Love Comes Home

by Molly Clavering

Jane Cranstoun is having a lovely time with friends in England (and has just been proposed to by the charming John Marsh) when she is summoned home to Scotland to welcome her young sister Love, newly returned from being 'finished' in Paris. Keeping her engagement a secret, and drawn back into an 'endless round of good works and dull county functions', Jane promptly gets off on the wrong foot with Peregrine Gilbert, a local politician and naturalist, and soon falls prey to Love's inveterate (and incompetent) matchmaking. Supported by a lively and vividly-portrayed cast of family and friends, Jane must steer carefully to avoid the pitfalls of misunderstandings, gossip, and misguided romance.

Molly Clavering was for many years the neighbour and friend of bestselling author D.E. Stevenson, and they may well have influenced one another's writing. First published in 1938 (under the pseudonym B. Mollett) and out of print for more than 80 years, Love Comes Home is one of her funniest and happiest tales.

Genres: Fiction, Romance, Historical Fiction, Historical Romance

233 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1938

About the author

AKA Marion Moffatt.

Molly Clavering was born in Glasgow, but lived in the country from an early age. After six years' service wiith the WRNS, she settled in Moffat, Dumfriesshire, where she served on the Town Council.

Reviews

[Alisha · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't quite know what to make of Molly Clavering with these last couple of books I've read. Her writing is beautiful and her dialogue is sharply satisfying, but she keeps moving the kaleidoscope until you hardly know what outcome would be best.

In this book, Jane returns home to Scotland from a visit where she became secretly engaged to a young naval officer. Her younger sister Love is also newly returned from finishing school or something like that. Where Jane is sensible and mild, Love is calculating, exuberant and brash. Love has made "plans" for her sister and herself about which men they must marry, and she loses no time maneuvering everyone into a state of confusion. Including the reader. You're just sure that Love's plans are all wrong. Or are they? Or aren't they? The plot keeps you on unsteady ground.

The writing, though, is thoroughly enjoyable.

[Katherine · Rating 1 out of 5]

Disappointing. I truly enjoyed the two other Clavering novels I read, Susan Settles Down and Yoked with a Lamb, this one not so much. I'm a reader that doesn't think rudeness or outrageous behavior is humorous and the author has so much of both in this story that it becomes distasteful. I was also appalled at the general acceptance of dysfunctional and unfaithful relationships being the norm. Not my cup of tea.

Unless you're set on reading everything you can from Molly Clavering you might want to give this one a skip.

An additional half a star for lovely descriptions of the flora and fauna.
1.5 stars

[Karen (Living Unabridged) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Clavering holds up well when compared to her friend, neighbor, and fellow author D.E. Stevenson. Her dialogue is witty and her characters well drawn.

But...she spins the plot wheel is some unexpected directions sometimes. In this case, I'm not sure her spin worked for me. I like Jane but "Love" (ridiculous name!) never grew on me. Probably because I'm an older sister myself, I would have liked the Baby Sister not to get away with everything. (But that would then be wish-fulfillment on my part and possibly not true to life and / or plot.)

And, word to the wise, this is written in the just pre-WW2 period so some aspects are quite dated. The fat shaming in this book is highly, as my daughters would say, cringe. Yes, we get it: Violet is overweight. Ha ha. It made me like the heroine(s) and hero(es) less the more they talked about Violet, who is just a friend / minor character so why give her such a hard time?! And don't get me started on Kitty. My favorite character was actually the improbably named Peregrine Gilbert (but even he succumbed to the casual mocking of the one overweight character).

[Gina House · Rating 4 out of 5]

4🌟 It's always a joy to read a Molly Clavering novel, especially in the Dean Street Press Furrowed Middlebrow edition!

This book centers around the Cranstoun family of Scotland and, specifically, the daughters of the family...Jane and Love. Jane is a thoughtful, dependable and careful young lady who is in the middle of a sticky situation with two young men, "Perry" and John. Peregrine Gilbert is shy, unsociable and nature-loving political man who buys the property next door to Sir Mangus and Lady Cranstoun. John Marsh is a flirty, charming and passionate friend of Jane's friends, Kitty and George (who live in England).

Love is Jane's younger sister just returning from finishing school. She is willful, self-centered, immature and lively, but also very likable and beautiful. Love decides to make her own plans for Jane's love life—with possibly dire results.

This story is a mixture of witty conversations, misunderstandings, jealousy, gossip and young love. Although this type of situation usually makes me feel very frustrated, I REALLY liked Love Comes Home. There was a bit too much nature description for me (some of it went on for more than a page) and I find it hard to picture in my mind landscapes and plants that are unknown to me. But, I still adore Molly Clavering's writing.

Many thanks to my new book friend, Chelcy (@cbstutzman on Instagram) for buddy reading this book with me. I hope I'll get to read and discuss another book with her soon!

I only have one more Molly Clavering book to go and then I might just start them all over again. They're just SO good! Highly recommended author!!

[Tony Siciliano · Rating 3 out of 5]

Molly Clavering writes delightful, domestic stories about life and romance in Scotland in the 1930s. Her tales hark back to a simpler, kinder, more romantic life. This novel does the same, but with some troubling differences. The tangled, bungled, and confusing romances involving the two major female and two male characters left this reader ambivalent about the entire story and, especially, its conclusion. One character sets out to control who she and her sister will marry. The other sister is a hopeless contradiction of ever-changing emotions that simply doesn't square with the strong and true characters Ms. Clavering presents in her other works. The two male characters are either deliberately opaque in their motives or are simply flawed characters who can settle with nearly any woman who will put up with his serious shortcomings. The writing and the description of southern Scotland are beautiful as usual. The plot and character development are quite unsatisfying.

[Jeanne Sauvage · Rating 3 out of 5]

I usually like Clavering's books and I realize that they are representative of a particular time. But this one was so misogynistic in its approach. So many times there were comments by characters that said things like, "she deserved to be hit with a board." There is one woman who is plump and the characters are frequently remarking to her face that she shouldn't eat so much, or that she was so fat she wouldn't find a husband, etc. Ugh.

[Lady Clementina ffinch-ffarowmore · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jane Cranstoun is staying with her friend Kitty, married to naval officer George Mariner, and enjoying her visit, for Kitty and she have always had a close connection. She has also met the handsome Commander John Marsh who proposes and they become engaged. Meanwhile Jane has been summoned home to Scotland mostly as her younger sister ‘Love’ is set to return from finishing school in France. Jane loves her house and the nature amidst which it is, but dreads the various social duties her mother pretty much compels her into undertaking, part of their responsibilities her mother feels as landed gentry in the village.

Unlike Jane who simply gives in, Love is not only independent minded but also cheeky (rather incorrigible, in fact) doing exactly as she pleases, their parents sometimes not even realising it nor taking (or rather unable to) the stricter tone they do with Jane and her brothers . Love is also somewhat of an Emma Woodhouse, with definite plans as to her own and Jane's futures, never mind what Jane might think about them. Then there's also Peregrine Gilbert, newly moved into the neighbourhood, with whom Jane gets off on a bad start but who turns out to have things in common with her.

As Jane navigates Love's machinations and acquaintanceship/friendship with Peregrine, there is much to be dealt with, especially once John moves close by and Love has decided what needs to be done with him as well.

This was a delightful read, though not as ‘light' as I'd expected with Love's various schemes and plans, as the confusions and misunderstandings that ensue (or states of affairs that are revealed) are not lighthearted or innocent but eventually come down to matters of trust and love. Jane gets support from her brothers, particularly Maggie and even her mother, who can see how Love's actions might be affecting her.

Not that Jane is gullible or always put upon, even if she does give in to her mother and circumstances. She is in fact a rather sensible character, with the maturity to recognise her own limitations and the failings and flaws of others, without imagining as some are apt to do that she'd be able to change the other or bring about any magical transformation. Interestingly while she claims she doesn't like taking on any of the good works her mother keeps getting her to contribute to, she's quite good and efficient at them where even her mother is not. She also manages, in her own way, to get a bit of ‘revenge’ at those who have done badly by her. It is her good sense and the fact that she has her head firmly on her shoulders that has one questioning the decision/path she takes at the end, but then again, perhaps we are meant to see that she is making the choice that love dictates but without any illusions as to its consequences!

These twists and turns of love and relationships play out against the background of upcoming elections where Peregrine Gilbert is to be candidate for the Tories while Labour, which seems to have a strong hold in the village, has its candidate in the local Danny Buchanan. The book was published in 1938, and shadows of the war to come are very much there, on the one side, Hitler spoken of rather lightly, on the other, through Danny, the true horrors of war both recognised and dreaded: Do you want another war? A war worse than the last, with the civilian population at the mercy of any raiding bombers?

There's an enjoyable segment of the story set around the King's visit to Scotland where, Jane, Love and their friend Violet are among the young women to be ‘presented’, capturing all the excitement of gowns being stitched and fitted, curtseys practiced and all the wonder and glamour of the event itself!

Also ever present is the beautiful Scottish countryside, nature--trees, flowers, animals and birds described beautifully by Clavering. If she’d done just nature writings, I'd be more than pleased to read them. There are several passages across the book, but this longish one was simply lovely

Sunlight was pouring between the branches, dappling the ground at her feet, gilding the vivid moss that grew at the tree-roots. The beaches were like green flame, the budding oak leaves golden, while among their sombre cousins the spruces, an occasional larch lifted its brilliant spire. The burn ran, low and clear, at the bottom of a high steep bank starred with primroses, to the left of the path, and suddenly Jane saw that an open glade fringed with silver birches was blue as a fairy sea. The wild hyacinths were out at last, hiding their drooping bells among spreading fronds of springing bracken, rising in great clusters from the bright green grass. A blackbird perched far above her on the swaying tip of a spruce-fir, uttered one or two tentative preliminary notes, and began his enchanting lay. Everything was young, fresh, lovely as a day in the beginning of the world when evil was unknown yet, and man had been tempted by no serpent.

This was my first time reading Molly Clavering and I enjoyed myself very much indeed. I'll certainly be looking up more of her work.

4.25 stars

[Abigail Bok · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m a fan of Molly Clavering’s stories but this one left me with very mixed feelings. Published in 1938, it’s a loving portrait of a world, and a worldview, that was wearing out in the late 1930s like a suit of old clothes. The portrayal is beautiful, lyrical and evocative, but the world it depicts is one more than ready to be put out of its misery. Rarely have I seen genteel British life between the wars so thoroughly discredited by someone with a clear affection for it.

We meet the heroine, Jane Cranstoun, living a seemingly modern life with friends, a naval officer and his wife—doing their own cooking and cleaning, oh my! Jane is anticipating a marriage proposal, which she gets in the first chapter. (Experienced readers know all too well that an engagement in the first chapter is headed for disaster, so I’m not concerned about the spoiler.) She’s leaving the next day to return to her family home, a Scottish estate, and that’s where the rest of the story takes place. Her younger sister—the “Love” of the title, short for Magdalen Lovett—is home from finishing school and taking up life as a nominal adult. Love is an Emma Woodhouse character, all brash confidence covering up immaturity, and she immediately sets about managing Jane’s life, with predictably painful consequences.

Their ancestral home, Craigrois, is described with loving intensity, particularly the wild surroundings. The descriptions of Scotland through the seasons are lush and vivid, and I especially loved the scenes involving birds. Blackcocks at lek! This birder was enchanted. Jane adores her home and all it stands for, which makes the direction the story takes confounding and unsatisfactory.

The description of the cultural life of Craigrois’s neighborhood is equally vivid, and that’s where my discomfort began. The Cranstoun family are hereditary lords (lairds?) of the manor, deeply involved in Tory politics and taking for granted their duty to treat the villagers and servants like charming but incorrigible children. The author sees nothing wrong with this idea, which leads to clichéd portrayals of the “ordinary folk” and the gobsmacking statement by one character that she can’t decide whether she supports or opposes Franco. Germany goes unmentioned though Hitler was already in power, and I had the uneasy feeling that the characters might well find good people on both sides of that story as well.

The backward-looking views of the Cranstoun family extend into more personal areas. Jane finds that her beloved has a roving eye and can’t stop himself from flirting, and worse, with other women, married and single, right up to and including her sister and her best friend. Yet she still decides he is the one for her, and this aspect of his character is something she simply has to put up with. Even her sister finds this perspective hard to swallow: “Is that the way marriage ought to begin? Knowing your husband’s failings and being able to cope with them?” The author clearly thinks so, but I can think of few drearier lives than one chained to an untrustworthy partner.

As always, Molly Clavering has a penetrating eye for human quirks, a gift for natural description that rivals Mary Stewart’s, and strong plotting skills. But in this book those talents are put in service to a story I found distasteful on many fronts.

Advisories: The book is clean, though with adultery implied; fat-shaming is treated as comedy; lower-class people are given demeaning portrayals.

[Louise Culmer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jane Cranston has been staying in Chatham with her married friends Kitty and George, and has fallen in love with John, a naval officer. But she is summoned to her parents home in Scotland, where her mother expects her to throw herself into local good works, Girl Guides etc. Jane’s younger sister Love who has just left school also returns home and being at something of a loose end decides to try her hand at matchmaking, leading to various romantic entanglements before everything is sorted out. A fairly amusing if predictable story with some politics thrown in here and there to provide a bit of seriousness, a brief passage concerning the Spanish Civil War for instance. And the usual supporting cast of devoted retainers. The author can get a bit heavy handed when trying to be funny, especially when she harps continuously about how fat Love’s friend Violet is, which became quite tiresome.

[Niki (nikilovestoread) · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have read three other books by Molly Clavering and enjoyed them, loving two of them, actually. So, I was surprised how much I disliked Love Comes Home. I couldn't stand many of the characters and the portrayal of what it means to love someone was just gross. I have said before that Agatha Christie's love interests in her mysteries are just terrible and this book ranks right up there. The only relationship in this book that could be seen as actual love was the parents, who barely played a part in the story. The relationships among all of the younger generation were extremely dysfunctional and not something anyone in their right mind would hope for. I should probably have thrown in the towel. There is nothing here to make me recommend it to anyone.

[Valerie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did enjoy this book, but I felt as though I had read it before, and I hadn't. So was this the original story, and someone else copied it? I read a review before I read the story. I shouldn't have, as it tainted my reading. Such a suggestible person. So an Emma-type little sister is home from school and decides she is going to structure everyone's lives. She steals her sister's fiancé. She is such a brat, too. However, the scene where she sits with Danny Buchanan and shares her troubles, while he shares his, is quite lovely, I think. Of course, since this is a romance, everyone but the voracious Violet ends up with a love interest, while she sticks to the delicacies on the buffet. So very Jane Austinish...ah, a clue!

[Miriam · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is one of my least favorite Clavering novels that I've read so far, even though the writing was fine. Love is a brat, and the age gap between her and her presumed love interest is a bit creepy, even though I liked him as a character. And Jane is an idiot for marrying John. Yeah, I'm sure she'll be able to keep him in line. I really am beginning to suspect that Clavering is laughing at her audience, or maybe she's just very pragmatic when it comes to relationships. But I hate finishing a book and being pretty sure that in real life the characters would probably wind up miserable. Oh, and she throws in a fairly racist description of a minor character as well.

[Merry · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was riddled with fat shaming, where a plump young girl was made fun of and needled because of her appetite and her size. I guess that kind of thing was acceptable in that era, but it certainly stands out as egregious and unacceptable nowadays. Otherwise, the book was okay, with Clavering's usual lyrical descriptions of nature, but I did not enjoy this set of characters and their story as much as I have enjoyed several of her other books.

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very silly, and very funny.

[Kay Robart · Rating 3 out of 5]

See my review here:

https://whatmeread.wordpress.com/2023...