Return Journey

by R.F. Delderfield

1967 First Edition. "Cheap Day Return" by R. E. Derderfield.

328 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

Ronald Frederick Delderfield was a popular English novelist and dramatist, many of whose works have been adapted for television and are still widely read.

Several of Delderfield's historical novels and series involve young men who return from war and lead lives in England that allow the author to portray the sweep of English history and delve deeply into social history from the Edwardian era to the early 1960s.

From Wikipedia

Reviews

[Nancy Ellis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delderfield is one of my favorite authors, and although I didn't like this one quite as much as all the others, it was still a great story masterfully written. Pip Stuart has grown up in a small English seaside resort in the 1920s. It's now 1932, and he is engaged to a lovely local girl, but he is restless, anxious to move out into the world of photographic journalism, and becomes infatuated with the more exotic older wife of the local doctor. The gradual discovery of their affair leads to the destruction of the peace of their little village, and Pip learns the hard way that things.....and people......are not always what they seem. 30 years later, Pip returns to find his town vastly changed. Delderfield is a master at recreating the vanished world of pre-war England, and his characters are warm and easy for us to identify with in our own time.

[Barbara · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really enjoy Delderfield's writing. That's why I was so disappointed in this absolute stinker of a book. I'll just say that Return Journey was not Delderfield's best work.

[A.J. · Rating 1 out of 5]

328 pages; 11 chapters
I didn't care for this book very much, though I have to say it ended better than I thought it would, so that's a "plus" I can give it.