delve deeply into social history from the Edwardian era to the early 1960s.

From Wikipedia

Reviews

[Dorcas · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Stars

Mixed feelings about this. I love Delderfield's storytelling and the way he keeps you turning the pages. Each chapter could be a tv miniseries episode, switching between each of the Avenue's characters in turn as they pick themselves up from WW1 and brace themselves for the next war. I like that style of writing so I sort of enjoyed this.

My pet peeves:

The author had a fixation for names beginning with "E".  Edith, Eunice, Eugene, Esther, Elaine, Esme, Edgar. I kid you not. And there were only a dozen or so characters total, making it all rather ludicrous.

Pet Peeve #2

The morals, or lack of. This is so Delderfield. I'm not saying there's anything explicit written here, no, it's not that kind of book. But it's the overall crude tone that bothers me. It gives the impression that the entire country was populated by dozens of male and female Charlie Sheens and Howard Sterns (One character even keeping a list of all the women he slept with for at least one week or more -he didn't bother to count the one night stands- and it tallied over 57! By the way, he had a wife somewhere, too). Other characters were just as ammoral, having no loyalty to anyone or anything and doing whatever, whenever. Now, these types of characters in the hands of the likes of Warwick Deeping would have at least come out of it chastened with an STD, but that doesn't seem to happen in a Delderfield.

So, bottom line:

I don't plan on re-reading this any time soon, and I have serious doubts about reading the sequel "The Avenue Goes To War". I don't know, perhaps Delderfield and I aren't such a great match after all and need to part ways. Still, I will always adore "Long Summer Day".

CONTENT:

A fair amount of 'fade to black' sex, sexual scheming/ manipulation, mild profanity, mild violence.

[Joy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A long-time favorite. The pair of books comprising "The Avenue" is the story of a British community, focusing on four of its families. THE DREAMING SUBURB runs from the end of WWI until Britain began to fight WWII. Delderfield had a wonderful ability to create humanity and endow them with engaging lives: Jim Carver and his seven children with their very different but freewheeling personalities. The crushed Frith family, living in terror of Mrs. Frith until their dramatic escapes. Edith Clegg, mothering her mentally damaged sister and their lodgers. Esme Fraser and his charming, helpless mother, who had been widowed by WWI. The interactions between the people of these families are a pleasure to reread over and over.

[Infosifter · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is both a joy and a sorrow to discover an author after he or she has died. On the one hand, their entire life's work opens up for your enjoyment, but on the other you can rarely look forward to new work being published. This book and its sequel are the last of Delderfield's major historical works that I hadn't read yet, so I started it with a sense of melancholy.

This book isn't so much a novel as a loosely connected series of vignettes exploring human nature, as well as the attitudes and ideas unique to English suburbs between the two world wars. I would almost call this a narrative anthropology, and would recommend it to anyone who likes examining people to see what makes them tick.

[Alayne Emmett · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this for the first time when I was 11. My mum recommended it to me and I loved it. Since then I've read the two books many times so, it was a joy to return to the characters in the Avenue once again.

[Claude · Rating 3 out of 5]

I give it 2 1/2 stars, rounded up to 3 simply because I finished it but the end felt like a chore.
I'm not considering reading the sequel, although I bought it.

I was so expecting to really like this book simply because RF Delderfield's novels have already brought me so much pleasure. But this one was just a disappointment. I guess that there were too many characters, too many unlikeable characters, and I had trouble remembering who was who. and the fact that they lived in the same street didn't help.

[Susan's Reviews · Rating 5 out of 5]

All the goings on in this suburb in England. It was totally fascinating. Again, I read this in my teens, but the portrayal of life in those days was riveting.

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. I have read most of Delderfield's novels. He is a wonderful storyteller. Though this novel doesn't rank among his finest works I still enjoyed it and am now starting the sequel, the last Delderfield novel left on my tbr.

[Cookie M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I truly enjoy visiting R. F. Delderfield's England, and I pray it really existed. His people are the ones I would like to know if I could travel back in time to the 19th, or as in the case of "The Dreaming Suburb," the early 20th Century.
This story is about several families who lived in an emerging lower middle class suburb of London between the end of the first world war and the start of the second.
If you don't like a lot of "feels" in your historic fiction, Delderfield can be a bit mawkish. There is always the earnest young boy, forever in love with the girl who embodies the unattainable feminine ideal. But most of the rest of the characters ring true.
This was my second time through this book. I a!m about to start the sequel, "The Avenue at War," and I wanted to refresh my memory .

[Susan Liston · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this for the most part. It's an old-fashioned sort of novel, which I like, no "modern day" narrator sticking their big schnoz into the story, for instance. Each chapter is about a different person(s) who lives on the Avenue, so if you don't like one of them you could skip their chapter without really hurting anything. It's sentimental but avoids being sappy. I got rather attached to some of the characters. World War II has begun as the novel ends, so it's looming over the sequel, which I'm almost afraid to read now because I'm worrying about their fates.....

8/21 re-read in preparation for the sequel, don't know what took me so long....

[Des · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you Goodreads. I was prompted to reread “The Dreaming Suburb”, a book that I read almost 50 years ago following a wonderful discussion with a fellow Goodreads contributor.
This book and the series “The Avenue” is hard to track down and I suspect out of vogue with contemporary readers.
Please don’t be put off by its seemingly dated presentation.
“The Dreaming Suburb” is a superb work. R.F. Delderfield Is an outstanding and acclaimed author. I really loved welcoming his work back to my reading life.
It is a highly enjoyable post World War One social history novel based in the emerging suburbs of England.
It’s wonderful fiction with lots of twists and a good feel to the plot.
The characters are immediately identifiable and work well throughout.
The work is less about any protagonist, event or story and all about the people, their world, their time and their essence living in Early 20th Century English suburbia.
Their lives becomes a series of challenges as each strives to live a daily life confronted with personal dramas, dilemmas and circumstances.
R.F. Delderfield is a master in creating wonderful prose and elevating the seemingly ordinary to captivating reading.
The work is refreshingly modern.
The story line is not entirely predictable, and it will keep you engaged until the end.
The book moves along quickly and worth the enjoyment and satisfaction of reading every word.
The reward for me is that there is a second part that I know is equal to the first.
How exciting for me!
… and for you too.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

An easy read saga of lives of people living in The Avenue. It is set between the wars and is typical Delderfield style.

[Nancy Ellis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Delderfield was one of the greatest storytellers ever, and I could never understand why he was not more popular. This is the first of two books in "The Avenue" set and deals with the years from 1919 to early World War II. In the introduction, he stated that there were many books written about country folk and city folk, but the people of the suburbs were largely ignored. The Avenue is a South London suburb where normal, everyday people try to make it through life as well as possible. As always, he gives us wonderful characters and stories and makes us feel as if we know them all personally. All of their experiences can be related to and we identify with their feelings. Some life stories have happy endings, some not so happy, but most are taken right along into the second book, right into the Second World War and its effects on the Avenue. This is a wonderful book, and Delderfield is by far one of the best authors!

[Andie · Rating 3 out of 5]

For some reason I'm getting notices of R.F. Delderfield books on me ebooks offers. I read most of these when they came out in the 1970's and they hold up remarkably well forty years later. This book is part of a two-book story about a suburb of London that begins right after World War I and ends with the conclusion of the Second World War. This volume takes place from 1919 to 1940. There is no real story arch to this book. Rather it's character studies of the people who inhabit the street, and as such is interesting, both as a study of old-fashioned English "types" and as an historical look at life in England in a now-vanished age. A cozy and entertaining read

[Bre Teschendorf · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is the story of England, more specifically a suburb of London from the end of the first world war until the start of the first as told from the view point of several fictitious families living on a fictitious avenue. However the surrounding events are all historical.
The book is a tad soap-operaish, but that makes it all the more exciting to read!
It is also a great way to become more aware of British culture.

[Elaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this, but it was too long. 3 1/2

[Alex Sarll]

I don't recall what first put The Dreaming Suburb on my radar, but whatever it was, I'm fairly sure it can't have used any of the reference points which struck me while reading this. That title, for starters, which like the quiet but powerful sensations of everyday life, the chorus of lawnmowers and the scent of the flowers, feels like something St Etienne should have borrowed – indeed, I had to Google to check it hadn't been some fanclub-only track I'd heard once and then forgotten, because it really could be, couldn't it? Just as they half-inched London Belongs To Me from the novel which is probably the closest thing I've read to this. But of course that's a story of the city, and as Delderfield's introductory note says, "The story of the country-dwellers, and the city sophisticates, has been told often enough; it is time somebody spoke of the suburbs, for therein, I have sometimes felt, lies the history of our race." Which nowadays sounds worryingly Legitimate Concerns, doesn't it? Reminds one of Chesterton's people of England, and how once they did speak up, we really wished they hadn't. Fear not: this is a book which has absolutely no sympathy with the fash, and indeed which opens with Jim Carver, probably the closest thing to its moral centre, converted to the cause of international socialism after bearing witness to one of the last and most pointless deaths of the Great War. No, what this reminded me of more was Arthur Machen – most of all the quiet epiphanies in A Fragment Of Life, but also his general sense that we don't fully appreciate what an enormous thing it is to have these huge expanses of streets, nobody knowing all of them, where behind each door there might be anyone, the conventional surface of their life hiding who knows what mysteries. You could almost call Delderfield a link from that to the later backstreet romanticism animating the early work of Scott Walker, or My Life Story a generation further still – the unguessed-at epics lurking in every neighbourhood. Sometimes the dreams are conventionally dreamy, only enacted in miniature – "there had always been a Mr. Carlyle to cosset her, pay her bills, and encourage her belief that life, for all but the collarless manual workers, was a gentle, downstream drift in an Arthurian barge"; the recurring image of the silent wood, rendered magical by snow or moonlight. But it's not always so exalted. The point is that the tycoon and the revolutionary, the adventurer and the femme fatale, can all be found on this unregarded street, and even if none of them will shake the world, that's very much a quantitative rather than a qualitative difference from the people who do. All of this executed with barely a hint of bathos, and also with a commendable reluctance to let the story be about anything so improbable as justice; the narrator's sympathies are clearly with the idealists, but it's mostly the venal and the sneaks, or at best the unthinking thrill-seekers, who are likely to get what they're after.

I know I'm fairly erratic when it comes to plot summaries in reviews, but this time out there really isn't much of one, beyond that provided by history, 1919-40 (and goodness me but it was a shock to realise that a saga covering a whole era takes place across the same length of time I've now lived in London). It's the story of one avenue in one south London suburb, and the people who live there, with a particular emphasis on four families whose paths turn and weave and recombine, occasionally all brought together at some centrepiece event – like Anthony Powell or Simon Raven for the folk who didn't go to the posh schools. The backdrop of events, elections and strikes and wars, looms larger at some times than others, and for some characters than others; elsewhere it's more about love, jobs, family tensions, the stories that can happen at any time even if they're always fitted into a shape determined by a particular age. And it is noticeable that this 1950s novel takes elements which even today are being used to propel whole novels, like the cluelessness of two newlyweds about what the wedding night entails ruining the whole marriage - but uses them as one short stretch of one theme in a grand symphony, instead of thinking that alone is enough for a book. Certainly it creaks in places, as when within the space of one chapter, two members of the Carver family find new positions after happening to catch runaways. Yes, the runaways are very different, but all the same it feels more like a shortage of invention than a clever parallel. Then too, I never altogether acclimatised to Esme as a boy's name, and in the overture, was surprised by what sounded like a deeply sapphic summary of some forthcoming events, with Esme loved by Judith and later kissing Elaine (although some of Judith's subsequent plot could very easily be read as queer-coded, and the whole project is a little less bashful about sex than my mental picture of a mainstream fifties novel would suggest). The Avenue itself...well, it was a long lockdown walk which bumped this up my reading list, wandering the streets that feel a little more like deep suburbia than my own, setting the title 'The Dreaming Suburb' resonating in my head. As it turns out, it's not there exactly, but certainly not far away – Shirley, on the Kent/Surrey border – and the action frequently comes even closer. One character gets a job in Anerley, an area I'd never really registered, let alone giggled at, until I moved next door to it; Norwood is here too, and a girl from Thornton Heath. Since moving to London those 21 (!) years ago, I've always enjoyed reading things where they're set, and now the options for that are so much more limited, it's a particular pleasure when one falls into your lap. Similarly, I've not been reading many long books since the Event, or at least not long physical books, and if 470 pages is hardly long-long, it still felt like a departure. But then part of that reluctance is not having the commute, or on these short, dark days even a full lunch hour, and so not the time – but with its sweep of years, this is very much a book that suits being read piecemeal around other stuff. The other half of the problem being the way long books can sometimes feed into that 2020s sense of stasis – padding round the same house and the same park every day, reading the same book every day, as it ever was and ever shall be. Here, though, the years that pass meant I could feel some countervailing sense of momentum – even if hardly a reassuring one, given the story begins with pandemic and ends with what it fairly names a second helping of Armageddon.

The contemporary resonances can sometimes hit hard, too. The opening flu is an obvious one, or the references to "neurotic gangsters" in power and all too easily mistaken for clowns come the thirties. But also the poignant flashbacks to young men singing songs about how happy they'll be after a war whose end they won't live to see. And the little things, too, the bits that don't survive in the cultural memory in the same way, like how although the trenches were hell, the veterans find the snapping and snarling as they chase scarce jobs afterwards to be in some ways worse. Later on, this is not the first book I've read post-Event in which the Phoney War sounded uncannily like lockdown, and here we even get 1939's very familiar festive season: "Christmas came and went, almost unnoticed in a general atmosphere of acute boredom and petty irritation.[...]There were no carol parties of children, to sing one verse of Good King Wenceslas, before ringing the bell and demanding money. There was nothing, nothing at all, beyond a sense of bewilderment and disappointment.[...]The decade ended in a kind of universal yawn." Because here at least it's an end not a beginning, and the forties can start on a note of battered but defiant hope, with neighbours who had once judged each other now coming together as they recognise shared interests and virtues instead. So exactly the opposite trajectory to the past few years, then. And underlying it all, a sense that surely it'll all be over soon, gradually crumbling into an understanding that it really won't (in this analogy, the role of vaccines will be taken by the Maginot Line). By which point we've already had the plotline in which the rise of talkies doesn't just end the careers of silent stars, as per Singin' In The Rain, but of a whole profession of cinema pianists – just over, suddenly and forever, as still seems all too likely for DJs and live bands now. We see the Avenue emptied out, and we know from the opening flash-forward that even once the war is won, it's doomed to ugly expansion, the solace and grandeur of the wood and its crumbling stately home demolished to make more streets. And in the meantime, for those long years of war, everyone's dreams must be put on hold.
"'Maybe they just mark time for a bit, and make do with dreaming about what they'll do when it's all over,' said Frances, but without much conviction[...]
'But that isn't really dreaming, is it? Not the sort of dreams that make up the nice part of life. That's just like a prisoner in a cell, waiting for the years to pass until they let him out. Take today, for instance – it's the second day of the war, and nobody, not even Hitler, could possibly say how long it'll go on. So from yesterday we start counting the hours, all of us, the Germans as well, and we've all got to stop what we're doing, and just count, without even knowing whether we've got to go on up to a thousand, or a million, or a million millions. We've got to start without ever knowing when we shall stop.'"

[Larry · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an excellent book. This is the second book I have read by Delderfield and both were exquisitely written. There are few authors with the skill of Mr. Delderfield. His prose, vocabulary and ability to describe things are to be admired. My only complaint about this book was it left you wondering about the future of the characters and you will feel forced to purchase the following novel to complete the story.

[Lady R · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful! I had forgotten how great an author Delderfield is. If you love a good saga about everyday people spanning several years and with great characters and plot lines then this is for you. This was so good I immediately went on and read its sequel - The Avenue Goes to War. Highly recommended.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've learned through this book that personally, I love character driven novels - and this is FULL of interesting characters!!! The writing is so beautiful and still so readable. I loved everything about this book, set in a London suburb from 1919-1940. Can't wait to get going on book number two, The Avenue at War. In my humble opinion, The Dreaming Suburb was brilliant!

[Lisa Irvin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good book

This book is very well written and researched. The author fully develops interesting and diverse characters. The time period between the world wars is fascinating and something I had not thought about until I read this book.

[Michael Kennard · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first venture into R F Delderfield many years ago. From the first page I was hooked

[Susan M Manning · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Classic English Tale...

Of course I enjoyed it!
This was probably my English grandparents’ favorite author, and one mine, too.
A thoroughly lovely read.

[John Witsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delderfield oozes nostalgia as regards the era that forms his subject matter, the inherent goodness of many of his characters and tepid wickedness of the rogues, the positive power of society and, if like me you first read him in the golden light of youth, a recalling of better more hopeful days past. In short for me this was a comfort read, to be interspersed with the grim realities and more intellectually challenging modern literature that I primarily immerse myself in.

His plotting, if predictable, is nevertheless enjoyable and entertaining. A full stage of players does not allow deep development of any, but this is not his intent, offering instead an ensemble cast derived to reflect a particular character type from the era, shoehorned into the macro-events of the period. This is something of a novel painted by numbers. Each chapter dwells on one character or related characters in the Avenue, before switching to another for the next. The novel ends with a quick round robin of where each is at as WWII begins to bite, so that progressing to the next installment, The Avenue Goes to War, is unchallenging. This technique is replicated at the end of Book 3 of A Horseman Riding By as the events and characters of the book are recalled by a dying man from a hilltop looking down on the estate where his happy years have been spent. This is what Delderfield does and he does it very well. I still recall many years later becoming misty-eyed on that hilltop beside that dying character even as I felt the author jerk my strings.

This type of novel seems tame by today's standards. It offers little or no philosophically challenging themes or symbolism. What you see is what you get. For the modern reader brought up in a post-Christian, liberal, internet society where moral certainties are being eroded by the lack of societal glue or fear of divine retribution, it will probably seem rather twee, the characters cardboard and unrealistic.

I would not wish to solely immerse myself in Delederfield-esque literature BUT it offers a place for warm, cosy escapism with its good old-fashioned storytelling that leaves one drawing a satisfied breath with the turning of the last page, yearning for the hope, goodness and simple pleasures that it has bestowed upon you to be reflected in the real world that one now has to return to......unless you choose to roll over and immediately break the spine of The Avenue Goes to War, which is very tempting.

[Elisabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

Every once in a while I like a good saga-type story that follows a large cast over a long period of years; and I'm totally in accord with Delderfield's opinion as expressed in the forward that the middle classes are the most important part of any society and frequently the most overlooked. And the book is well-written. I just didn't care for his vision of these people's personal relationships. Even the ones that are not absolutely dysfunctional are rather vague and unemotional—particularly the parent-child relationships. And the ratio of illicit affairs to happy marriages is about 10 to 1. While there are a handful of honestly likeable characters (e.g. Harold, Edith, Ted, Judy—and Esme is a well-developed and mainly sympathetic character in spite of lacking the judgment to save him from being sadly manipulated), Delderfield seems to spend the most time with and take the most interest in the two most promiscuous and most selfish people in the book, Archie and Elaine.

There are a few somewhat bittersweet passages that show real perception and poignance, like Jim's gradual disillusionment with the political causes he's devoted his life to, Judy dealing with her first broken heart, and Pippa's speech about the looming war affecting the way people plan and dream. But it's just hard to reconcile Delderfield's broader view of the resilience and value of a class of people when he's spent so much time time depicting specific incidences of frustration, unfaithfulness, and dissatisfaction in their daily lives. The end of the book would have felt much more emotional if he'd made me like the bulk of the characters a lot more.

Definitely a PG-13 rating; there's nothing positively explicit, but a number of fade-to-black and generally sensual scenes and much discussion of illicit affairs and marital issues.

[Jan Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jim Carver returns home from the front to find his wife passed away and seven children on his hands. His socialist leanings clash with the ambition of his eldest boy who is determined to better his lot since the artful, ruthless Archie has an eye on owning a chain of grocery shops. His eldest daughter mothers his two sets of twins, and daughter Judith, until they also flee the nest.
Mrs Firth’s religious and controlling rod of iron over her husband and children eventually breaks down when her husband discovers the kindness of another woman, and begins an affair. Handsome, gentle creative Esme Fraser is bewitched by the spirited and sensual Elaine Firth, but she rebels against her repressed upbringing and after a boring job in a Welsh seaside town, runs away to join a circus. Esme’s childhood sweetheart, the girl next door, Judith Carver, is heartbroken by his betrayal. And spinster Edith Clegg who looks after her mentally ill sister, finds life much improved when musician Ted Hartnell arrives to lodge with them.


This was right up my street (or avenue). A richly detailed, nostalgic slice of suburban life. The lives of ordinary people, their relationships, their hopes and dreams. Set between the two world wars, this novel covers a period of significant change and makes for an interesting social commentary. It’s a linear story in so much that the structure, like life, is ongoing rather than forming a neat circle with all ends tied in a ribbon. But there is a natural ebb and flow, the acknowledgement of good and bad times, the roots of which evoke a strong sense of realism.
My overriding criticism is the use of similar character names – around 7 or 8 – whose names begin with the letter E. However, I thought the diverse, colourful cast hugely entertaining and well-characterised and I’m pleased to see there is a sequel.

[Steve Prentice · Rating 5 out of 5]

Delderfield is very much out of fashion, but I am a great fan and this book exemplifies why. Basically the story concerns the inhabitants of The Avenue in the interwar years of 1918 to 1940 (WW2 began in 1939 so this novel actually covers the so-called phony war period up to the the British retreat from Dunkirk).

What is excellent about the book is that we gain insight into the careers, attitudes and challenges of multiple characters and learn their personalities, predilections, idiosyncracies, politics and so on during this turbulent period. But the minutiae of their personal lives is skilfully interwoven into the characters' larger relationships with other residents of the Avenue as well as with the grand themes of the history of the time, such as the rise of Facism in Italy and Germany. The result is hugely atmospheric as events unfold - we can gain a glimpse, no matter how imperfectly, of what it must have been like to be alive during this period from multiple perspectives - and we see the attitudes of, and consequences to, the characters as a second world war in the space of just 21 years is unleashed on them and the British people as a whole (just sufficient years from the end of the first world war to raise a new generation of cannon fodder).

This is, to me, historical fiction at its best because it does NOT focus on the 'great and good' but on the 'ordinary' folk whose lives were, at best, forcibly put on hold by circumstances outside their control for five years as a consequence of the outbreak of hostililties.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

What R. F. Delderfield does well is to evoke a sense of England goneby. Writing from the distance of 40 or so years, he captures the zeitgeist of England between wars: the daily routines, the language, the small moments that add up to a life well lived - or not.

As in Delderfield's other works, the protagonist is a veteran of the Great War. Unlike either David/P.J./Pow-Wow or Paul Craddock, Jim Carver is neither scarred by the war (physically or mentally), nor single. He returns home to his seven children and the still-warm body of a wife who has just succumbed to the Spanish flu, determined to make a better life for his family.Although there are several characters to whom Delderfield has given starring roles, if you will, Jim is ultimately the soul of the book; Delderfield deftly portrays both his striving for a better world, as well as his aloofness from his family, particularly oldest son Archie with whom his relations are tenuous at best.

Also not unlike either To Serve Them All My Days or Long Summer Day, Delderfield is at times extremely long-winded. I plead guilty to occasionally needing to skim his work, rather than read closely. That said, Delderfield succeeds marvelously at the goal which he has laid out himself in the introduction: his "attempt to photograph the mood of the suburbs in the period between the break up of the old world and the preambulator days of an entirely new civilization."

[Ron Wroblewski · Rating 4 out of 5]

A tale of a street in a suburb of London and the people who lived there, between the end of WWI and the beginning of WWII. Several different families were followed through this timefrae.
The novel gets off to a slow start, but by the middle of the book you are anxious to see what comes next with many of the characters.
Here is a quote from the book: "The books I liked, I think, are the books people liked writing. You can tell this somehow. It's like humming a tune that sticks in your mind. You know that what they are writing about was in their minds a long time before it was written down." I think Delderfiend enjoyed writing this book.
There is a sequel I will be reading soon that continues the story: "The Avenue Goes to War". I am anxious to find out what happens to all the people during WWii.

[Ant Koplowitz · Rating 4 out of 5]

R.F. Delderfield's gentle novel of some of the residents of Manor Park Avenue in South East London between the two world wars. Character is what Delderfield does best, and there are some memorable characters here. The Carvers form the backbone of the 'mini stories'. They are a large, sprawling family who don't seem particularly close emotionally.

Delderfield's style is detailed and direct, no fancy writing or prose, but plain, straightforward story-telling. There isn't really a plot to speak of; the narrative is primarily driven by the passing of time, and what we get is these detailed glimpses of events and happenings as they orbit around the characters. With such a large cast, some get more page time than others, which was a bit of a shame.

Looking forward to reading the second volume.

© Koplowitz 2020

[Stephanie Pieck · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel offers a group portrait covering the inter-war years on a suburban London residential street. The comings and goings of families, the personal dramas that unfold behind the tidy lawns and curtains, and the shifting influences of society at large are all here. The book is genial and pleasant, something like a slow train trip where one gazes out a window at passing scenery. It's all very nice and smooth, but there's something of a remove between viewer and what's being viewed. The chapters alternate among the various avenue residents, and sometimes these switches are somewhat jarring. Still, it is all very English, all very proper, and a nice read for grey winter days and chilly nights.