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Rose Deeprose
Miss Sheila Kaye-Smith has forsaken Sussex, and the scene of her latest novel is buried deep among the wooded hills of Kent.
The story is divided into three parts, Daughter, Wife and Mother. It opens with a sympathetic unfolding of the relations between the sixteen-year-old Rose Deeprose, of Harlakenden Farm, and her mother. From the quiet beginning in a teashop in a little country town the reader is led out upon the stormy trail of tragedy. Rose is the unwitting instrument of her mother's death, and the rest of the novel deals with her courageous combat against a persistently adverse fate. She meets disaster on every count—in her marriage with her cousin Townley, of Bladbean Farm ; in her friendship with Christian Lambert, the town-bred beauty and light-o '-love ; in motherhood (her only child, whom she passionately longed for and devotedly loved, turns out to be mentally deficient) ; in her attempted suicide.
A solution to Rose's problems and an earnest of a happier future is foreshadowed at the end of the book. Townley shoots himself, and we leave Rose, as we found her, at Harlakenden. She is at peace, and the reader realizes with a slight sense of shock that, at the end of some four hundred crowded pages, the heroine is only twenty-five years old, and her life is all before her. . . .
Miss Kaye-Smith is a master of the English language, and the book abounds in happy phrases and in descriptions which are as leisured and lovely as the country they depict. Of the psychological interest, the contrast between Rose of yeoman stock and Christian Lambert, superficial product of the intelligentsia, is particularly well done.
The story is divided into three parts, Daughter, Wife and Mother. It opens with a sympathetic unfolding of the relations between the sixteen-year-old Rose Deeprose, of Harlakenden Farm, and her mother. From the quiet beginning in a teashop in a little country town the reader is led out upon the stormy trail of tragedy. Rose is the unwitting instrument of her mother's death, and the rest of the novel deals with her courageous combat against a persistently adverse fate. She meets disaster on every count—in her marriage with her cousin Townley, of Bladbean Farm ; in her friendship with Christian Lambert, the town-bred beauty and light-o '-love ; in motherhood (her only child, whom she passionately longed for and devotedly loved, turns out to be mentally deficient) ; in her attempted suicide.
A solution to Rose's problems and an earnest of a happier future is foreshadowed at the end of the book. Townley shoots himself, and we leave Rose, as we found her, at Harlakenden. She is at peace, and the reader realizes with a slight sense of shock that, at the end of some four hundred crowded pages, the heroine is only twenty-five years old, and her life is all before her. . . .
Miss Kaye-Smith is a master of the English language, and the book abounds in happy phrases and in descriptions which are as leisured and lovely as the country they depict. Of the psychological interest, the contrast between Rose of yeoman stock and Christian Lambert, superficial product of the intelligentsia, is particularly well done.
407 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 1936
About the author
Sheila Kaye-Smith
83 books12 followersThe daughter of a country doctor, Shelia Kaye-Smith was born in St Leonards-on-Sea near Hastings. Her first novel, The Tramping Methodist was published when she was 21. In 1923 her book, The End of the House of Alard became a best-seller and gave her national prominence. She went on to write over 40 books.
Kaye-Smith's early novels were chiefly pre-occupied with rural life in Sussex and Kent. They focused on farming, land inheritance, agricultural mechanisation and changing women's roles in rural life. Joanna Godden, arguably her most famous novel, was adapted into a film in 1947.
Her later books focused on her religious pre-occupations, and her conversion to catholicism. She was also a passionate scholar of Jane Austen and with her friend, G.B. Stern wrote Speaking of Jane Austen and More About Jane Austen.
Kaye-Smith's early novels were chiefly pre-occupied with rural life in Sussex and Kent. They focused on farming, land inheritance, agricultural mechanisation and changing women's roles in rural life. Joanna Godden, arguably her most famous novel, was adapted into a film in 1947.
Her later books focused on her religious pre-occupations, and her conversion to catholicism. She was also a passionate scholar of Jane Austen and with her friend, G.B. Stern wrote Speaking of Jane Austen and More About Jane Austen.
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