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Love for Lydia
Love for Lydia was the first novel with an English setting that H.E. Bates wrote after the second world war, and it was his own favourite among his Northamptonshire novels. The Northants setting becomes the background both ugly and beautiful for the story of a young girl, the daughter of a decaying aristocratic household, and her lovers, of which the most important is the narrator himself.
Published in 1952, it is essentially an autobiographical novel, and, though much of his fiction reflects his own life and background, this probably contains more than in any other piece of fiction – That may explain why it is such a satisfying book. Bates spent a brief time as a reporter on the Northamptonshire Chronicle, and there are other echoes of the author’s personal experiences here in the character of the narrator, Richardson. Lydia, it seems, is based on, or was inspired by, a young lady he once glimpsed on Rushden railway station – "a tallish, dark, proud, aloof young girl in a black cloak lined with scarlet". Lydia in the story is the sheltered and selfish Aspen daughter, and the novel chronicles her affairs with Richardson and two of the other young men. It has been described as a novel of "a young man's struggle to understand and resolve himself to a formidable world of change and uncertainty”, and the novel ends in his committing himself to Lydia in a much more mature and lasting way than he could have done at the beginning of the story. The novel was serialised on television in 1976.
Published in 1952, it is essentially an autobiographical novel, and, though much of his fiction reflects his own life and background, this probably contains more than in any other piece of fiction – That may explain why it is such a satisfying book. Bates spent a brief time as a reporter on the Northamptonshire Chronicle, and there are other echoes of the author’s personal experiences here in the character of the narrator, Richardson. Lydia, it seems, is based on, or was inspired by, a young lady he once glimpsed on Rushden railway station – "a tallish, dark, proud, aloof young girl in a black cloak lined with scarlet". Lydia in the story is the sheltered and selfish Aspen daughter, and the novel chronicles her affairs with Richardson and two of the other young men. It has been described as a novel of "a young man's struggle to understand and resolve himself to a formidable world of change and uncertainty”, and the novel ends in his committing himself to Lydia in a much more mature and lasting way than he could have done at the beginning of the story. The novel was serialised on television in 1976.
319 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1952
53 people are currently reading
1077 people want to read
About the author
H.E. Bates
278 books194 followersHerbert Ernest Bates, CBE is widely recognised as one of the finest short story writers of his generation, with more than 20 story collections published in his lifetime. It should not be overlooked, however, that he also wrote some outstanding novels, starting with The Two Sisters through to A Moment in Time, with such works as Love For Lydia, Fair Stood the Wind for France and The Scarlet Sword earning high praise from the critics. His study of the Modern Short Story is considered one of the best ever written on the subject.
He was born in Rushden, Northamptonshire and was educated at Kettering Grammar School. After leaving school, he was briefly a newspaper reporter and a warehouse clerk, but his heart was always in writing and his dream to be able to make a living by his pen.
Many of his stories depict life in the rural Midlands of England, particularly his native Northamptonshire. Bates was partial to taking long midnight walks around the Northamptonshire countryside - and this often provided the inspiration for his stories. Bates was a great lover of the countryside and its people and this is exemplified in two volumes of essays entitled Through the Woods and Down the River.
In 1931, he married Madge Cox, his sweetheart from the next road in his native Rushden. They moved to the village of Little Chart in Kent and bought an old granary and this together with an acre of garden they converted into a home. It was in this phase of his life that he found the inspiration for the Larkins series of novels -The Darling Buds of May, A Breath of French Air, When the Green Woods Laugh, etc. - and the Uncle Silas tales. Not surprisingly, these highly successful novels inspired television series that were immensely popular.
His collection of stories written while serving in the RAF during World War II, best known by the title The Stories of Flying Officer X, but previously published as Something in the Air (a compilation of his two wartime collections under the pseudonym 'Flying Officer X' and titled The Greatest People in the World and How Sleep the Brave), deserve particular attention. By the end of the war he had achieved the rank of Squadron Leader.
Bates was influenced by Chekhov in particular, and his knowledge of the history of the short story is obvious from the famous study he produced on the subject. He also wrote his autobiography in three volumes (each delightfully illustrated) which were subsequently published in a one-volume Autobiography.
Bates was a keen and knowledgeable gardener and wrote numerous books on flowers. The Granary remained their home for the whole of their married life. After the death of H. E Bates, Madge moved to a bungalow, which had originally been a cow byre, next to the Granary. She died in 2004 at age 95. They raised two sons and two daughters.
primarily from Wikipedia, with additions by Keith Farnsworth
He was born in Rushden, Northamptonshire and was educated at Kettering Grammar School. After leaving school, he was briefly a newspaper reporter and a warehouse clerk, but his heart was always in writing and his dream to be able to make a living by his pen.
Many of his stories depict life in the rural Midlands of England, particularly his native Northamptonshire. Bates was partial to taking long midnight walks around the Northamptonshire countryside - and this often provided the inspiration for his stories. Bates was a great lover of the countryside and its people and this is exemplified in two volumes of essays entitled Through the Woods and Down the River.
In 1931, he married Madge Cox, his sweetheart from the next road in his native Rushden. They moved to the village of Little Chart in Kent and bought an old granary and this together with an acre of garden they converted into a home. It was in this phase of his life that he found the inspiration for the Larkins series of novels -The Darling Buds of May, A Breath of French Air, When the Green Woods Laugh, etc. - and the Uncle Silas tales. Not surprisingly, these highly successful novels inspired television series that were immensely popular.
His collection of stories written while serving in the RAF during World War II, best known by the title The Stories of Flying Officer X, but previously published as Something in the Air (a compilation of his two wartime collections under the pseudonym 'Flying Officer X' and titled The Greatest People in the World and How Sleep the Brave), deserve particular attention. By the end of the war he had achieved the rank of Squadron Leader.
Bates was influenced by Chekhov in particular, and his knowledge of the history of the short story is obvious from the famous study he produced on the subject. He also wrote his autobiography in three volumes (each delightfully illustrated) which were subsequently published in a one-volume Autobiography.
Bates was a keen and knowledgeable gardener and wrote numerous books on flowers. The Granary remained their home for the whole of their married life. After the death of H. E Bates, Madge moved to a bungalow, which had originally been a cow byre, next to the Granary. She died in 2004 at age 95. They raised two sons and two daughters.
primarily from Wikipedia, with additions by Keith Farnsworth
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 98 reviews
August 11, 2020
5★
A glorious, slowly evolving story told by a young man about his dull, drab industrial village of leather tanneries and the changes to his life when he meets Lydia Aspen. Richardson (the only name we know him by) and Lydia are both nineteen, innocent children by today’s teen-aged standards. Apparently orphaned, she has been brought to live with her two elderly aunts, the aristocratic Aspen sisters, and their unsavoury brother, in their imposing house surrounded by expanses of land and avenues of trees.
Richardson, a reluctant newspaper reporter, is summonsed to the house by the aunts and asked to provide some companionship for their young charge. They want her to meet people and not be isolated and stuffy as they are. Lydia is lovely but awkward, and the two young people come to know each other, bonding over ice skating, dancing and walks. She’s a flirt and a tease, delighting in her growing power over him but fretting that it won’t last.
The narrator is a sensitive, nature-loving fellow who seems out of his depth with this budding femme fatale. Someone has said this is reminiscent of The Great Gatsby, and I can see why. There's pain and tragedy amidst the partying.
The first half of the book is about their growing attachment to each other, but as they begin to socialise more with others, we meet a number of interesting characters, some of whom are rivals for Lydia’s attention. And the large, blonde, blue-eyed Holland family, is worth waiting for. Sixteen people sat down to Sunday dinner, including the newest generation.
“. . . already a generation of fair, chaste-looking Holland was springing up, all alike, all clean and fresh as sheaves in a wheat field. You were never expected to hold conversations at Busketts; meals had the pleasant discordance of a disorganized and hungry choir. Brown arms passed and exchanged and repassed across the table buttery masses of scones and bread and currant loaf, plates of ham and watercress and pork-pie and in winter toasted crumpets and apples baked and stuffed to a sugary glitter with walnuts and figs. Tarts of lemon curd and Mrs Holland’s speciality, cheese-curd, a tart of greenish melting softness with fat brown plums in it, were wolfed down by mouths that seemed to be laughing whenever they were not eating.”
The writing is exquisite. If I have a complaint, it’s only that in this dry, grey, drab place there are also so many flowers, cultivated and wild, that Richardson feels the need to tell us about every blossom he spies.
They walked in the garden after tea past “long stone pergolas of dripping rambler rose, hot crimson above urns of pale blue agapanthus lilies on paths of sun-baked stone. . . opulence and amplitude and calm loveliness spread with lushness everywhere about long lawns broken by cedar-shade pools of intense blackness.”
And that pretty much describes Lydia as well. A contrast of colour and lushness and dark shadows. The characters are wonderfully real, and the weather is almost another character itself.
Through the seasons, we are moved from bitter cold where a chapel has “frozen steps like a waterfall of chipped glass” to extreme heat. “There was no rain and by August the tips of the elms on the high clay-land were scorched yellow, then brown and dry. Corn began to catch fire by railway tracks. . . in bean-fields you could hear the splintering crack of exploding pods, burnt black by heat. . . “
H.E. Bates is well known still for Darling Buds Of May and the series that followed, and I have long loved the Larkin family. This is not so light-hearted, and there are some dark times ahead for Richardson and his friends.
I am so pleased this has been reissued or I might never have discovered it. Thanks to NetGalley and Bloomsbury for a copy for review.
A glorious, slowly evolving story told by a young man about his dull, drab industrial village of leather tanneries and the changes to his life when he meets Lydia Aspen. Richardson (the only name we know him by) and Lydia are both nineteen, innocent children by today’s teen-aged standards. Apparently orphaned, she has been brought to live with her two elderly aunts, the aristocratic Aspen sisters, and their unsavoury brother, in their imposing house surrounded by expanses of land and avenues of trees.
Richardson, a reluctant newspaper reporter, is summonsed to the house by the aunts and asked to provide some companionship for their young charge. They want her to meet people and not be isolated and stuffy as they are. Lydia is lovely but awkward, and the two young people come to know each other, bonding over ice skating, dancing and walks. She’s a flirt and a tease, delighting in her growing power over him but fretting that it won’t last.
The narrator is a sensitive, nature-loving fellow who seems out of his depth with this budding femme fatale. Someone has said this is reminiscent of The Great Gatsby, and I can see why. There's pain and tragedy amidst the partying.
The first half of the book is about their growing attachment to each other, but as they begin to socialise more with others, we meet a number of interesting characters, some of whom are rivals for Lydia’s attention. And the large, blonde, blue-eyed Holland family, is worth waiting for. Sixteen people sat down to Sunday dinner, including the newest generation.
“. . . already a generation of fair, chaste-looking Holland was springing up, all alike, all clean and fresh as sheaves in a wheat field. You were never expected to hold conversations at Busketts; meals had the pleasant discordance of a disorganized and hungry choir. Brown arms passed and exchanged and repassed across the table buttery masses of scones and bread and currant loaf, plates of ham and watercress and pork-pie and in winter toasted crumpets and apples baked and stuffed to a sugary glitter with walnuts and figs. Tarts of lemon curd and Mrs Holland’s speciality, cheese-curd, a tart of greenish melting softness with fat brown plums in it, were wolfed down by mouths that seemed to be laughing whenever they were not eating.”
The writing is exquisite. If I have a complaint, it’s only that in this dry, grey, drab place there are also so many flowers, cultivated and wild, that Richardson feels the need to tell us about every blossom he spies.
They walked in the garden after tea past “long stone pergolas of dripping rambler rose, hot crimson above urns of pale blue agapanthus lilies on paths of sun-baked stone. . . opulence and amplitude and calm loveliness spread with lushness everywhere about long lawns broken by cedar-shade pools of intense blackness.”
And that pretty much describes Lydia as well. A contrast of colour and lushness and dark shadows. The characters are wonderfully real, and the weather is almost another character itself.
Through the seasons, we are moved from bitter cold where a chapel has “frozen steps like a waterfall of chipped glass” to extreme heat. “There was no rain and by August the tips of the elms on the high clay-land were scorched yellow, then brown and dry. Corn began to catch fire by railway tracks. . . in bean-fields you could hear the splintering crack of exploding pods, burnt black by heat. . . “
H.E. Bates is well known still for Darling Buds Of May and the series that followed, and I have long loved the Larkin family. This is not so light-hearted, and there are some dark times ahead for Richardson and his friends.
I am so pleased this has been reissued or I might never have discovered it. Thanks to NetGalley and Bloomsbury for a copy for review.
February 25, 2012
LOVE FOR LYDIA is the sexy, sophisticated story of the dizzy and exciting but also rather empty lifestyle of English society people during the wild Twenties decade. The central character, Lydia, is a beautiful but rather shy girl at first. Then she inherits a great deal of money and begins to realize that she is a very desirable catch -- and that men will let her get away with almost anything!
The one man who truly loves Lydia is Richardson, a would-be writer from a rather poor and humble local family. On a cold winter day, Lydia has her first kiss from him, but instead of making her fall for him it merely sparks her interest in men in general. Before long Lydia is the talk of the town, dashing about in her flashy new clothes and going to hot, Twenties-style dances where she is always the center of attention. One by one, all the handsomest and most exciting young men in the neighborhood simply collapse at her feet -- rich and stylish Alec Sanderson, sweet and trusting Tom Holland, and even the tough local mechanic, mean and muscular and hairy-chested Blackie Flannagan. Lydia toys with all three men at once, totally enjoying both the sense of power and the pleasure. Totally ignoring the pain in Richardson's eyes, she grows more and more reckless, until at last tragedy strikes. Lydia sees herself as she truly is -- weak, greedy and selfish. She wants to change, but by now even loyal and faithful Richardson is tired of her. Is it too late for Lydia -- too late for love?
LOVE FOR LYDIA is a detailed and beautifully written romantic epic. The big dance scenes are exhilarating, but the quiet scenes draw you in too. Lydia changes from a shy schoolgirl to a glamorous and sexy siren.
But in her quiet moments you can see her basic insecurity, like the way she lies on the bed listening to the same jazz love song over and over. Night after night she dances till 2 or 3AM, and then next day is still asleep past noon.
There's an aimless quality to her life, and an emptiness as well. It shows in the way she downs a drink before dinner or takes a quick hit from a pocketbook flask. Glamorous and sexy, but you feel the human side of it -- the loneliness and the waste. A very good British novel.
The one man who truly loves Lydia is Richardson, a would-be writer from a rather poor and humble local family. On a cold winter day, Lydia has her first kiss from him, but instead of making her fall for him it merely sparks her interest in men in general. Before long Lydia is the talk of the town, dashing about in her flashy new clothes and going to hot, Twenties-style dances where she is always the center of attention. One by one, all the handsomest and most exciting young men in the neighborhood simply collapse at her feet -- rich and stylish Alec Sanderson, sweet and trusting Tom Holland, and even the tough local mechanic, mean and muscular and hairy-chested Blackie Flannagan. Lydia toys with all three men at once, totally enjoying both the sense of power and the pleasure. Totally ignoring the pain in Richardson's eyes, she grows more and more reckless, until at last tragedy strikes. Lydia sees herself as she truly is -- weak, greedy and selfish. She wants to change, but by now even loyal and faithful Richardson is tired of her. Is it too late for Lydia -- too late for love?
LOVE FOR LYDIA is a detailed and beautifully written romantic epic. The big dance scenes are exhilarating, but the quiet scenes draw you in too. Lydia changes from a shy schoolgirl to a glamorous and sexy siren.
But in her quiet moments you can see her basic insecurity, like the way she lies on the bed listening to the same jazz love song over and over. Night after night she dances till 2 or 3AM, and then next day is still asleep past noon.
There's an aimless quality to her life, and an emptiness as well. It shows in the way she downs a drink before dinner or takes a quick hit from a pocketbook flask. Glamorous and sexy, but you feel the human side of it -- the loneliness and the waste. A very good British novel.
June 25, 2016
You know how Fitzgerald's writing sounds like neon lights and champagne jazz? Transpose that to the English countryside with pops of flowers and you have H.E. Bates.
Thank you to Bloomsbury and Netgalley for the review copy!
Thank you to Bloomsbury and Netgalley for the review copy!
July 7, 2018
After planning to read this book for decades, I finally got to it. It's so beautifully told and completely put me in another place and time. The young narrator Richardson expresses the pain and beauty of love, loss, and growing up in such an eloquent and moving manner. This one will go down as a favorite, and is worthy of a re-read. I loved it.
February 20, 2021
A thoughtful coming of age story.
September 8, 2018
What a wonderfully satisfying story.
I have not finished a book this quickly in a long time.
Love For Lydia is a vicarious whirlwind of affairs between the unconventional and extraordinary Lydia and her growing group of village boy admirers, lived and told by our narrator and Lydia's long-time lover, the patient yet afflicted young Mr Richardson.
Lydia needs attention, Lydia needs company and she collects men like daisies on a chain: first Richardson, then Alex, then Tom and then Blackie.
So the adventure, set in a small English town inside a valley surrounded by countryside hills - of which plenty of attention to detail is given, begins when Richardson, a junior newspaper reporter, wanders through the gates of the mysterious Aspen manor on a death knock. There, he meets the curious Aspen sisters who request he take out their niece, who is coincidentally the same age as Richardson. At 19, the shy Lydia blossoms into the vivacious and fickle character we come to know as she and Richardson fall in love.
Their sultry romance is short-lived when Lydia strays away from commitment in favour of her glitzy roaring twenties lifestyle, which she enjoys to the extreme. It all soon becomes destructive and fatal as one tragedy leads to the next, setting the town again in gloom and killing whatever lively spirit was there. The joyful characters of the story fade away into the scenery as the past becomes a faint memory that they think back to with melancholy. Is it too late for a second chance of love between Lydia and Richardson or does the hurt from the past stain the present too much for them to move on?
Bates' writing is a delicacy. Typically I prefer sparse sentences that say a lot with a little in digestible bites that keep the story moving along at a decent pace as opposed to long and slow over-articulated descriptions like those by Jane Austen but somehow, the writing in Love For Lydia paints every scene so vividly that you just couldn't do without it. The imagery is a powerful part of the story, of the mood. The winter that begins the story is romantic, idealistic and sparkling, contrasting the long hot summer that ensues or the winter at the end of the novel, which portrays the town as cold and vacant, resembling the mental state of Richardson and Lydia.
Bates pays each and every character the full attention they deserve and when you read of them, it is easy to feel a familiarity that you've met before an unsavoury plum-awful Rollo or a flower adoring dumpling Bertie, a kind and timid blonde-haired Tom and our steadfast charismatic old-soul narrator, Richardson. Perhaps not with Lydia, who could be described as a variant of Scarlett O'Hara and Holly Golightly. She is a literal femme fatale, unintentionally. As a reader, you want to hate her - you know you should - but you can't stop being fascinated, relative to her disciples, so you end up stuck in a limbo of neither love nor hate but resented dependency.
Love For Lydia is poignant, nostalgic, touching, sexy and sad - my type exactly. Novels like this are hard to come by and I am so glad I did come by it, thanks to a lucky coincidence. It is extremely underrated and deserves more popularity for it is not every day I get to add a book to my 'all time favourites' list but there it is, proud and shining - a definite contender for a second read.
I have not finished a book this quickly in a long time.
Love For Lydia is a vicarious whirlwind of affairs between the unconventional and extraordinary Lydia and her growing group of village boy admirers, lived and told by our narrator and Lydia's long-time lover, the patient yet afflicted young Mr Richardson.
Lydia needs attention, Lydia needs company and she collects men like daisies on a chain: first Richardson, then Alex, then Tom and then Blackie.
So the adventure, set in a small English town inside a valley surrounded by countryside hills - of which plenty of attention to detail is given, begins when Richardson, a junior newspaper reporter, wanders through the gates of the mysterious Aspen manor on a death knock. There, he meets the curious Aspen sisters who request he take out their niece, who is coincidentally the same age as Richardson. At 19, the shy Lydia blossoms into the vivacious and fickle character we come to know as she and Richardson fall in love.
Their sultry romance is short-lived when Lydia strays away from commitment in favour of her glitzy roaring twenties lifestyle, which she enjoys to the extreme. It all soon becomes destructive and fatal as one tragedy leads to the next, setting the town again in gloom and killing whatever lively spirit was there. The joyful characters of the story fade away into the scenery as the past becomes a faint memory that they think back to with melancholy. Is it too late for a second chance of love between Lydia and Richardson or does the hurt from the past stain the present too much for them to move on?
Bates' writing is a delicacy. Typically I prefer sparse sentences that say a lot with a little in digestible bites that keep the story moving along at a decent pace as opposed to long and slow over-articulated descriptions like those by Jane Austen but somehow, the writing in Love For Lydia paints every scene so vividly that you just couldn't do without it. The imagery is a powerful part of the story, of the mood. The winter that begins the story is romantic, idealistic and sparkling, contrasting the long hot summer that ensues or the winter at the end of the novel, which portrays the town as cold and vacant, resembling the mental state of Richardson and Lydia.
Bates pays each and every character the full attention they deserve and when you read of them, it is easy to feel a familiarity that you've met before an unsavoury plum-awful Rollo or a flower adoring dumpling Bertie, a kind and timid blonde-haired Tom and our steadfast charismatic old-soul narrator, Richardson. Perhaps not with Lydia, who could be described as a variant of Scarlett O'Hara and Holly Golightly. She is a literal femme fatale, unintentionally. As a reader, you want to hate her - you know you should - but you can't stop being fascinated, relative to her disciples, so you end up stuck in a limbo of neither love nor hate but resented dependency.
Love For Lydia is poignant, nostalgic, touching, sexy and sad - my type exactly. Novels like this are hard to come by and I am so glad I did come by it, thanks to a lucky coincidence. It is extremely underrated and deserves more popularity for it is not every day I get to add a book to my 'all time favourites' list but there it is, proud and shining - a definite contender for a second read.
January 23, 2025
For the first half, I struggled with interest. I had to tell myself to try another chapter, and another one. Eventually, I got involved and interested.
I appreciated it was a coming-of-age story from a boy/man point of view. So far, most of such books I have read have been from a girl's perspective.
I regret I seemed to lose something of the story. It was a well-written novel about 20. of XX century. I really liked it, and I can recommend it.
[3.5 stars]
I appreciated it was a coming-of-age story from a boy/man point of view. So far, most of such books I have read have been from a girl's perspective.
I regret I seemed to lose something of the story. It was a well-written novel about 20. of XX century. I really liked it, and I can recommend it.
[3.5 stars]
October 30, 2017
The trouble with Lydia is that she's an obnoxious, insufferable bore. A nice set of legs can't ever compensate for that.
May 10, 2016
HE Bates wrote before, during, and after World War II. Many readers came to his work after seeing a televised version of it on Masterpiece Theater. It was different for me. I am fond of excellent fiction, military history, and short stories, and when I cruised Net Galley and found The Flying Officer X and Other Stories, I took a chance and scored a copy. Once I had read those, I knew I would want to read more of his work when I could. So although I came to this outstanding novel in a different way than most readers, I have to tell you that I loved it every bit as much as they did. Thank you Net Galley and Bloomsbury Reader for the complimentary DRC. I read multiple books at a time, and I feel a bit sorry for others I read at the same time I read this, because almost everything else looks shabby next to Bates’s work. Those that enjoy great literary fiction, romance, and historical fiction—which this technically isn’t, since it was written during that time rather than later, but the feeling it generates is similar—should get a copy. Once the reader opens it, she is destined to be lost to all other purposes until the last page is turned.
This spellbinding story will be released digitally Thursday, May 12, 2016.
The setting is a small town in Britain, a town with a tannery and small farms. One great house surrounded by beautiful gardens stands aloof from the rest; it houses two elderly single women and their alcoholic brother.
Then Lydia, their niece, comes to live with them.
Lydia’s arrival is cloaked in mystery. She doesn’t talk about her mother. The aunts encourage the belief that Lydia is an orphan, but we later learn that isn’t really true. And at first Lydia, who has been cocooned so carefully that she has no social graces nor any real wardrobe, futzing around in clothing that looks suspiciously like that of her elderly aunts, really needs a trustworthy young mentor close to her own age. After having eyed the local population, the aunts send for the protagonist, young Mr. Richards, whose family fortunes have slid to terrible places. Once the proud owners of considerable farmland, the Richards family is now cramped in a noisy flat that shares a wall—and the attendant noises and smells—with the tannery.
Perhaps the thing the aunts like most about young Richards is his great fondness for flowers, an unusual trait in a young man at the party-animal age. He endears himself to the aunt that gives her attention to the landscaping, commenting on the traits of flowers and making suggestions that create an instant bond between young man and old lady, but Richards is unprepared for what awaits him.
The aunts want him to meet Lydia, and they wonder whether he might take her skating on the lake. He agrees to do so. Lydia has never skated and starts out as if she were a colt trying to navigate a frozen surface, all arms and legs floundering, falling. So he is unprepared for the grace and dignity that soon possess her. They fall in love, and young love proves to be the school of hard knocks for our young man, as it is for so many.
None of this brief outline can provide Bates’s magical facility with words. This blog has reviewed hundreds of books—all read and reviewed by me—and this is one that stands out and that has stood the test of time. Bates transports us to a place we have never been and makes us feel we know it, and its inhabitants, intimately. He also lights on issues like social class and the way those with lifelong privilege might treat those without. But this is not a social justice campaign, it’s a brilliant work of fiction that sizzles in places and scorches in others. Character development is spectacularly done; I have had my nose in half a dozen books since I finished reading this one, yet I still think of Blackie, of Tom, of Nancy, of Alex, and oh of course, of Lydia. The ending is bittersweet yet strangely satisfying.
The vocabulary level that makes for such tremendous depth of character and setting also requires a strong facility for the English language on the part of the reader. Although there are no explicit sex scenes, I don’t recommend handing this novel to your love-struck sixteen-year-old as summer reading unless he or she reads at the college level.
I dare you to find a more engaging love story than this one.
This spellbinding story will be released digitally Thursday, May 12, 2016.
The setting is a small town in Britain, a town with a tannery and small farms. One great house surrounded by beautiful gardens stands aloof from the rest; it houses two elderly single women and their alcoholic brother.
Then Lydia, their niece, comes to live with them.
Lydia’s arrival is cloaked in mystery. She doesn’t talk about her mother. The aunts encourage the belief that Lydia is an orphan, but we later learn that isn’t really true. And at first Lydia, who has been cocooned so carefully that she has no social graces nor any real wardrobe, futzing around in clothing that looks suspiciously like that of her elderly aunts, really needs a trustworthy young mentor close to her own age. After having eyed the local population, the aunts send for the protagonist, young Mr. Richards, whose family fortunes have slid to terrible places. Once the proud owners of considerable farmland, the Richards family is now cramped in a noisy flat that shares a wall—and the attendant noises and smells—with the tannery.
Perhaps the thing the aunts like most about young Richards is his great fondness for flowers, an unusual trait in a young man at the party-animal age. He endears himself to the aunt that gives her attention to the landscaping, commenting on the traits of flowers and making suggestions that create an instant bond between young man and old lady, but Richards is unprepared for what awaits him.
The aunts want him to meet Lydia, and they wonder whether he might take her skating on the lake. He agrees to do so. Lydia has never skated and starts out as if she were a colt trying to navigate a frozen surface, all arms and legs floundering, falling. So he is unprepared for the grace and dignity that soon possess her. They fall in love, and young love proves to be the school of hard knocks for our young man, as it is for so many.
None of this brief outline can provide Bates’s magical facility with words. This blog has reviewed hundreds of books—all read and reviewed by me—and this is one that stands out and that has stood the test of time. Bates transports us to a place we have never been and makes us feel we know it, and its inhabitants, intimately. He also lights on issues like social class and the way those with lifelong privilege might treat those without. But this is not a social justice campaign, it’s a brilliant work of fiction that sizzles in places and scorches in others. Character development is spectacularly done; I have had my nose in half a dozen books since I finished reading this one, yet I still think of Blackie, of Tom, of Nancy, of Alex, and oh of course, of Lydia. The ending is bittersweet yet strangely satisfying.
The vocabulary level that makes for such tremendous depth of character and setting also requires a strong facility for the English language on the part of the reader. Although there are no explicit sex scenes, I don’t recommend handing this novel to your love-struck sixteen-year-old as summer reading unless he or she reads at the college level.
I dare you to find a more engaging love story than this one.
May 26, 2016
Love for Lydia, H. E. Bates
Review from Jeannie Zelos book reviews
Genre: Literary Fiction, General Fiction (Adult)
I’m an avid reader, always have been and occasionally I feel pangs of conscience for not having read a “classic” book, one it seems everyone has read and loved.
This book is one of those, I thought it was time to extend my reading, try something different. Sadly its one of those that others love but leave me cold.
I found it long winded and dreary, and so many times I was just waiting for something, anything, to happen. It seemed like every tiny aspect had to be described in minute detail.Maybe if I’d liked Lydia it would have helped, but I didn’t. she came over as a shallow, vapid, selfish girl, one who had to be the centred of attention, the focus of all the drama, and she didn’t care about others feelings, just used people for her own needs. I really didn’t know why the men fell in love with her.
I found it hard to really like any of the characters, I never really felt I understood them, didn’t know them enough to care about what they went through. I need to like characters ( or hate them) I need that strong emotion, need to enjoy what happens to them and here I just felt I wasn’t interested in any of them.
I probably liked Nancy the best, felt sorry for her, but not enough to really care ultimately about her. The boys – well, I just wanted to shout “Open your eyes! See what's really going on!” But there – that's why its not a story for me, but is for hundreds of thousands of others ;-)
One I now know why I didn’t read it....great for others but clearly H.E.Bates writing isn’t for me.
Stars: Two, a miss for me
ARC received from Netgalley and publishers for review purposes.
Review from Jeannie Zelos book reviews
Genre: Literary Fiction, General Fiction (Adult)
I’m an avid reader, always have been and occasionally I feel pangs of conscience for not having read a “classic” book, one it seems everyone has read and loved.
This book is one of those, I thought it was time to extend my reading, try something different. Sadly its one of those that others love but leave me cold.
I found it long winded and dreary, and so many times I was just waiting for something, anything, to happen. It seemed like every tiny aspect had to be described in minute detail.Maybe if I’d liked Lydia it would have helped, but I didn’t. she came over as a shallow, vapid, selfish girl, one who had to be the centred of attention, the focus of all the drama, and she didn’t care about others feelings, just used people for her own needs. I really didn’t know why the men fell in love with her.
I found it hard to really like any of the characters, I never really felt I understood them, didn’t know them enough to care about what they went through. I need to like characters ( or hate them) I need that strong emotion, need to enjoy what happens to them and here I just felt I wasn’t interested in any of them.
I probably liked Nancy the best, felt sorry for her, but not enough to really care ultimately about her. The boys – well, I just wanted to shout “Open your eyes! See what's really going on!” But there – that's why its not a story for me, but is for hundreds of thousands of others ;-)
One I now know why I didn’t read it....great for others but clearly H.E.Bates writing isn’t for me.
Stars: Two, a miss for me
ARC received from Netgalley and publishers for review purposes.
January 22, 2010
As winter comes to Evensford, a local newspaper reporter meets a shy heiress.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00czgtq
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00czgtq
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 4, 2016
Lydia arrived an awkward girl, bloomed into an attractive woman, discovered men liked her, and gaily left a wake of bodies in her path. When she saw what she had accomplished she tried to burn herself out in a two year binge of dancing and drink and ended up desperately lonely and guilty in a sanitarium.
Some might believe Lydia was a tease and vixen, partying her way into destruction. Others may feel she was a girl-child who, when released from the 'cotton-wool' prison of her girlhood, mishandles her sudden sexual power over men. Or is she the genetic product of her profligate parents, an alcoholic mother paid off to keep away and the distant, womanizing father who proscribed her sheltered girlhood?
Love for Lydia by H.E. Bates is an autobiographical homage to his home town, with the narrator Richardson sharing Bates' early jobs and family.
It is the story of young people growing up, the thrill and torment of first love, the end of a way of life, and class stricture. It is the story of what happens when four young men fall for Lydia and how she handles their adulation. It is the story of learning what love really means. It is a love story to England's pastoral beauty.
The novel begins in 1929 when Richardson is nineteen and a reporter for the town paper. Richardson is sent to the Aspen manor to learn about the eldest Aspen brother's demise. The deceased's elderly spinster sisters introduce Richardson to his heir and daughter, Lydia. The aunts suggest he take her skating, show her some fun, for they don't want her growing up in isolation. Ill dressed and stick thin with candlestick curls, Lydia is having fun with peers for the first time. It is a magical time.
Richardson discovers that Lydia is game for anything, pushing him past his comfort zone. And into regular clandestine meetings where she enjoys his physical attention. As Lydia fills out her aunt's hand-me-down dresses Richardson falls in love, and Lydia claims to love him too.
'Oh! Darling--don't stop loving me'--she said. 'Don't ever stop loving me-'...'Even if I'm bad to you--would you?--will you always?'
'Yes,' I said.
The aunts press the young people to attend dances and Lydia's social network expands. Richardson's best friend, Alex, local yeoman's son Tom, and chauffeur Blackie all fall under Lydia's charm and vie for her love. Lydia is 'excitable and impulsive," following her instincts thoughtlessly. In the battle for Lydia's attention hearts are broken and even a death occurs.
The descriptions of the landscape are beautifully written. Richardson seeks out nature as a respite and for its restorative effects. The town is a center of shoe manufacturing, an unattractive and crowded place. Richardson is very aware that the loveliness of the land has been infringed upon by mankind.
In 1977 I watched and enjoyed the Masterpiece Theater's series Love for Lydia but had not read the book until now. I am so glad I did. I will look to read more by Mr. Bates in the future.
I received a free ebook through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.
Some might believe Lydia was a tease and vixen, partying her way into destruction. Others may feel she was a girl-child who, when released from the 'cotton-wool' prison of her girlhood, mishandles her sudden sexual power over men. Or is she the genetic product of her profligate parents, an alcoholic mother paid off to keep away and the distant, womanizing father who proscribed her sheltered girlhood?
Love for Lydia by H.E. Bates is an autobiographical homage to his home town, with the narrator Richardson sharing Bates' early jobs and family.
It is the story of young people growing up, the thrill and torment of first love, the end of a way of life, and class stricture. It is the story of what happens when four young men fall for Lydia and how she handles their adulation. It is the story of learning what love really means. It is a love story to England's pastoral beauty.
The novel begins in 1929 when Richardson is nineteen and a reporter for the town paper. Richardson is sent to the Aspen manor to learn about the eldest Aspen brother's demise. The deceased's elderly spinster sisters introduce Richardson to his heir and daughter, Lydia. The aunts suggest he take her skating, show her some fun, for they don't want her growing up in isolation. Ill dressed and stick thin with candlestick curls, Lydia is having fun with peers for the first time. It is a magical time.
Richardson discovers that Lydia is game for anything, pushing him past his comfort zone. And into regular clandestine meetings where she enjoys his physical attention. As Lydia fills out her aunt's hand-me-down dresses Richardson falls in love, and Lydia claims to love him too.
'Oh! Darling--don't stop loving me'--she said. 'Don't ever stop loving me-'...'Even if I'm bad to you--would you?--will you always?'
'Yes,' I said.
The aunts press the young people to attend dances and Lydia's social network expands. Richardson's best friend, Alex, local yeoman's son Tom, and chauffeur Blackie all fall under Lydia's charm and vie for her love. Lydia is 'excitable and impulsive," following her instincts thoughtlessly. In the battle for Lydia's attention hearts are broken and even a death occurs.
The descriptions of the landscape are beautifully written. Richardson seeks out nature as a respite and for its restorative effects. The town is a center of shoe manufacturing, an unattractive and crowded place. Richardson is very aware that the loveliness of the land has been infringed upon by mankind.
In 1977 I watched and enjoyed the Masterpiece Theater's series Love for Lydia but had not read the book until now. I am so glad I did. I will look to read more by Mr. Bates in the future.
I received a free ebook through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.
February 5, 2017
This has to be one of the best books I have read in a long time, or possibly ever. It is completely beautiful, showcasing the highs and lows of young people in love. Bates' intricate descriptions of surroundings and of inner thoughts reflect the genius of Austen herself. A perfect read for the hopeless romantics, the reader will feel the pure joy as well as the pain of Edward and his experiences in growing up.
April 1, 2024
4,5. Tiene destellos del Gran Gatsby. Qué pena que este delicioso libro sea tan poco conocido, es un “coming of age” pizpireta que recomiendo mucho.
PD: la única pega que le pongo es que hay muertes de ciertas amistades que no se gestionan demasiado, pasan un poco sin pena ni gloria.
PD: la única pega que le pongo es que hay muertes de ciertas amistades que no se gestionan demasiado, pasan un poco sin pena ni gloria.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 14, 2020
H. E. Bates is a deceptive writer. He wouldn't, I should think, have known this at the time when he was writing his classic stories back in the 50s; but reading his works today takes some careful work.
This is because books such as 'Love for Lydia' or 'The Darling Buds of May' are very beautiful, often very sweet stories on a gloriously rich England and with a great love of ordinary English folk. To be sure, 'Love for Lydia' is a tragedy and there's a great deal of hobnobbing of the educated and privileged classes. Nevertheless, it is beautifully written, pastoral in style and, like 'Remains of the Day' something of a longing for a simpler time.
And there's the deception: there was no simpler time. The characters within are caricatures of both ruling and rural classes and fail to really tell the truth of what life was like for either.
The female character of the title, is a spoilt and unthinking brat of a girl who, from beginning to end, is positively unlovely and seems to hold nothing more than a sexual magnetism to the various men who fawn at her feet. Why they fall hopelessly in love with her, God only knows. The narrator, Richardson, is a wet drip who is neither capable of giving Lydia the chastisement she deserves, nor of pulling away when she clearly becomes not worth the effort, is hoist by her own petard and he falls out of love with her. In between, he mopes around and is absolutely ineffectual. I'm fairly certain you could beat him around the head and he would hardly murmur. The rest of the characters barely register as anything other than bit parts which come in and out from time to time - including 'Blackie', Richardson's chief (though not only) rival for Lydia's affections. The main question I ask of these people is merely 'Why?'
Really then, there's not a great deal of good reason why anyone should read this book - which is probably why it has very much fallen out of favour during this century - except that, somehow, Bates does manage to write in a delightful manner which is pleasing and rather soothing. This book lures you in, despite an urge to slap every character within and certainly despite the stereotypes and bored cliches which abound on every page. It really isn't an unpleasant book to read.
Could I recommend this book to anyone to read? No. Was it a waste of time reading it? Also, no. Has it put me off the author? Oddly - and as a surprise to myself - again, I must say no. I will review 'The Darling Buds of May' soon. Did I care about these characters when the last page was turned? Alas, not at all. They're all instantly forgettable.
An odd mix then, this little novel which you could get through in a day or two. Not a waste of time, but not a classic must-read either. It is, in essence, dangerously quaint.
This is because books such as 'Love for Lydia' or 'The Darling Buds of May' are very beautiful, often very sweet stories on a gloriously rich England and with a great love of ordinary English folk. To be sure, 'Love for Lydia' is a tragedy and there's a great deal of hobnobbing of the educated and privileged classes. Nevertheless, it is beautifully written, pastoral in style and, like 'Remains of the Day' something of a longing for a simpler time.
And there's the deception: there was no simpler time. The characters within are caricatures of both ruling and rural classes and fail to really tell the truth of what life was like for either.
The female character of the title, is a spoilt and unthinking brat of a girl who, from beginning to end, is positively unlovely and seems to hold nothing more than a sexual magnetism to the various men who fawn at her feet. Why they fall hopelessly in love with her, God only knows. The narrator, Richardson, is a wet drip who is neither capable of giving Lydia the chastisement she deserves, nor of pulling away when she clearly becomes not worth the effort, is hoist by her own petard and he falls out of love with her. In between, he mopes around and is absolutely ineffectual. I'm fairly certain you could beat him around the head and he would hardly murmur. The rest of the characters barely register as anything other than bit parts which come in and out from time to time - including 'Blackie', Richardson's chief (though not only) rival for Lydia's affections. The main question I ask of these people is merely 'Why?'
Really then, there's not a great deal of good reason why anyone should read this book - which is probably why it has very much fallen out of favour during this century - except that, somehow, Bates does manage to write in a delightful manner which is pleasing and rather soothing. This book lures you in, despite an urge to slap every character within and certainly despite the stereotypes and bored cliches which abound on every page. It really isn't an unpleasant book to read.
Could I recommend this book to anyone to read? No. Was it a waste of time reading it? Also, no. Has it put me off the author? Oddly - and as a surprise to myself - again, I must say no. I will review 'The Darling Buds of May' soon. Did I care about these characters when the last page was turned? Alas, not at all. They're all instantly forgettable.
An odd mix then, this little novel which you could get through in a day or two. Not a waste of time, but not a classic must-read either. It is, in essence, dangerously quaint.
December 22, 2016
This novel is set during the post war years of the 1920s, amid rural Northamptonshire in the rapidly expanding town of Evensford. The narrator, a Mr Richardson, in the first flush of adulthood, finds that his love of the countryside is soon surpassed by an ever-growing affection for Lydia, the youngest member of a local aristocratic family. When you are young and in love, life should be carefree and enchanting, but a feeling of unease is never far from the narrator's thoughts. The newly industrialised Evensford is cramped and grimy; the jobs on offer are uninspiring; and the shy and ungainly Lydia is enigmatic, nested in a family estate on the cusp of decline, surrounded by aged aunts.
As the story progresses, with the delights of ice skating and dancing providing regular distractions, the reader soon discovers that the fast maturing Lydia is courting a path that threatens destruction for herself and all who are drawn into her world. "She's got you all running round like little boys." With these words, it seems almost inevitable that tragedy will follow - and follow it does.
H.E. Bates' writing captures the aspirations and travails of youthful love beautifully. Love for Lydia is a novel that tugs at the emotions and pulls the reader through moments of exhilaration and heartache without sentimentality. It is a story told in a manner that will captivate you and have you enthralled from the first page to the last sentence.
Highly recommended. Read it.
As the story progresses, with the delights of ice skating and dancing providing regular distractions, the reader soon discovers that the fast maturing Lydia is courting a path that threatens destruction for herself and all who are drawn into her world. "She's got you all running round like little boys." With these words, it seems almost inevitable that tragedy will follow - and follow it does.
H.E. Bates' writing captures the aspirations and travails of youthful love beautifully. Love for Lydia is a novel that tugs at the emotions and pulls the reader through moments of exhilaration and heartache without sentimentality. It is a story told in a manner that will captivate you and have you enthralled from the first page to the last sentence.
Highly recommended. Read it.
March 6, 2014
As winter comes to Evensford, a local newspaper reporter meets a shy heiress. Stars Tim Pigott-Smith and Juliet Aubrey.
Broadcast on:
BBC Radio 7, 11:00am Monday 11th January 2010
---
Somewhere in my dim and distant past I must have read this as so much is familiar, including a sense of 'Yeah! Whatev'. That 'Yeah! Whatev' factor is still hanging about this mediocre tale this time around too. I've ditched after Alex's drowning.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 14, 2011
If I were British and wrote The Great Gatsby, it probably would've turned out like this. Though the tale of obsessive love for an almost hypnotically enchanting young woman certainly struck a common chord with me, the writing was so utterly mediocre I could never quite get engaged in the narrative. A good story, just not a very good book.
Most of the books I've read in this series (Marshall Cavendish's Great Writers Library)have either been superb or have been a torture to read. This was neither; it was simply too bland to love or hate. I can only assume Love For Lydia's a book better-known in the UK than anywhere else, hence its inclusion in this Great Writers series.
Most of the books I've read in this series (Marshall Cavendish's Great Writers Library)have either been superb or have been a torture to read. This was neither; it was simply too bland to love or hate. I can only assume Love For Lydia's a book better-known in the UK than anywhere else, hence its inclusion in this Great Writers series.
November 21, 2021
i apologize, this review will consist of me gushing about how wonderfully, incredibly lovely this book is. the most beautifully vivid descriptions of winter and summer and springtime and those tiny special moments resembling memories of times long gone. one of my new favourite novels, maybe because im young and anxious of growing up- or because i entertain fears of love myself- i loved it so, maybe i felt connected to it because i can imagine myself in these scenarios, viewing the world as mr. richardson would. gorgeous writing as ive already stated, sometimes i would just put the book down and meditate on the special world it has created for me. sometimes i would near tears just seeing it in my head. i feel like ive visited evansford, lived in it, seen its every corner and crevace, i was left wanting more as the book came to a close. beautiful ending, beautifully intricate characters.
June 28, 2024
Some of the best descriptive prose I have read in a delightful book that is a “slow burner” but beautifully put together. Simply put it’s about young love and a coming-of-age tale of young people from various walks of life in the East Midlands. A little long and the pace could be quicker in parts but a lovely book about love in a bygone age.
Read
February 17, 2025No me ha gustado nada
November 15, 2020
This is a beautifully written classic British novel set in the 1920’s English countryside. It is descriptive, slow moving, and quaint. If that sounds boring to you, it probably would be. I enjoyed it.
March 12, 2019
I found this novel to be irritating and unsatisfactory. I know it is a work of classic literature (otherwise why would it be included in my collection of great novels?) and H E Bates has a superb writing style - he must have been a keen gardener and nature-lover as his evocations of gardens and the natural world in season are incomparable. At face value it is a tragic tale of how a naive young man and his friends are undone by their love for Lydia, an upper class flapper, bent on catching up on all the experiences she was deprived of by her sheltered upbringing.
Yet the narrator, Mr Richardson (nobody ever calls him by his first name so we never learn it), is an unsympathetic character. His descriptions of the people he dislikes are nasty caricatures - the newspaper editor he unwillingly works for, the plain ginger Scottish Presbyterian girl nextdoor who makes a play for his friend Tom, the handsome young working class chauffeur who he sees as his rival for Lydia’s love. His attitude to women is ambiguous. He sees them either as emotional and sexual predators, or as would-be wives trying to entrap potential husbands. He is very aware of the good looks and physical attractiveness of his male friends and rivals, and equates his love for Alex with his love for Lydia. Yet his arrogant self-absorption has a part to play in the deaths of both his best friends. At these two low points In the novel, I so despised his inadequacy, I almost stopped reading it. The few short apologetic paragraphs at the very end of the novel do nothing to redeem him.
Lydia, like her mother, is a classic femme fatale. She seems to be completely unaware of the damage her behaviour does to her male admirers, as she sets them off against each other for her own amusement, and commits to none of them. Even at the end of the novel she does not understand how she has hurt Richardson and still demands his unquestioning love. She may be amoral and completely selfish, and yet somehow she eventually arouses the sympathy (or is it pity?) of the reader. She did for me anyway.
Yet the narrator, Mr Richardson (nobody ever calls him by his first name so we never learn it), is an unsympathetic character. His descriptions of the people he dislikes are nasty caricatures - the newspaper editor he unwillingly works for, the plain ginger Scottish Presbyterian girl nextdoor who makes a play for his friend Tom, the handsome young working class chauffeur who he sees as his rival for Lydia’s love. His attitude to women is ambiguous. He sees them either as emotional and sexual predators, or as would-be wives trying to entrap potential husbands. He is very aware of the good looks and physical attractiveness of his male friends and rivals, and equates his love for Alex with his love for Lydia. Yet his arrogant self-absorption has a part to play in the deaths of both his best friends. At these two low points In the novel, I so despised his inadequacy, I almost stopped reading it. The few short apologetic paragraphs at the very end of the novel do nothing to redeem him.
Lydia, like her mother, is a classic femme fatale. She seems to be completely unaware of the damage her behaviour does to her male admirers, as she sets them off against each other for her own amusement, and commits to none of them. Even at the end of the novel she does not understand how she has hurt Richardson and still demands his unquestioning love. She may be amoral and completely selfish, and yet somehow she eventually arouses the sympathy (or is it pity?) of the reader. She did for me anyway.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 17, 2025
Love for Lydia by H.E. Bates is one of The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read https://www.theguardian.com/books/200... and on Realini’s best 100 love novels list http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/u...
10 out of 10
‘My love is as a fever longing still for that which longer nurseth the disease’ – this quote from a sonnet by William Shakespeare might go a long way to summarize Love for Lydia, coupled with ‘past cure I am, now reason is past care’ and that is because the dynamic of the passion in this extraordinary novel, the progress of the feelings is often unpredictable, it seems to be infatuation, then it looks like a disease and we are baffled, captivated, dazzled, curious, seduced, mad, entertained and often upset.
Mr. Richardson is arguably the hero, albeit the title suggests otherwise and we could argue that all the main players engage in the games conducted by Lydia Aspen – we find one of the most used explanations in the psychology classic Games People Play by Eric Berne http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/09/g... and indeed, if it were not for Lydia, none of this would have happened or been written – and the novel is autobiographical, at least in part.
One of the allures of the magnum opus is that we could identify with the protagonist, for we have all been in a position to love (or at the very least call love a biological process, an attraction, Thomas Man argues in a short story that love can be found only in literature and art, not in real life, where we claim ‘there are no words to express what we feel’, but most often, we just fail when we are tested on the depth, intensity of out attachment) and be rejected, and ‘learn to fail or fail to learn’ is a good motto, used by Harvard Professor Tal Ben-Shahar in his positive psychology lectures, the most popular ever, in the history of that institution…
After her father had died, Lydia arrives in Evensford, a small town where her relatives live and she will be encouraged to find some friends, the most suitable seems to be Mr. Richardson, who is working for the local newspaper, is about her age (nineteen) and offers to take her out in nature, where they aim to skate, once she will have learned how to keep moving on the ice without falling, and when this is achieved, they embrace for the first time, and this is when she meets Tom , a name she will forget quite a few times, until later in the narrative, he becomes extremely important, and he will be able to change the course of events…
The attraction between Lydia and the narrator grows and nothing seems to stand in their way, the difference in status does not look like an obstacle, for the aunts encourage the young man, and one of them even asks if he has asked for Lydia’s hand, with the hope that he is serious about this, something that is altered by the fact that the aunts are quite feeble, forget what they say and eventually have little, or no influence on what will happen, and cannot prevent the decay, downfall of their property and family.
Anton Chekhov - the greatest writer of short stories http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/01/t... – has written about the rifle that shows up in the first act and then needs to be put to use in one of the following chapters, and Lydia warns us early about her character, the fickle way in which she might treat her love interest, opening here a debate over what love really means and the many ways in which it is distorted, or better said, the name is misused, for instances that have nothing to do with the idea, at least in its intended definition, for could one harm the love of his, her or their love…
The heroine or anti-heroine as she is for quite a way, warns the admirer that she could be mean, and let us anticipate, she will be, after encouraging, prompting, seducing her lover, she would lose interest – some will say this is as innocent and normal as it can get, for these things happen, indeed, let me say that I have met my own Lydia, or a few, and when the Queen of Beauty of this land (officially crowned, not just some metaphor or hyperbole inserted here) agreed to be my girlfriend, I thought this is paradise on earth and it was such a catharsis that I would not wake from the aftermath and even once the fog would have cleared, many things, events, happenings have gone, they have been wiped out in what may be a self-defense mechanism or just due to the fact that once you get there, in Eden or just East of Eden, you cannot bring back to this other, so much bleaker reality, the experience from Up there, it just does not balance, there is no language…oops, I fell into that absurd situation mentioned by Thomas Mann, where we go with ‘oh, my adoration, amorous feeling is so vast, there are no ways to explain it’ which is so lame – Marcel Proust and so many others have found the words and we have the Magnum opera http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/04/l... we are just not endowed enough to stay in their shadow…
Lydia does not keep the same interest in her friend, and thus she starts flirting with his friends, Tom Holland, Alex Sanderson, and for a while it looks as if she may even have a strange bond with Blackie aka Bert Johnson, though for the latter case we find that her intentions have been munificent – Shakespeare has said that ‘hell is paved with good intentions’ – and we have a game that people play, in which we see Alex Sanderson infatuated, to the point where he is determined to ask Lydia Aspen to marry him.
In quite a few ways, it is intriguing and puzzling to see the narrator accept the change, at least apparently, when in fact we have the phenomenon called Hedonic Adaptation http://realini.blogspot.com/2015/11/h... and looking back, I did just the same thing, although in a different guise – because she had just won the Beauty Contest nationally, the parents of the Lydia I loved decades back had expected the best for her, glory, power, position, money, and I had not had them, therefore, when we met with them, she maintained that we have to hide the truth and pretend that I am just a platonic friend (if it were acceptable to them at that moment, and I doubt they would be very open and liberal even now, she would have made me the gay mate) and with that, a serious blow to any bigger, longer term chance had been blown, and with my agreement, for psychologically, I took the position I had been assigned and though we were in private more than that, the lovers that took cover under a lie, would have a much smaller chance to succeed together
Signed by a proud participant in the Revolution that took down one of the most horrible dictators of the age
http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/r...
Posted 11th August 2022 by realini
10 out of 10
‘My love is as a fever longing still for that which longer nurseth the disease’ – this quote from a sonnet by William Shakespeare might go a long way to summarize Love for Lydia, coupled with ‘past cure I am, now reason is past care’ and that is because the dynamic of the passion in this extraordinary novel, the progress of the feelings is often unpredictable, it seems to be infatuation, then it looks like a disease and we are baffled, captivated, dazzled, curious, seduced, mad, entertained and often upset.
Mr. Richardson is arguably the hero, albeit the title suggests otherwise and we could argue that all the main players engage in the games conducted by Lydia Aspen – we find one of the most used explanations in the psychology classic Games People Play by Eric Berne http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/09/g... and indeed, if it were not for Lydia, none of this would have happened or been written – and the novel is autobiographical, at least in part.
One of the allures of the magnum opus is that we could identify with the protagonist, for we have all been in a position to love (or at the very least call love a biological process, an attraction, Thomas Man argues in a short story that love can be found only in literature and art, not in real life, where we claim ‘there are no words to express what we feel’, but most often, we just fail when we are tested on the depth, intensity of out attachment) and be rejected, and ‘learn to fail or fail to learn’ is a good motto, used by Harvard Professor Tal Ben-Shahar in his positive psychology lectures, the most popular ever, in the history of that institution…
After her father had died, Lydia arrives in Evensford, a small town where her relatives live and she will be encouraged to find some friends, the most suitable seems to be Mr. Richardson, who is working for the local newspaper, is about her age (nineteen) and offers to take her out in nature, where they aim to skate, once she will have learned how to keep moving on the ice without falling, and when this is achieved, they embrace for the first time, and this is when she meets Tom , a name she will forget quite a few times, until later in the narrative, he becomes extremely important, and he will be able to change the course of events…
The attraction between Lydia and the narrator grows and nothing seems to stand in their way, the difference in status does not look like an obstacle, for the aunts encourage the young man, and one of them even asks if he has asked for Lydia’s hand, with the hope that he is serious about this, something that is altered by the fact that the aunts are quite feeble, forget what they say and eventually have little, or no influence on what will happen, and cannot prevent the decay, downfall of their property and family.
Anton Chekhov - the greatest writer of short stories http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/01/t... – has written about the rifle that shows up in the first act and then needs to be put to use in one of the following chapters, and Lydia warns us early about her character, the fickle way in which she might treat her love interest, opening here a debate over what love really means and the many ways in which it is distorted, or better said, the name is misused, for instances that have nothing to do with the idea, at least in its intended definition, for could one harm the love of his, her or their love…
The heroine or anti-heroine as she is for quite a way, warns the admirer that she could be mean, and let us anticipate, she will be, after encouraging, prompting, seducing her lover, she would lose interest – some will say this is as innocent and normal as it can get, for these things happen, indeed, let me say that I have met my own Lydia, or a few, and when the Queen of Beauty of this land (officially crowned, not just some metaphor or hyperbole inserted here) agreed to be my girlfriend, I thought this is paradise on earth and it was such a catharsis that I would not wake from the aftermath and even once the fog would have cleared, many things, events, happenings have gone, they have been wiped out in what may be a self-defense mechanism or just due to the fact that once you get there, in Eden or just East of Eden, you cannot bring back to this other, so much bleaker reality, the experience from Up there, it just does not balance, there is no language…oops, I fell into that absurd situation mentioned by Thomas Mann, where we go with ‘oh, my adoration, amorous feeling is so vast, there are no ways to explain it’ which is so lame – Marcel Proust and so many others have found the words and we have the Magnum opera http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/04/l... we are just not endowed enough to stay in their shadow…
Lydia does not keep the same interest in her friend, and thus she starts flirting with his friends, Tom Holland, Alex Sanderson, and for a while it looks as if she may even have a strange bond with Blackie aka Bert Johnson, though for the latter case we find that her intentions have been munificent – Shakespeare has said that ‘hell is paved with good intentions’ – and we have a game that people play, in which we see Alex Sanderson infatuated, to the point where he is determined to ask Lydia Aspen to marry him.
In quite a few ways, it is intriguing and puzzling to see the narrator accept the change, at least apparently, when in fact we have the phenomenon called Hedonic Adaptation http://realini.blogspot.com/2015/11/h... and looking back, I did just the same thing, although in a different guise – because she had just won the Beauty Contest nationally, the parents of the Lydia I loved decades back had expected the best for her, glory, power, position, money, and I had not had them, therefore, when we met with them, she maintained that we have to hide the truth and pretend that I am just a platonic friend (if it were acceptable to them at that moment, and I doubt they would be very open and liberal even now, she would have made me the gay mate) and with that, a serious blow to any bigger, longer term chance had been blown, and with my agreement, for psychologically, I took the position I had been assigned and though we were in private more than that, the lovers that took cover under a lie, would have a much smaller chance to succeed together
Signed by a proud participant in the Revolution that took down one of the most horrible dictators of the age
http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/r...
Posted 11th August 2022 by realini
March 18, 2021
4* Very enjoyable and involving novel with interesting characters.
I loved the 1977 TV series of Love for Lydia which made me want to read the book and I was not disappointed.
SYNOPSIS:
Lydia - shy, sheltered, beautiful and just 19 - glides into Evensford, a fictional town in Northamptonshire, one wintry day, stirring up feeling amongst the town's young men. But it is the young journalist, Mr Richardson that she befriends; but a change comes over the once retiring girl as she discovers the effect she has on other men. As his closest friends fall under her spell, the love Richardson feels for Lydia becomes tangled with jealousy and resentment, a rift that may never be repaired.
The young adults in this novel and others of the 1920s are a product of life scarred by the First World War; driven to live life to the full, possibly burdened with the guilt of living whilst a whole generation were lost. They are fun-loving, selfish, and reckless with their own lives and others, always looking for the next best thing with little regard to the feelings of others at times.
Set amidst the hazy beauty of the English countryside in the 1920s and the crumbling splendour of the British upper classes, Bates demonstrates his ability to capture the complexities of human character, his remarkable talent for contrasting romance against stark reality, and the innocence, joy and sadness of young love.
I loved the 1977 TV series of Love for Lydia which made me want to read the book and I was not disappointed.
SYNOPSIS:
Lydia - shy, sheltered, beautiful and just 19 - glides into Evensford, a fictional town in Northamptonshire, one wintry day, stirring up feeling amongst the town's young men. But it is the young journalist, Mr Richardson that she befriends; but a change comes over the once retiring girl as she discovers the effect she has on other men. As his closest friends fall under her spell, the love Richardson feels for Lydia becomes tangled with jealousy and resentment, a rift that may never be repaired.
The young adults in this novel and others of the 1920s are a product of life scarred by the First World War; driven to live life to the full, possibly burdened with the guilt of living whilst a whole generation were lost. They are fun-loving, selfish, and reckless with their own lives and others, always looking for the next best thing with little regard to the feelings of others at times.
Set amidst the hazy beauty of the English countryside in the 1920s and the crumbling splendour of the British upper classes, Bates demonstrates his ability to capture the complexities of human character, his remarkable talent for contrasting romance against stark reality, and the innocence, joy and sadness of young love.
May 12, 2020
'I felt I had made the impossible mistake of thinking that one of the virtues of love was permanence' (Penguin, 1974, p.188).
Bates's tale of the harsh penalties of early love and generous youthful hope is a bitter-sweet salutation to the irrepressible optimism of falling in love and being dashed against the indifferent rocks, like a merciless sea of emotion. He evokes that pleasure-pain principle that first love brings most of us, bedded in a story of real living characters against the inter-war backdrop of an idyllic English countryside, half of which is now gone for ever, it seems. Wistful is the word. It makes you turn inwards and want to burst out at the same time. It has that same tristesse that Charles Ryder felt when he happened again upon Brideshead; in a way, it is Bates's Brideshead.
His story takes place in an ugly nineteenth century town of squalid little houses adjoining squalid steam-age factories in the late '20s, early '30s, the only reprieve being the vast landed estate in its south of the Aspens, of whom Lydia is the heiress. It is at yet another remove, of the old industrial mess dependent on coal and gas, of paraffin and oil burners, that disappeared in the '70s, the days before central heating and draft excluder, of chilling drafts under doors and through windows, of servants in cold back corridors. Nothing modern about any of it. Another age entirely. One has to adjust. Oh, we were lucky in that respect, being born into this age, to see these changes. But the remnants of that inter-war period are still about us, and evoked here.
'It is not the Evensford we like. It is not the Evensford we knew.' (p.12).
I feel exactly the same way about my home town, to which I've returned: there is no change of improvement, merely of modernisation. Yes, it now has a university, but that is a characterless utilitarian red brick mock-up originally built for the council. It has a pedestrianised main street, but that leads to a featureless mall of modern utility in which half the shops are empty, leading back into a ghostly No Man's Land, shabby and seedy, like the forgotten poverty of its two nations. It has a new bypass that is just another incessant rat-run, and they are building new amorphous boxes all along the old bypass, which used to be the town's limits. No change for the good, except the new football ground which takes the hordes out of the town centre. Even the 'new' hospital is an ugly modern sprawl. I say this because this is also the unconscious whimsical regret of Richardson, who misses the beauty of England's meadows - and all the wildlife that belongs to them - given over to squalid little brick housing and gasometers and cinder tracks through waste ground.
Lydia is the femme fatale, always socially remote from the gay group who regale her with skating and dancing and teas, as her two kindly aunts arrange for her to share a less isolated life than they had. Socially remote, yet drawing them all into a shared world of irresponsible partying. And poor Richardson - whose first name we never learn - is the lost young man who suddenly finds a purpose in his life and devotes himself to her, only to be let down by her uncaring selfishness. There's a fatalism to the first half of the book, as the party of friends get dragged - willingly - about Lydia's skirts: Tom, Alex, Nancy, Blackie. The Hollands - a large farming family - are clearly the inspiration for the Larkins (1958-70), in spirit, if not yet in character.
But it doesn't have the charm of A Moment In Time (1964), a later war romance, or the depth of beauty of Fair Stood The Wind For France (1944), perhaps the finest war romance there is, or the exotic expanse of his other war novels (The Purple Plain [1944], The Jacaranda Tree [1949] The Scarlet Sword [1950]), or the first of the Larkin books, which are deliciously silly and affectionate. It is soured by its 'heroine', someone I would have dropped after the first signs of insincerity, like a hobbling shoe. But the young party gamble on, and the fatalism grows; something's got to give.
When it does, the book takes a turn into trademark Bates rusticism: we are festooned with his characteristic portraiture of the land teeming with flora and the masterly painting of a rural idyll. This is the Bates we love and crave. Typically, in his war romances, we have the juxtaposition of the threat of destruction - of individual lives, of civilisation - against the fecundity and sheer peace and beauty of his country landscapes, the quick green and bleached corn of the English countryside, bounded by bright cool streams and dark furtive woodlands under the wide parched blue, under the flat or shimmering heat of summer. This is Bates at his best, and is a welcome turn in the novel. This is the evocation of those glorious summer days spent roaming the carefree English countryside, the lost days of youth, all cares far, far away.
Bates was at his most assured and natural in describing the flowers and flora of the English countryside. His evocation of weather, seasons, the atmosphere of a place in those terms, fills out his stories as though they couldn't exist without such observations. Richardson here is not Bates, his epigraph disclaims, yet he knows so much about the flowers, the meadows and woodlands, the character of the land. I dart to and from the laptop to discover what an anemone (such an awkward word) looks like, or sorrel, gaillardia, or some rose.
It is an experience of reading with reservation, caused by trying to fend off the inevitable fatalism of tragedy and hurt, while involuntarily springing open to his evocation of a rural idyll. It is as real as the land, as wistful as the heart, as deep as love. My resistance gained momentum, then uncoiled like the breaking of the purple-black storm after the parched summer months. I admired its structure, his complexity of expression, his simplicity at the heart of his characters, real and tender and fragilely human. It left me once again glad that I had read yet another H.E. Bates novel, and could look forward to many more.
Bates's tale of the harsh penalties of early love and generous youthful hope is a bitter-sweet salutation to the irrepressible optimism of falling in love and being dashed against the indifferent rocks, like a merciless sea of emotion. He evokes that pleasure-pain principle that first love brings most of us, bedded in a story of real living characters against the inter-war backdrop of an idyllic English countryside, half of which is now gone for ever, it seems. Wistful is the word. It makes you turn inwards and want to burst out at the same time. It has that same tristesse that Charles Ryder felt when he happened again upon Brideshead; in a way, it is Bates's Brideshead.
His story takes place in an ugly nineteenth century town of squalid little houses adjoining squalid steam-age factories in the late '20s, early '30s, the only reprieve being the vast landed estate in its south of the Aspens, of whom Lydia is the heiress. It is at yet another remove, of the old industrial mess dependent on coal and gas, of paraffin and oil burners, that disappeared in the '70s, the days before central heating and draft excluder, of chilling drafts under doors and through windows, of servants in cold back corridors. Nothing modern about any of it. Another age entirely. One has to adjust. Oh, we were lucky in that respect, being born into this age, to see these changes. But the remnants of that inter-war period are still about us, and evoked here.
'It is not the Evensford we like. It is not the Evensford we knew.' (p.12).
I feel exactly the same way about my home town, to which I've returned: there is no change of improvement, merely of modernisation. Yes, it now has a university, but that is a characterless utilitarian red brick mock-up originally built for the council. It has a pedestrianised main street, but that leads to a featureless mall of modern utility in which half the shops are empty, leading back into a ghostly No Man's Land, shabby and seedy, like the forgotten poverty of its two nations. It has a new bypass that is just another incessant rat-run, and they are building new amorphous boxes all along the old bypass, which used to be the town's limits. No change for the good, except the new football ground which takes the hordes out of the town centre. Even the 'new' hospital is an ugly modern sprawl. I say this because this is also the unconscious whimsical regret of Richardson, who misses the beauty of England's meadows - and all the wildlife that belongs to them - given over to squalid little brick housing and gasometers and cinder tracks through waste ground.
Lydia is the femme fatale, always socially remote from the gay group who regale her with skating and dancing and teas, as her two kindly aunts arrange for her to share a less isolated life than they had. Socially remote, yet drawing them all into a shared world of irresponsible partying. And poor Richardson - whose first name we never learn - is the lost young man who suddenly finds a purpose in his life and devotes himself to her, only to be let down by her uncaring selfishness. There's a fatalism to the first half of the book, as the party of friends get dragged - willingly - about Lydia's skirts: Tom, Alex, Nancy, Blackie. The Hollands - a large farming family - are clearly the inspiration for the Larkins (1958-70), in spirit, if not yet in character.
But it doesn't have the charm of A Moment In Time (1964), a later war romance, or the depth of beauty of Fair Stood The Wind For France (1944), perhaps the finest war romance there is, or the exotic expanse of his other war novels (The Purple Plain [1944], The Jacaranda Tree [1949] The Scarlet Sword [1950]), or the first of the Larkin books, which are deliciously silly and affectionate. It is soured by its 'heroine', someone I would have dropped after the first signs of insincerity, like a hobbling shoe. But the young party gamble on, and the fatalism grows; something's got to give.
When it does, the book takes a turn into trademark Bates rusticism: we are festooned with his characteristic portraiture of the land teeming with flora and the masterly painting of a rural idyll. This is the Bates we love and crave. Typically, in his war romances, we have the juxtaposition of the threat of destruction - of individual lives, of civilisation - against the fecundity and sheer peace and beauty of his country landscapes, the quick green and bleached corn of the English countryside, bounded by bright cool streams and dark furtive woodlands under the wide parched blue, under the flat or shimmering heat of summer. This is Bates at his best, and is a welcome turn in the novel. This is the evocation of those glorious summer days spent roaming the carefree English countryside, the lost days of youth, all cares far, far away.
Bates was at his most assured and natural in describing the flowers and flora of the English countryside. His evocation of weather, seasons, the atmosphere of a place in those terms, fills out his stories as though they couldn't exist without such observations. Richardson here is not Bates, his epigraph disclaims, yet he knows so much about the flowers, the meadows and woodlands, the character of the land. I dart to and from the laptop to discover what an anemone (such an awkward word) looks like, or sorrel, gaillardia, or some rose.
It is an experience of reading with reservation, caused by trying to fend off the inevitable fatalism of tragedy and hurt, while involuntarily springing open to his evocation of a rural idyll. It is as real as the land, as wistful as the heart, as deep as love. My resistance gained momentum, then uncoiled like the breaking of the purple-black storm after the parched summer months. I admired its structure, his complexity of expression, his simplicity at the heart of his characters, real and tender and fragilely human. It left me once again glad that I had read yet another H.E. Bates novel, and could look forward to many more.
April 6, 2016
When Lydia Aspen is sent into the care of her reclusive aunts in the “big house” in rural Evensford, they are concerned to ensure that she isn’t isolated from other young people and ask a local newspaper reporter to look after her and take her out and about. This he does with pleasure, but looking after Lydia turns out to be a far more complicated business than anyone could have imagined. This is a really charming and engaging tale, beautifully written, very evocative of its time and place, and a touching love story. Set just after WWI, young people are challenging the established order and the boundaries between the social classes are gradually being eroded. Although Bates has an observant and sometimes acerbic eye for the social nuances, he’s never cruel and always shows empathy and understanding for his characters with their foibles and inadequacies. There’s tragedy here, but also gentleness and generosity, and all in all it’s a delightful book, one which has stood well the test of time.
November 17, 2012
TV Series when I was a kid - but before that, there was this! Picture of the actress on the cover of the book reminds me of part of why I used to watch the series (you figure it out), so I was able to visualise her as I read the book and it translated to an enjoyable experience.
You might think that this should be a review of the book rather than a review of me (and we may well differ in that respect), but to assuage your misgivings: it's a nice little story, well written, with a satisfying ending. Another 'underdog' story of the kind that I love.
You might think that this should be a review of the book rather than a review of me (and we may well differ in that respect), but to assuage your misgivings: it's a nice little story, well written, with a satisfying ending. Another 'underdog' story of the kind that I love.
June 20, 2014
Lots of good prose with a plethora of flowers, shrubs, youthful angst, and soap opera simplicity, but keeps you reading until the last few pages where an interesting nineteenth century sensibility meets Hollywood ending. These two main young characters seem to have expended a lifetime in a few years, then set off together for what can only be imagined as mismatched misery except by the most Pollyanish reader.
May 18, 2016
Love for Lydia was first published in 1952 and it is still an extremely poignant novel. This is by far one of the greatest love stories of the twentieth century. It is a beautifully written, classic love story. The prose is exquisite and the descriptions of the outdoors and countryside scenery are a delight. I’m very glad a gave this novel a chance. A timeless, steamy love story that I highly recommend.
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