Evenfield

by Rachel Ferguson

This book was written for those who don’t despise children’s parties, Edwardian actresses, dancing classes and the scent of lilac over sun-warmed fences. Barbara Morant spent a crucial part of her childhood in the unremarkable suburban house which lends this novel its name. For her siblings, it’s merely a place to live; for her mother, it’s a symbol of the provincial drudgery of suburban living. But for Barbara, the house and the routines of those years are invested with a halo of happiness, and she yearns for them long after the family’s return to London. Her obsessive nostalgia, the pursuit of her childhood joys, lead her to attempt a recreation of the past. She leases the house, undoes the changes made in the intervening years, and moves in, only to find the past irretrievably changed and changed by her later knowledge and experiences. Lushly packed with domestic detail and references to popular culture, household products, advertisements, songs, décor, and pastimes, Evenfield provides us with a hilarious but surprisingly profound exploration of childhood and the way it’s remembered (and misremembered) by adults, and of the vanity of searching for lost time. Rachel Ferguson – known for earlier classics The Brontës Went to Woolworth’s , A Footman for the Peacock and Alas, Poor Lady – gives us here her own unique variation on Proust. This new edition includes an introduction by social historian Elizabeth Crawford. ‘It is only (now) that I realise how much … my work owes to the delicacy and variety of Rachel Ferguson’s exploration of the real and the dreamed of, or the made up, or desired.’ A.S. Byatt ‘An exceptional ability to interpret the humour of families.’ Punch

Genres: Fiction, British Literature, Classics

265 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1942

About the author

Rachel Ferguson was educated privately, before being sent to finishing school in Italy. She flaunted her traditional upbringing to become a vigorous campaigner for women's rights and member of the WSPU.

In 1911 Rachel Ferguson became a student at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. She enjoyed a brief though varied career on the stage, cut short by the First World War. After service in the Women's Volunteer Reserve she began writing in earnest.

Working as a journalist at the same time as writing fiction, Rachel Ferguson started out as 'Columbine', drama critic on the Sunday Chronicle. False Goddesses, her first novel, was published in 1923. A second novel The Bröntes Went to Woolworths did not appear until 1931, but its wide acclaim confirmed Rachel Ferguson's position in the public eye. Over the next two decades she wrote extensively and published nine more novels.

Rachel Ferguson lived in Kensington until her death in 1957.

Reviews

[Shawn Mooney (Shawn Breathes Books)]

I loved Ferguson’s The Brontës Went To Woolworths, and there was much in the first 50 pages of this novel, Evenfield, that I enjoyed, but its whimsicality was flattened—almost deadened—by the head-spinningly tedious prose style with nary a plot in sight. I have decided to set it aside.

[Louise Culmer · Rating 3 out of 5]

The narrator, Barbara Moran, describes in loving detail her 1890s childhood in Addisford, a suburban neighbourhood on the Thames which I presume is based on Hampton Wick, where the author was born in the same era as her heroine. She writes at great length about the family home,Evenfield, about parties, friends, servants, food, clothes etc. Not a great deal happens until she is eleven, when her parents decide to go and live in Kensington. Barbara is the only member of the family who regrets the move, he parents and siblings don’t care for Evenfield or for Addisford. She continues to cherish affectionate memories of Addisford and its inhabitants, and twenty years later, when she has made some money as a songwriter, she is able to return to Evenfield to live, with mixed results. This was fairly enjoyable, though I was pained by Barbara’s lack of affection for the Thames(I expected the river to play a larger part in the story) and seriously, how could she not know what a lock is for?

[Lynnie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this delightful "memoir" novel. It was witty and poignant and I loved Barbara Morant's voice as she remembered her childhood at Evenfield, sometimes accurately, sometimes misremembered, sometimes supplemented by other people's memories. It is very thought provoking, you can't go back and expect everything to be the same, however much you try.
Definitely a book to reread for me.

[Diana Eberhardt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very satisfying period novel about people's lives and relationships in an English town. I learned some new old words, too, which is also very satisfying.

[Orinoco Womble (tidy bag and all) · Rating 1 out of 5]

1.5 stars. I wanted a cosy evening read, and it looked like I'd found one. I hadn't.
What a mess! This...writing...pretends to be both a novel and a memoir and is neither. I understand that nostalgia for a safer, cosier time was at a premium in 1942 UK, but I was surprised that it was published as it stands given the paper shortage in 1942 UK! Barbara waffles and rambles and sets up one memory after another only to cheap out saying she "doesn't remember" what happened, or who that was, or where it took place, though she can remember ex-act-ly what she was wearing at the time. A lot of her sentences don't even make sense.

Basically the MC wants to remain in her childhood home as a way to remain in her childhood, even though she also complains the whole time about her emotionally absent father, her physically absent siblings and her mother who hates the village they live in and feels superior to all she surveys, though why is never explained. And yet this is all so lovely she wants to return to the old home!

Toward the end of this trudge through the sludge MC basically has some kind of breakdown and finally admits the truth of the old saying, "You can't go home again." Because even if you do, people and things have moved on while you've been moving on yourself. They don't remember and/or don't care, and they wonder why you do.

The last quarter of the book or more I kept telling myself to cease and desist, I was wasting my time.
I was, too.

[Classic reverie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rachel Ferguson's "Evenfield" was my last of her Kindle available offerings. I had read as much as I could, it started okay for me in remembering her childhood. It was just so uninteresting and having read her other books which was really a chore to read, I just decided to read something else and glance at the rest, not feeling I was missing anything but happy to move on.

[Kim · Rating 1 out of 5]

A stream of consciousness novel. It has charm, especially in revealing lives before the war started and in showing the difference between childhood memories and adult. I found this difficult because I didn't want to be in her mind and because the novel is depressing for me. Beautifully written.

[Reading with Cats · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reading this was like watching paint dry. DNF at 26%.