Across the Common

by Elizabeth Berridge, Siân Phillips (Narrator)

Louise returns to the house where she grew up, The Hollies. It's a refuge for the vanishing The Great British Aunt. There is Aunt Seraphina, who steals cuttings from under the park-keeper's nose; Aunt Rosa, who has only one eye but can hurl a cushion as straight as a die; and Aunt Cissie in her wheelchair, tiny and malevolent. Together, they probe the secrets hidden by family pride and home truths that have been conveniently forgotten...

Genres: Gothic, Amazon

Audio Cassette

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

Elizabeth Berridge grew up in the ‘safe London suburb’ of Wandsworth Common. A year in Switzerland and a ‘hateful’ period at the Bank of England, described in Be Clean, Be Tidy (1949), was followed by work in a photographic news agency. She married Reginald Moore in 1940, published her first short story in 1941 and, in 1943, after the birth of the first of her two children, moved to a remote house in Wales, where Moore edited Modern Reading and other wartime anthologies and she wrote the stories reprinted in Tell It to a Stranger – published as Selected Stories in 1947; they returned to London in 1950. Elizabeth Berridge published nine novels, Across the Common winning the Yorkshire Post Award for Best Novel of the Year in 1964. She reviewed fiction for the Daily Telegraph for twenty-five years. Her last novel, Touch and Go, was adapted as a play by BBC Radio 4.

Reviews

[Sandysbookaday (on indefinite hiatus) · Rating 5 out of 5]

EXCERPT: I was nearly asleep when Aunt Seraphina came in. She was in her long summer dressing gown and the flowers on it looked black in the white light from the uncurtained windows. She half-drew the curtains against the strong light, fearing moon madness. Her hair was brushed long over her shoulders, grey and fine, and her face looked smaller on the long wrinkled neck. A withered bud, a frosted rose on a long stem. Circe in decline.

She looked at me, hesitated, but did not come to kiss me. At the door she turned, asked quietly, 'I would like to know the real reason for this visit, Louise.'

Just as quietly I replied, secure in my childhood room looking up at that tree patterned ceiling, remembered yet strange, telling her the truth, too tired not to, 'I want to know why my marriage has failed. This is where I can find out.' And went to sleep surprised at myself, for the truth is not a courtesy the young often extend to the old.

ABOUT THIS BOOK: One secret can tear a family apart…

Sensing the end of her marriage, Louise Yeovil takes the initiative and leaves her husband.

Twelve years ago and madly in love, she’d eloped with Max Yeovil, much to her family’s disbelief.

Life with Max had been good, but it had its challenges.

A series of miscarriages and Max’s eccentric, never-ending, stream of friends and colleagues filtering into their lives, had left Louise unable to cope with the path she’d chosen.

But she knew there was more to it than just that.

Returning to her home, The Hollies, the house she’d grown up in, Louise believes she will find the answer to some of her niggling thoughts.

Nothing much has changed in the twelve years she’s been away.

There is Aunt Seraphina, who steals cuttings from under the park-keepers’ noses; Aunt Rosa, the eldest, who has the ability to hurl a cushion as straight as a die, with her one eye; and Aunt Cissie in her wheelchair, tiny and malevolent

An unexpected turn of events results in Louise learning of troubles that had been kept secret from her and she makes it her mission to unearth the truth from her ever-cunning aunts.

But how can she find out more about the secret she revealed?

A chance encounter with someone from her childhood leads Louise to The Common, just outside their garden gates.

The Common had always been a place that attracted danger, of one sort or another; a place her aunts had always warned her about as a child.

But how was it connected to the secrets her aunts had kept from her all these years?

Louise needed to find out what happened… at whatever cost!


MY THOUGHTS: This is a beautifully written journey of discovery as one woman seeks to make sense of the demise of her marriage, in a time of social change.

Should you be thinking that this is a book of angst and vitriol, you couldn't be further from the truth. While it is a voyage of self discovery for Louise, she also begins to make sense of many things from her childhood that puzzled her over the years as she unravels a labyrinth of secrets and lies perpetuated by her aunts.

A gentle story, an unexpected joy, that left me wanting to read more by this author.

A couple of my favourite quotes from Across the Common - 'Might as well be dead now,' said old Mr Protheroe. 'We're in the book, but we've lost the page we're on.'

- 'Reality's all right,' she added strongly, 'that is, for some people, but you can't live with it all the time.'

THE AUTHOR: Elizabeth Berridge grew up in the ‘safe London suburb’ of Wandsworth Common. A year in Switzerland and a ‘hateful’ period at the Bank of England, described in Be Clean, Be Tidy (1949), was followed by work in a photographic news agency. She married Reginald Moore in 1940, published her first short story in 1941 and, in 1943, after the birth of the first of her two children, moved to a remote house in Wales, where Moore edited Modern Reading and other wartime anthologies and she wrote the stories reprinted in Tell It to a Stranger – published as Selected Stories in 1947; they returned to London in 1950. Elizabeth Berridge published nine novels, Across the Common winning the Yorkshire Post Award for Best Novel of the Year in 1964. She reviewed fiction for the Daily Telegraph for twenty-five years. Her last novel, Touch and Go, was adapted as a play by BBC Radio 4.

DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Endeavour Press via Netgalley for providing a digital ARC of Across the Common by Elizabeth Beresford for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

Please refer to my Goodreads.com profile page or the about page on sandysbookaday.wordpress.com for an explanation of my rating system. This review and others are also published on Twitter, Amazon, and my webpage sandysbookaday.wordpress.com/2019/07/...

[Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm the last person to whine when books written decades or centuries ago fail to match up to current notions of political correctness (and this is not an attack on PC itself!), but I think I might have given this book four stars for its many undeniable qualities if it hadn't reminded me so shamelessly of just what an appallingly class-ridden society Britain was in the 1950-60s. I say shamelessly because Berridge, for all the fineness of her emotional and creative intelligence, all of which is amply on display in this novel, never imagines that the world beyond, or rather beneath, the one she describes - a world of dwindling private incomes, devoted staff and not taking one's hat off for tea - isn't simply barbarism howling at the door. If the novel had managed - just once - to mention the world of council houses and supermarkets without the finicky larding of adjectives like 'ugly' or 'horrible', or had showed the merest glimmer of novelistic insight when describing the son of the family's faithful retainer - a (shudder) supermarket assistant manager - rather than painting him in the crudest, broadest strokes possible, this would have been a richer, and far less dated novel. If I thought for a minute that the title contained a play in the word 'common', or that the image of someone using a telescope to observe, almost wistfully, the lives of the people across it, had a metaphorical resonance, I'd respect the book more. As it is, by playing to her own limitations and to the presumed limitations of her readership, Berridge - and the perception at the heart of her book - is sadly blinkered.

[Jess · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this one. That bastion of British Aunts is a formidable one to come up against. That is exactly what Louise does when she returns to her family home, The Hollies. Her marriage is changing, she's not sure how she feels about that. Louise also has childhood baggage that she hasn't sorted through and unpacked, mentally and emotionally. Returning home to the familiarity and routine of her aunts seems like the solution.

Returning home is bittersweet. Her aunts have aged. The house has aged. Evidences of time and the frugality of fixed incomes are too obvious to ignore. Yet her aunts cling to their pride, their ancestry, decorum, and way of life fiercely. As Louise begins to find chinks in their armor, humanizing them, she also discovers a settling in herself. When a letter from her father finds its way to her revealing a family secret never spoken of; Louise makes it her purpose to uncover the truth and bring healing to the family.

Though this sounds like a contemporary book. It really isn't. There are gothic undercurrents in the plot along with a darkness in the Victorian house's imagery. A few moments has me concerned that someone was lurking to do harm to Louise. Humor is interlaced in the sentences along with a sense of poignant nostalgia. This was my first Berridge and it won't be my last.

[Danielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Across the common I am adding Elizabeth Berridge to my list of "authors whose work I want to read all of". I see why Persephone Books has reissued a book of her short stories and why Faber Finds, well, found her again. After reading just one novel, Across the Common, I'm happy that I can continue to explore her work as a number of her books are in print and readily available. When I was browsing the Faber Finds backlist my curiosity was piqued when I saw that a few of her books, although listed as fiction, were also tagged crime and suspense. Across the Common was further described as 'paranoia', 'secrets', and 'suburbia'. That pretty well ticked my interests in a novel of suspense, so one short ILL request and a little patience for the book to arrive and the right book found its way into the hands of the right reader.

While this is not really what you would consider a conventional crime or suspense novel, it has the right elements all wrapped up in wonderful language and a careful eye for detail. She knows how to tell a story well, and it's not surprising that she won England's Yorkshire Post Award for Best Novel for Across the Common in 1964. There is an interesting article by Berridge on the Faber Finds website about her inspiration for the story. She describes the commons of her childhood, those leafy suburbs with wide open green spaces that have since been encroached upon, as the "lungs of London".

"The common haunted me as a child. I would cycle across it to school, skirting the big houses with their long gardens behind tall, brick walls, scanning the gorse bushes on the right for Men Who Lurked. I had one such fright, the flapping raincoat had hidden any impropriety. All I remembered was the man's thin, abstracted face, his eyes sliding away from mine. Sad."

"But the common made its way into my dreams. I would wake up with one of those silent screams, struggling to free my ankle from the senile clasp of an old gnarled hand that reached out from a seat as I ran past to reach the safety of a back gate. What horror lay just within those tall barred gates?"

It's the secrets behind that gate Berridge explores in her novel. Every family has secrets and the Braithwaite family prefers to keep theirs closely guarded and tucked away. Louise Yeovil doesn't realize just what bad memories her aunts have tried to forget. More than ten years married, she leaves her husband one day and returns home to her aunts, who await her at the door as if they had expected her all along. The Hollies is suffused with their nervous energies. Louise's own parents died when she was very young, so she was raised by her aunts, being especially close to Seraphina. Fina and Rosa, along with Gibby their dedicated housemaid, live frugally in that vast, echoing house, where females always seem to hold dominion. Only three dried up old women are left in what was once a seemingly thriving household.

Old memories are dredged up by way of a letter from Louise's father, which is passed along to her so many years after his death thanks to some old shares finally becoming profitable. His letter reveals a side to the aunts she had not sensed or didn't understand growing up.

"You are too young to know the atmosphere of this house. It is like living in a minefield; confined energy in tins buried and waiting for the unwary foot. Emotions, activities, all narrowed to a small compass, like a hospital ward or a prison camp. Nothing from the outside seeps in except, of course newspapers, but they disregard these. The fierce light of self-regard (without the objective sanity of self-analysis) beats down on them all. I wish I had time to tell you--."

Her father lets slip the fact her grandfather had committed suicide, an act that was hushed up and explained away as an accident, and only one of several incidents that went undiscussed by Louise's aunts who would never have revealed any of it to her. The Hollies is like a pressure cooker of secrets, unspoken hopes and unfulfilled dreams as well as past transgressions never forgiven or forgotten. It's only through a series of throwaway comments and Louise's insistence for answers that she finally discovers the disgrace wrought upon the family one night that began with a party celebrating the flowering of a rare Chinese lily that ended in tragedy occurring just outside the garden gate.

Berridge is superlative when it comes to creating interesting characters. Each woman is eccentric in her own way. Rosa, the strong sister, who married and went away but returned a widow. Seraphina has always been passionately interested in her niece. There's always one daughter who must give up her dreams and maybe even love to remain with the family. Instead of marrying she is left to tend to her plants, following in her father's footsteps, looking for the most unusual blooms. Aunt Cissy returns home to be taken care of by her sisters, but she returns home a success of sorts and throws the house into an upheaval.

It's perhaps the idea of home which causes Louise so much trouble. She leaves her (she believes) unfaithful husband to return home to her aunts, when she had already been home all along. She realizes she has been and perhaps will always be a little girl to her aunts, so this understanding of the secrets that are hidden behind the doors of the Hollies is her way of finding her own independence from these women who raised her. Her husband tells her the aunts represent security to her and believes she returned in order to grow up. Maybe it isn't the aunts and their secrets she wants to expose but herself.

Elizabeth Berridge is a marvelous writer--there is so much there under the surface to think about. She seems a real master of domestic fiction (well, maybe better to just say a master of storytelling), delving into he interior lives of her characters. Harriet Harvey Wood, in Berridge's obituary, says it best:

"Although she was, on the surface, a conventional master of conservative suburban fiction, her work concealed a deep subversiveness. The reader continually finds his expectations railroaded on to a completely different track. She was, par excellence, the celebrator of family life. There is, as she said herself, no substitute for the family: 'It is society's first teething ring, man's proving ground. When repudiated, it still leaves its strengthening mark. When it does the rejecting, the outcast is damaged. Within its confines, devils and angels rage together, emotions creep underfoot like wet rot, or flourish like Russian ivy. It is the world in microcosm, the nursery of tyrants, the no man's land of suffering, a place and a time, a rehearsal for silent parlour murder'."

Doesnt that quote make you curious about her?

[Kirsty · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received a delightful Abacus paperback copy of Elizabeth Berridge's Across the Common as a birthday gift.  As I have been keen for quite some years now to try Berridge's work, I began it within the week, and thoroughly enjoyed the reading experience.  Noel Coward described it perfectly when he wrote that the novel is '... entirely good and most beautifully written.  I love her subtlety and observation and impeccable characterisation...'.  Me too, Noel.  Me too.

Although she seems to have fallen into something akin to disregard in the twenty-first century, Berridge's 'crisp and distinctly English style of writing established her as one of the most significant novelists of the post-war years.'

Originally published in 1964, Across the Common takes as its focus Louise, who has decided to leave her husband.  She opens by saying: 'I know it was finished, as I finished it myself...  I cooked ahead for three days, took a purple pill and under its influence was able to write some sort of crazy note. He didn't know I had those pills: he thought I was too stable to need them.'

Louise returns to her childhood home, The Hollies, a large rambling building which stands at the edge of a common in the fictional town of Pagham Green.  The Hollies is 'tall and big and excelled in useless crenellations'.  The house has, over the years, become 'a refuge for that vanishing species, the Great British Aunt' - specifically, acidic and judgemental Seraphina, who steals cuttings of plants from royal parks to grow them in her own garden; Rosa, the eldest, and therefore the one who makes all of the decisions; and 'tiny and malevolent' Cissie.  When Louise arrives, without having notified anyone, she finds her 'aunts stood at either side of the front door, without surprise, and embraced me in the intense, dry way of the elderly.'  The house has become a space exclusively devoted to women; the family has, over the years, 'shed its men'.

Along with Louise's present day story, and the turmoil which she feels to be back in her old home, run many memories of her early life.  These memories, all of which have been woven into the narrative, have a delightful flavour to them.  She is acutely aware of all of the differences, of all of the things which have changed since she began her independent life.  On her first morning, when she walks into the local high street, she observes: 'I moved along the row of shops like a dreamer in a largely alien landscape.  Certain things were familiar, familiar enough to lull the dreamer into a sense of false security, so that she does not wake up screaming.'

I found Berridge's acerbic humour both welcome and amusing, and felt that it suited the tone and the plot perfectly.  I very much enjoyed Louise's witty asides and muttered comments.  She pronounces, for instance, that 'Aunt Cissie had the same effect on me as a lemon was supposed to have if sucked in front of an unfortunate trombonist.  She dried up my juices.'

Louise comes to life on the page; she is complex, and feels thoroughly realistic.  Her narrative voice is lively and endearing.  I enjoyed the rather eccentric cast of characters, and found myself invested in their stories.  We as readers are given a lens into the life of a family, meeting both those who exist in Louise's present, and those whom she never met, or knew only slightly.

Across the Common is essentially a domestic novel; in reality, it is so much more than that.  There are a lot of quite ordinary scenes at play within it - for example, when Louise is tended to by the ageing housekeeper, or the aunts looking through vast collections of family photographs which have been found in the attic - but Berridge makes each one into something compelling.  She manages, somehow, to give different perspectives on the most mundane of occurrences.  Berridge's writing is exquisite, as is her attention to detail. 

On the strength of Across the Common, I broke my longstanding book-buying ban to buy three more of Berridge's novels, and I am wholly looking forward to reading them.  Already, I can see that she could easily become one of my favourite authors.

[Roger Pettit · Rating 3 out of 5]

Faber Finds, the imprint under which "Across the Common" is currently published, specialises in bringing back to public attention books and authors that it feels have unjustly fallen into neglect. The decision to revive this novel is justified. "Across the Common" is an interesting and entertaining story, written with verve in crisp, concise language. Its principal character is Louise Yeovil, a thirty-year old married, childless woman who, as the novel opens, leaves her husband Max, a painter, to return to her family home in Clapham Common, London, to live with her two aunts, Seraphina and Rosa, and their housemaid, Gibby. A third aunt, Cissie, eventually joins them. The period in which the story is set is not precisely stated but seems (from the description and chronology of certain events) to be the early 1960s. Louisa, who is prone to panic attacks, leaves the matrimonial home ostensibly because she feels she needs a break from her husband. But, as the story develops, it seems that things may not be quite as clearcut as that. When she moves into the aunts' house - "The Hollies" - all sorts of family memories are stirred up and this leads Louise to reconsider her opinion of her aunts, of her childhood and upbringing, of her late parents and grandparents and of her seemingly troubled marriage and her approach to life. There is not much plot in this novel. There is a great deal of reflection and reminiscence and some stream of consciousness thinking. But, for all that, it is certainly not a boring book. As I say, it is well written. The characterisation is very good. And there are some interesting insights into the impact of delving into long-buried family secrets. "Across the Common" is a good read. I gather that Elizabeth Berridge wrote several other novels that have been out of print for years. On the evidence of this one, they too are probably worthy of resuscitation. 7/10.

[Mystica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Louise has left her husband of twelve years and returned to the family home at The Hollies. Her three aunts are older than ever, more eccentric than ever and each determined to keep the family honor despite hard times. Louise lost her parents as a young child and her memories of them are hazy. An unexpected letter from her late father through his lawyers was a bolt from the blue - and apart from the very pleasant legacy of some money, his last note to her leaves behind remains of a mystery which she wants to solve.

Solving the mystery is going to be tougher than she thinks as the Aunts are determined to keep the past in the past and are perturbed at Louise's investigations. She feels however that she owes it to her father to discover the secrets in the family and put it to rest.

More of a coming of age story Louise has to decide her priorities, take charge of her life and decide which path she will take.

Sensitively told

[Amy · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was my encounter with "Across the Common"--

The description of this book sounded like something I would really like. I started reading it and thought; "Hmmmm. Not quite."

So I put it down and picked up my next book in line. That title was a definite--"HELL NO!" after the first few pages so I put that unspeakable novel (really, really vapid mystery)down and returned to Across the Common because at least the writing was good.

I read the next ten pages or so and then said out-loud to the dog--"I don't like her"--meaning the main character.

I then just went to bed.

End of scene.

It is so rare that I dislike a book in the beginning and then end up liking it (actually I think that has NEVER happened to me) that I just don't waste time. I found this woman so tiresome and I had the distinct feeling I would loathe her in real life that I just wanted to be rid of her.

[Marjorie Lexton · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great read.

I loved the sophisticated writing style, after having read several nice books which were hampered by mediocre writing. The setting of the lovely old English house is alluring, and the main characters enticing. Predictable ending, but still a great read. Recommend.

[Kathleen Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Family secrets and lies. This is a well written novella from a gentler time. I was quite sympathetic to Louise and was happy to see her solve the mystery. Thanks to netgalley for the ARC.

[Lisa of Hopewell]

HORRIBLE COVER on that copy!! I learned of this book via https://theliterarysisters.wordpress....

[JacquiWine · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Stars

First published in 1964, Across the Common is the third book I’ve read by the British writer Elizabeth Berridge, and it’s probably the richest and most complex of the three. There is quite a lot going on under the surface in this novel of family relationships and suburban life – a subversive element that reveals itself as the narrative progresses.

As the novel opens, Louise is in the process of leaving her husband, Max, to return to The Hollies, the house where she was brought up, largely by her aunts. Waiting at the door for Louise on her arrival are Aunt Rosa and Aunt Seraphina, almost as if they were expecting her despite the lack of notice.

Right from the start there is a strange aura surrounding life at The Hollies, situated as it is across from the common in suburban Pagham Green. The house itself was built by Louise’s grandfather, a man whose presence still casts a shadow over the property in spite of (or perhaps because of) his early death. Now the house has become a refuge ‘for that vanishing species, the Great British Aunt’, as Rosa and Seraphina are soon to be joined by their sister, the wheelchair-bound Cissie.

Berridge excels at creating miniature pen-portraits of the three aunts, capturing their personalities and idiosyncrasies in the most visual of ways.

Aunt Cissie sat in her wheelchair, tiny and malevolent. She could not have weighed more than seven stone, and yet she seemed to vibrate with energy and fill the hall. I had forgotten, or perhaps had never noticed, how handsome she was. She had the Braithwaite nose, high and arched, and a look of a Basque woman about her: indomitable, aristocratic, and yet with a peasant’s energy. Beside her, my two aunts looked faded. (p. 103)

With her fur hat and forthright manner, Cissie has the eccentric air of ‘minor royalty’, commanding attention as she makes her big entrance. By contrast, Aunt Rosa – the eldest and most orderly of the three sisters – seems rather reserved in comparison, a standing typified by her grey flannel dress. Ultimately, it is left to Aunt Seraphina – the green-fingered middle sister – to provide some of the novel’s most humorous moments. As Louise is somewhat surprised to observe, Seraphina is a dab hand at pilfering flower cuttings from the local park, expertly trimming geranium shoots with great speed and efficiency, irrespective of the official regulations.

To read the rest of my review, please visit:

https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2021...

[Ida Hiorns · Rating 5 out of 5]

An atmospheric, creepy story about repression and family secrets and how both can affect future generations.