Patrimony

by Jane Thynne

PATRIMONY cleverly weaves together the past and the present as a young woman film-maker tries to unravel the mysteries surrounding Valentine Siddons, a First World War poet and the subject of her film. Was he really a hero? Elsa Meyers is a young woman film maker developing a film about a little known poet Valentine Siddons who was alleged to have been a hero in the First World War. When her researcher mysteriously disappears with all his papers, Elsa is obliged to explore the poet’s past herself. This leads to the discovery that Valentine Siddons may not have been quite the hero he was made out to be. Elsa is helped in her investigations by the poet’s grandson with whom she has an affair while failing to notice the attention of Simon, her employer at Durban Films. Patrimony combines the nostalgic suspense of Robert goddard with the biting observation of the contemporary media world of Kathy Lette.

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Jane Thynne was born in Venezuela and educated in London. She graduated from Oxford University with a degree in English and joined the BBC as a journalist. She has also worked at The Sunday Times, The Daily Telegraph and The Independent, as well as for numerous British magazines. She appears as a broadcaster on Radio 4 and Sky TV. She has also written WIDOWLAND under the pen name C.J. Carey.

Reviews

[Veronica Ross · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting description of an alternate life with all the difficulties of integrity, truth and intelligence told using the search for emotional fulfilment and jutamixed with the same quests and some of the challenges in today's reality whilst clearly demonstrating the devastating consequences of war.

[Jane Cairns · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is between a so-so read and a thumbs-up pic. I enjoyed it and I didn't. It's about two different time periods - the present and WWI - and involves love stories in both eras. I will read other books by this author, though, despite my mediocre liking for this book.

[Catherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit tedious at times but a good story nevertheless.

[Peggy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book, I wasn't sure where it was going, but I loved the ending. I enjoy reading Jane Thynne's books, they give me a new view on life during WWII.

[Roman Clodia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an intelligent novel that successfully combines elements of literary mystery together with parallel stories of the first world war and contemporary London.

Valentine Siddons is one of the first world war poets (an imaginary figure combining elements of Wilfred Owen, Sassoon, Graves et al.) who died a hero's death in 1917 rescuing a comrade in no-man's land. Elsa Myers is researching a film of his life, and starts an affair with his grandson, an academic who is writing a biography of Siddons. She discovers what she thinks are early but unknown poems of his and seeks to fit them into what is known about his life, little knowing that they will lead her to a very different story from the one she expects.

Interspersed with Elsa's story are snippets of her lover's biography, which introduce a 3rd person narrative of various episodes from Valentine's real life: his time at Oxford, the publication of his first poetry, his introduction into London literary society and the Bloomsbury group; his love affair with Constance Emberley and his time in the trenches.

This sounds complicated but actually Thynne pulls it off confidently, and allows the layers of narrative and various versions of the `truth' to themselves become part of the story she is telling. Personally I found the 1914-17 part of the story marginally more compelling than the contemporary one which was a little too obvious in some ways, but both are important to the book. With the glut of fairly recent books set in the same period, this somehow manages to remain fresh, perhaps because it spends time in London amongst the pacifist and literary crowd; but the warfare scenes are also powerful without becoming too repetitive or derivative.

The one weakness is that Elsa, supposedly a literature graduate from Oxford, cannot see that the `early' Siddons poems she finds, and which we get to read, are actually immature and just fairly bad poetry - while the story tells us that this just wasn't the case with his war poetry (which we don't get to read). But that's a small blip, which doesn't spoil the overall feel. Dramatic, emotionally reticent rather than overblown, this is a compelling and sometimes moving novel.

[Rachel Nowakowski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thought this book was amazingly good and absolutely heartwrenching. Short but sweet. The overiding message I took from this book was that we live our lives with our own motives and remember them in our own way which is often at variance with how our stories are created by others.