What do you think?
Rate this book
Good Daughters #2
Indifferent Heroes
In this second volume of Mary Hocking's excellent trilogy, England joins the world in its march to war, sweeping along the members of the Fairley household, their relations and friends.
It is 1939, and great changes come running to meet them all, snatching at their innocence and steadfast convictions and tossing them far away. Alice, Ben and Guy travel overseas, serving in the same war but on very different battlegrounds. For those who stay behind, Judith, Louise, Claire and Daphne, the struggle is to preserve the home, to keep things going, no matter what. But the sudden insecurity of the war confuses them. It gives them new strengths and fresh dreams, but leaves them still furiously hunting for a future, hoping that the old familiar beliefs will be patiently waiting for them to catch up again.
It is 1939, and great changes come running to meet them all, snatching at their innocence and steadfast convictions and tossing them far away. Alice, Ben and Guy travel overseas, serving in the same war but on very different battlegrounds. For those who stay behind, Judith, Louise, Claire and Daphne, the struggle is to preserve the home, to keep things going, no matter what. But the sudden insecurity of the war confuses them. It gives them new strengths and fresh dreams, but leaves them still furiously hunting for a future, hoping that the old familiar beliefs will be patiently waiting for them to catch up again.
277 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1985
40 people want to read
About the author
Mary Hocking
33 books8 followersBorn in in London in 1921, Mary was educated at Haberdashers’ Aske’s Girls School, Acton. During the Second World War she served in the Women’s Royal Naval Service (Wrens) attached to the Fleet Air Arm Meteorology branch and then briefly with the Signal Section in Plymouth.
Writing was in her blood. Juggling her work as a local government officer in Middlesex Education Department with writing, at first short stories for magazines and pieces for The Times Educational Supplement, she then had her first book, The Winter City, published in 1961.
The book was a success and enabled Mary to relinquish her full time occupation to devote her time to writing. Even so, when she came to her beloved Lewes in 1961, she still took a part-time appointment, as a secretary, with the East Sussex Educational Psychology department.
Long before family sagas had become cult viewing, she had embarked upon the ‘Fairley Family’ trilogy, Good Daughters, Indifferent Heroes, and Welcome Strangers, books which give her readers a faithful, realistic and uncompromising portrayal of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary times, between the years of 1933 and 1946.
For many years she was an active member of the ‘Monday Lit’, a Lewes-based group which brought in current writers and poets to speak about their work. Equally, she was an enthusiastic supporter of Lewes Little Theatre, where she found her role as ‘prompter’ the most satisfying, and worshipped at the town’s St Pancras RC Church.
* Source
Writing was in her blood. Juggling her work as a local government officer in Middlesex Education Department with writing, at first short stories for magazines and pieces for The Times Educational Supplement, she then had her first book, The Winter City, published in 1961.
The book was a success and enabled Mary to relinquish her full time occupation to devote her time to writing. Even so, when she came to her beloved Lewes in 1961, she still took a part-time appointment, as a secretary, with the East Sussex Educational Psychology department.
Long before family sagas had become cult viewing, she had embarked upon the ‘Fairley Family’ trilogy, Good Daughters, Indifferent Heroes, and Welcome Strangers, books which give her readers a faithful, realistic and uncompromising portrayal of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary times, between the years of 1933 and 1946.
For many years she was an active member of the ‘Monday Lit’, a Lewes-based group which brought in current writers and poets to speak about their work. Equally, she was an enthusiastic supporter of Lewes Little Theatre, where she found her role as ‘prompter’ the most satisfying, and worshipped at the town’s St Pancras RC Church.
* Source
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
August 29, 2013
indifferentheroes
All Virago/All August continues with another Mary Hocking novel – mine isn’t a Virago copy although I do really like the Abacus editions. I read Good Daughters, the first book in this family trilogy at the beginning of August and loved it. It is really hard to review the novels of this Hocking trilogy because I know a lot of people are reading them at the moment or intending to, and I don’t want to spoil them for people, and I don’t know how interesting a blog post about a second instalment of a series is, when you haven’t read the first one. Oh well here goes.
At the opening of this second book in Mary Hocking’s Fairley family trilogy, it is 1939, and Alice, the middle daughter has newly joined the Wrens. She has previously suffered a breakdown following the events at the conclusion of Good Daughters, but is now excited to be going out into the world. Her elder sister, married to Guy, is now the mother to two young children, while Claire is coming to the end of her school days. The outbreak of war gives Stanley Fairley an excuse to re-tell the stories of his own service during the Great War – and turn his attention to more practical matters like the clearing of the loft, and helping out his increasingly hopeless neighbour Mrs Vaseyelin. Guy has also joined up – and is already abroad, while the sister’s cousin, Ben initially takes his time to join up – but does so, irritated at the interruption to his career at the bar.
“There was not much to laugh about during the next two days. Enormous seas built up. Even the crew was sick. Worse than this, submarines had wreaked havoc on a previous convoy and soon the ships were steaming through a sea laden with wreckage that at times it seemed they were making their way amid the ruins of a sunken city. It was only too easy to hear the cries of drowned men in the howling wind. Ben had not tasted fear until now. In an emergency, the crew would be at their posts. The men on draft were cargo.”
Alice soon finds herself in Egypt, where she embarks on her first romance, and is both impressed and surprised by the sophisticated worldliness of her fellow Wrens – who indulge in casual love affairs with ease. Back in London Angus Drummond is involved with some kind of secret war work – and begins a relationship with Irene one of Alice’s friends. Daphne Drummond – of whose family relationships Alice still has very uneasy feelings – has a brief fling with Ben before he too goes abroad, with the absence of Alice, Daphne and Louise are thrown together. Louise is lonely, a young woman with two small children, she is not the type to throw herself into good works, and there are plenty of temptations for an attractive young woman who hasn’t seen her husband in a long time. Louise’s behaviour makes her difficult to sympathise with – although she isn’t totally reprehensible, she is a silly weak girl, and the Fairley sister I like the least, I will be interested to see if she redeems herself further in the third novel.
One of my favourite characters from Good Daughters Jacov Vaseyelin shows up too, even running into Alice in Egypt as part of a touring company – his is a calm, philosophical attitude to the tragedies that the war has brought to his and his friends’ doors.
Mary Hocking gives her readers a faithful and realistic portrayal of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary times. Fear and confusion, loneliness and unexpected deaths, Hocking doesn’t just show us the frustrations of rationing, the jolly camaraderie of shelter life. Instead we have the horror of a Japanese prisoner of war camp, the feeling of homelessness that follows a bombing, the desolation of a railway siding during the blackout – the glamour of a Wrens uniform and the strangeness of new found freedom. Born in 1921, Mary Hocking herself would have lived through these times as a young woman and in fact she served in the meteorology branch of Fleet Air Arm during the war.
These are characters I have come to really like, some of them are flawed, but I am certainly looking forward to finding out what happens to them all next.
All Virago/All August continues with another Mary Hocking novel – mine isn’t a Virago copy although I do really like the Abacus editions. I read Good Daughters, the first book in this family trilogy at the beginning of August and loved it. It is really hard to review the novels of this Hocking trilogy because I know a lot of people are reading them at the moment or intending to, and I don’t want to spoil them for people, and I don’t know how interesting a blog post about a second instalment of a series is, when you haven’t read the first one. Oh well here goes.
At the opening of this second book in Mary Hocking’s Fairley family trilogy, it is 1939, and Alice, the middle daughter has newly joined the Wrens. She has previously suffered a breakdown following the events at the conclusion of Good Daughters, but is now excited to be going out into the world. Her elder sister, married to Guy, is now the mother to two young children, while Claire is coming to the end of her school days. The outbreak of war gives Stanley Fairley an excuse to re-tell the stories of his own service during the Great War – and turn his attention to more practical matters like the clearing of the loft, and helping out his increasingly hopeless neighbour Mrs Vaseyelin. Guy has also joined up – and is already abroad, while the sister’s cousin, Ben initially takes his time to join up – but does so, irritated at the interruption to his career at the bar.
“There was not much to laugh about during the next two days. Enormous seas built up. Even the crew was sick. Worse than this, submarines had wreaked havoc on a previous convoy and soon the ships were steaming through a sea laden with wreckage that at times it seemed they were making their way amid the ruins of a sunken city. It was only too easy to hear the cries of drowned men in the howling wind. Ben had not tasted fear until now. In an emergency, the crew would be at their posts. The men on draft were cargo.”
Alice soon finds herself in Egypt, where she embarks on her first romance, and is both impressed and surprised by the sophisticated worldliness of her fellow Wrens – who indulge in casual love affairs with ease. Back in London Angus Drummond is involved with some kind of secret war work – and begins a relationship with Irene one of Alice’s friends. Daphne Drummond – of whose family relationships Alice still has very uneasy feelings – has a brief fling with Ben before he too goes abroad, with the absence of Alice, Daphne and Louise are thrown together. Louise is lonely, a young woman with two small children, she is not the type to throw herself into good works, and there are plenty of temptations for an attractive young woman who hasn’t seen her husband in a long time. Louise’s behaviour makes her difficult to sympathise with – although she isn’t totally reprehensible, she is a silly weak girl, and the Fairley sister I like the least, I will be interested to see if she redeems herself further in the third novel.
One of my favourite characters from Good Daughters Jacov Vaseyelin shows up too, even running into Alice in Egypt as part of a touring company – his is a calm, philosophical attitude to the tragedies that the war has brought to his and his friends’ doors.
Mary Hocking gives her readers a faithful and realistic portrayal of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary times. Fear and confusion, loneliness and unexpected deaths, Hocking doesn’t just show us the frustrations of rationing, the jolly camaraderie of shelter life. Instead we have the horror of a Japanese prisoner of war camp, the feeling of homelessness that follows a bombing, the desolation of a railway siding during the blackout – the glamour of a Wrens uniform and the strangeness of new found freedom. Born in 1921, Mary Hocking herself would have lived through these times as a young woman and in fact she served in the meteorology branch of Fleet Air Arm during the war.
These are characters I have come to really like, some of them are flawed, but I am certainly looking forward to finding out what happens to them all next.
May 8, 2016
It's hard to tell what I think of this novel. I read it as an ebook and it has been so badly edited that I am not even sure the ending was the actual ending. The novel felt unfinished. Who can tell? At some point, a whole chapter that obviously didn't belong to the novel was inserted.
I am quite disappointed with Bello and am wondering whether I should buy the third instalment of Good Daughters.
I am quite disappointed with Bello and am wondering whether I should buy the third instalment of Good Daughters.
September 14, 2013
Mary Hocking's WW2 novel surprised me in many ways.
It presented the war years in the most chilling, unsentimental manner I have encountered in fiction. Particularly, in fiction written by a woman.
I have a fondness for British women writers from the 40's through the 60's and this book was intriguing because it has a style and tone reminiscent of an earlier literary era, yet was published in the mid '80's. Hocking didn't make any attempt to create sympathetic characters: everyone the reader encounters in this rather demanding novel has an edge. I love reading about this period, so I soldiered on, but pages were filled with frustration and uncertainty---just like the war years. I am surprised that the forty years that intervened between the book's story and the writing didn't envelope the tale with even a tiny patina of gloss or glory. There was nothing but boredom; deprivation; disappointment and far less "discovery" than I expected.
One of the more interesting facets of the book for me was the portraits of young women in the military. I wasn't quite prepared for the almost wonton sexual liberation described by Mary Hocking. If her picture is accurate, the 1960's were not introducing women to a new way of life, they were just talking about it more openly than during the 1940's.
Although I didn't enjoy this book, I valued reading it. It served as a reminder of the horrific consequences of prolonged war; the devastating emotional burdens on both the soldiers and their families; and the lingering social problems everyone faces.
It presented the war years in the most chilling, unsentimental manner I have encountered in fiction. Particularly, in fiction written by a woman.
I have a fondness for British women writers from the 40's through the 60's and this book was intriguing because it has a style and tone reminiscent of an earlier literary era, yet was published in the mid '80's. Hocking didn't make any attempt to create sympathetic characters: everyone the reader encounters in this rather demanding novel has an edge. I love reading about this period, so I soldiered on, but pages were filled with frustration and uncertainty---just like the war years. I am surprised that the forty years that intervened between the book's story and the writing didn't envelope the tale with even a tiny patina of gloss or glory. There was nothing but boredom; deprivation; disappointment and far less "discovery" than I expected.
One of the more interesting facets of the book for me was the portraits of young women in the military. I wasn't quite prepared for the almost wonton sexual liberation described by Mary Hocking. If her picture is accurate, the 1960's were not introducing women to a new way of life, they were just talking about it more openly than during the 1940's.
Although I didn't enjoy this book, I valued reading it. It served as a reminder of the horrific consequences of prolonged war; the devastating emotional burdens on both the soldiers and their families; and the lingering social problems everyone faces.
June 9, 2017
(4 1/2*)
In this, the second of the Hocking WWII trilogy, the storyline moves from the Fairley family to particular members of the family and how their lives change & how they deal with those changes throughout the War. The story is told mainly through the lives of the eldest daughter, Louise & the middle daughter, Alice.
Louise is now married & the mother of two, whose husband is off to war. The time in interminable for her and she needs diversion. Not for her the war-time volunteer work nor church work that seems to keep her now widowed mother, Judith sane and busy.
The middle daughter, Alice has joined the Wrens and is occupied with travels to far off places where she is needed for the war-effort. She seems to not quite fit in with the other girls who are more free with their favors but seems to spend most of her free time pondering her life, her future and her friendships. She falls in love with a man who is gone to war also and much of her time is taken up with letters to him.
There is not a whole lot about Claire, the youngest of the three daughters, in this book. She still appears to me to be the spoiled darling of her youth and not grown up at all.
I enjoyed this book a great deal, just not quite as much as the first of the trilogy.
In this, the second of the Hocking WWII trilogy, the storyline moves from the Fairley family to particular members of the family and how their lives change & how they deal with those changes throughout the War. The story is told mainly through the lives of the eldest daughter, Louise & the middle daughter, Alice.
Louise is now married & the mother of two, whose husband is off to war. The time in interminable for her and she needs diversion. Not for her the war-time volunteer work nor church work that seems to keep her now widowed mother, Judith sane and busy.
The middle daughter, Alice has joined the Wrens and is occupied with travels to far off places where she is needed for the war-effort. She seems to not quite fit in with the other girls who are more free with their favors but seems to spend most of her free time pondering her life, her future and her friendships. She falls in love with a man who is gone to war also and much of her time is taken up with letters to him.
There is not a whole lot about Claire, the youngest of the three daughters, in this book. She still appears to me to be the spoiled darling of her youth and not grown up at all.
I enjoyed this book a great deal, just not quite as much as the first of the trilogy.
September 4, 2019
I'm really not too sure what to make of this book. On the one hand, it is chock full of interesting narrative, giving insights on a broad range of lives during the Second World War, and sometimes (though not often enough) attempting to disentangle many of the moral dilemmas of the time.
What was harder to disentangle though was the massive cast of characters, all with similar names and similar character traits. I couldn't tell my Daphne's from my Deirdre's - indeed, I thought Daphne had died half way through the book, and when she turned up in canned biographical format at the end of the book I was left wondering whether it was me or the author who had made the mistake.... alongside a plethora of other seeming huge plot black holes.
It also felt as if it really was an attempt at moralizing around various topics, with a huge cast of characters thrown together just to add some glue between titbits. Yet it was all very well written.....
Quite confusing - I got a lot out of it, but so much more left me bewildered and confused!
What was harder to disentangle though was the massive cast of characters, all with similar names and similar character traits. I couldn't tell my Daphne's from my Deirdre's - indeed, I thought Daphne had died half way through the book, and when she turned up in canned biographical format at the end of the book I was left wondering whether it was me or the author who had made the mistake.... alongside a plethora of other seeming huge plot black holes.
It also felt as if it really was an attempt at moralizing around various topics, with a huge cast of characters thrown together just to add some glue between titbits. Yet it was all very well written.....
Quite confusing - I got a lot out of it, but so much more left me bewildered and confused!
February 11, 2019
4.5 rating. Although I listed this novel on my forgotten books shelf, I am pleased to say that Bello Publishers has reissued Mary Hocking's novels in both ebooks and print-on-demand format. Kudos to blogger Heavenali, who has championed Hocking and suggested the need for a reprint to Bello. This fine book is the second part of a trilogy about three sisters, their family members, neighbors and friends. The first of the trilogy, The Three Sisters, covered the period from 1933 to right before WWII. The sequel takes us through the second World War. What a pleasure to read a novel set during this period that was written by a British author who was the age of the middle sister during the war. The author actually served as a WREN during the war just as the middle sister did. I can't wait to see how Hocking finishes up the trilogy in the final novel set in the post- war period.
September 16, 2013
The beginning moved slowly. Curses on editors who demand that the author fill in readers who are joining at the second book. But eventually the story picked up energy again. Like the first book, full of sympathetic characters.
November 10, 2023
I remember after finishing the first book of this trilogy, perhaps from a review by somebody, that the second book (this one) was not as good as the first. I liked the first book and hence why I decided to continue on with the second book in the trilogy. This book was not good (1.5 stars from me)...I simply can’t recommend it. There are reviews which are favorable towards it, so what can I say? It did not work for me. I’ll leave it at that. I think only if I am desperate to read something will I proceed with the third book of the trilogy.
The first book, ‘Good Daughters’, was published in 1984, and there were quite a few central characters in that book. Mary Hocking in this book provided insufficient introductions to the three daughters and the people who played a role in their lives in the early parts of this book. I dunno...she must have assumed readers had a perfect memory of those characters and that they could easily pick up on all the characters from the first book when reading about them in this second book. Well, I couldn’t. I read many books in between reading the first book and then this one that so I couldn’t remember characters from the first book. And she threw in so many superfluous characters in this book...fer chrissake...
Plus, I liked the writing in the first book, and I couldn’t believe how bad the writing was, at times, in this one (again, that’s just the way I felt).
Blurbs from the front and back cover of the Abacus re-issue I read from:
• Mary Hocking is an undisguised blessing. [The Guardian]
• Extremely readable...Roll on Part Three! [Observer]
Review:
• https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2013/...
The first book, ‘Good Daughters’, was published in 1984, and there were quite a few central characters in that book. Mary Hocking in this book provided insufficient introductions to the three daughters and the people who played a role in their lives in the early parts of this book. I dunno...she must have assumed readers had a perfect memory of those characters and that they could easily pick up on all the characters from the first book when reading about them in this second book. Well, I couldn’t. I read many books in between reading the first book and then this one that so I couldn’t remember characters from the first book. And she threw in so many superfluous characters in this book...fer chrissake...
Plus, I liked the writing in the first book, and I couldn’t believe how bad the writing was, at times, in this one (again, that’s just the way I felt).
Blurbs from the front and back cover of the Abacus re-issue I read from:
• Mary Hocking is an undisguised blessing. [The Guardian]
• Extremely readable...Roll on Part Three! [Observer]
Review:
• https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2013/...
January 11, 2025
A stronger story than the first book, due to the dramas of WW2 being the whole background. Characters develop more interesting differences as they age in such difficult circumstances. Full of depth and nuance concerning motivation, changing values and hopes.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews