The First Year: Heartache and joy on the wards of a 1950s hospital

by Lucilla Andrews

Twenty-year-old Rose Standing has a reputation for being accident-prone and absent-minded. Dos she really have what it takes to make a good nurse?

"Arguably the best of all writers of hospital fiction." Nursing Times

1957. London. Rose has a lot to learn about hospital life, patients - and romance, during her first year as a probationer nurse at St Martin's Hospital in 1950s London.

The biggest question on Rose's mind is whether the Senior Surgical Officer, Jake Waring, will even notice her existence. Are her day-dreams about a romance between them destined to remain a fantasy?

Rose discovers that each department has its own heartaches and joys as she gains experience on the men's surgical, women's medical, and Casualty wards.

Meanwhile, handsome student doctor Bill Martin shows a keen interest in Rose. But she has her suspicions about his motives.

A moving and heart-warming story of a young nurse, and the challenges she faces on the hospital wards and in her personal life.

The First Year is the fourth novel by the bestselling hospital fiction author Lucilla Andrews. For the first time, Lucilla's novels are now available as ebooks. More at www.lucillaandrews.com

Genres: Romance

243 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1957

About the author

Lucilla Matthew Andrews Crichton
aka
Lucilla Andrews, Diana Gordon, Joanna Marcus.

Lucilla Matthew Andrews was born on 20 November 1919 in Suez, Egypt, the third of four children of William Henry Andrews and Lucilla Quero-Bejar. They met in Gibraltar, and married in 1913. Her mother was daughter of a Spanish doctor and descended from the Spanish nobility. Her British father workerd by the Eastern Telegraph Company (later Cable and Wireless) on African and Mediterranean stations until 1932. At the age of three, she was sent to join her older sister at boarding school in Sussex.

She joined the British Red Cross in 1940 and later trained as a nurse at St Thomas' Hospital, London, during World War II. In 1947, she retired and married Dr James Crichton, and she discovered, that he was addicted to drugs. In 1949, soon after their daugther Veronica was born, he was committed to hospital and she returned to nursing and writing. In 1952, she sold her firt romance novel, published in 1954, the same year that her husband died. She specialised in Doctor-Nurse romances, using her personal experience as inspiration, and wrote over thirty-five novels since 1996. In 1969, she decided moved to Edinburgh.

Her daugther read History at Newnham College, Cambridge, and became a journalist and Labour Party communications adviser, before her death from cancer in 2002. In late 2006, Lucilla Andrews' autobiography No Time for Romance became the focus of a posthumous controversy. It has been alleged that the novelist Ian McEwan plagiarized from this work while writing his highly-acclaimed novel, Atonement. McEwan has protested his innocence. She passed away on 3 October 2006. She was a founder member of the Romantic Novelists' Association, which honoured her shortly before her death with a lifetime achievement award.

Reviews

[Alex Ankarr · Rating 3 out of 5]

I LLIIIIIKED IT! Now, I'm not saying I'm proud of it.

[Misti · Rating 3 out of 5]

Awful kindle cover aside, this was not bad. You have to take into account the social norms at the time it was written. But if you can handle terrible advice about men, giving up careers to get married and not questioning it, and the H/h not actually talking that much to each other, it’s kind of good. Ha ha... Plus, I love getting a glimpse of life in another time. Rose is a great character and if she and Jake had actually had a few more scenes together, it would have gotten 4 stars, dated as it is. Kindle Unlimited has a few more of Lucilla Andrews books and I will probably give some of them a try.
If you liked the BBC series Call the Midwife, you might like these too.

[Nightwitch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Engaging and fun, but this is very much one of those Lucilla Andrews romances which would benefit by, well, not being a romance; it was set in the 1950's, so while we're watching the heroine fall in love with nursing, Andrews is also desperately trying to foreshadow the eventual ending in which the twenty-year-old heroine marries the thirty-six-year-old doctor on whom she has a crush, with whom she has barely spoken (but who fell in love with her at first sight, which is sweet when it's a thirty-two-year-old doctor falling for an uber-competent nurse in her late twenties whom he's known by reputation for some time but gross when it's... this), thereby giving up nursing or any profession forever. It's not offensive (although there is a line which frankly I'd have preferred they edit out about the surgeon's room being "off limits to white women" early in the book) but it's very much a product of its era. Rose is a very young twenty-year-old and her near-total lack of interaction with the hero, combined with the first-person narration, makes it hard to believe in the romance.

[Sam Still Reading · Rating 4 out of 5]

I do enjoy nursing stories set in the past, where everything seems that bit much easier in terms of workload. Lucilla Andrews is a new to me author who wrote many stories combining nursing stories with what a modern reader would describe as a touch of romance.

This book is set in a major London hospital in the 1950s as Rose and her colleagues graduate from probationary training into first year student nurses. Rose is a bit of a dreamer, but also can be quite clumsy with a penchant for doing the wrong thing in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s while gliding on a wheelchair with a life size mannequin that she runs into chief surgeon Mr Waring and a number of medical students. That sets up a crush on Jake Waring, and she will meet him many times during her rotations in surgical, medical and casualty. For the most part, the story is about Rose’s life on the ward (who knew nurses had so much time to cook and clean) and being bossed around by her seniors. But there is time to look after patients, learn new things and make new friends. It’s slightly predictable, but enjoyable. However, the super chaste romance isn’t so believable these days (although after months of night shift, you probably do want to quit and marry a consultant).
The story is very light, but also very engaging and cosy. It asks nothing more than following Rose around in her day to day and seeing what happens. These days, it’s intriguing how the hospital operates so differently – big one room wards, a seemingly endless supply of young female nurses (but also a short working life as they have to quit when they get married) and a rigid hierarchical structure. Bed shortages are managed by adding another bed to the ward and patient flow probably isn’t even a term used. But some things don’t change – how everywhere in the hospital is getting busier and people coming to emergency for minor problems. The medical problems described aren’t overly complex – heart failure, pneumonia and surgical complications – but are interesting in the way they are treated in comparison to today.
This book is good for a midweek read, as it’s not overly demanding and surprisingly engrossing. I enjoyed spending my after work evenings with Rose and her colleagues.

[Hilary Tesh · Rating 3 out of 5]

The details of life as a probationary nurse in the 1950s at St Martin’s (closely based on St Thomas’ where the author herself trained as a Nightingale nurse) are very interesting. It’s a world of strict discipline and tradition where patients stayed in hospital for a long time compared with today and were ever grateful, in the early days of the nhs, for the treatment they received. There’s only one example of impatience - and a hint of the hardship in the surrounding area with the little boy who wants to be in hospital for Christmas, together with a glimpse into the then thriving London dockyards. The romance aspect of the book is considerably less convincing, the heroine’s feelings seeming little more than a crush on a man she didn’t really know. Throughout the book, it seems quite shocking to modern readers that young women would be willing their careers for marriage - but that was how it still was at that time.
(It’s good to find these vintage books released on Kindle)

[Miriam · Rating 3 out of 5]

The details of a first-year nurse's training in the 1950s were very interesting. The romance in this one was interesting not because of yet another 16-or-so-year age gap between the nurse and her true love, but because the rules of the hospital meant that the gulf between the hero and heroine is as gaping as that in any Regency novel. It's true that nothing much happens between them throughout the book, but it really couldn't until he was no longer at the hospital, which doesn't leave much time.

[Flo · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Tomboy Meets her Master

It's very obvious that I enjoy Lucilla Andrews' writing and romances. In The First Year Andrews explores a young girl's efforts to become a nurse but shows how she grows and falls in love with a senior doctor on the staff. Despite making some idiotic and some terrible mistakes Nurse Rose Standing gets through her first 6 months at a large London hospital but realizes that she has fallen madly in love with Jake Waring, the Senior Surgical Officer at the hospital. What a beautiful love story.

[mrs lynda hall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great storyline loved this book.

[gail Ramsay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lucilla andrews

Fantastic book . Could imagine being on wards working . Now to pick next book. What book to chose A Love Lucilla Andrews

[Kathryn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great details of a London hospital in the 1950's. The romance is a little unlikely but I enjoyed it because of the times I read Lucilla Andrews books back in the 60's and 70's.

[Catarina Jonsson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Have a Swedish copy and have red a few times! Wouldn't mind reading it in the native tongue! Love it!!