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William
Book by Young, E. H.; With a new Introduction by Bayley, John
304 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1925
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
November 2, 2025
William Nesbitt is a successful businessman who, with his wife Kate, has five children; four are now married and the fifth, Janet, is still living with them. Kate has her own ideas as to how her children should behave, but William knows they must be allowed to live their lives and make their own mistakes. "She had given birth to five bodies and would always be a stranger to their souls. This was a terrible thought and it would have been more terrible still if she had known it was William's too". When Lydia, William's favourite, leaves her husband to live with another man, the repercussions are felt throughout the family and test many of the relationships within.
The fact that the story is set in Radstowe, which is based on Clifton in Bristol, a lovely part of one of my favourite cities adds to my enjoyment of these stories. How nice to read about Clifton in the 1920's.
The fact that the story is set in Radstowe, which is based on Clifton in Bristol, a lovely part of one of my favourite cities adds to my enjoyment of these stories. How nice to read about Clifton in the 1920's.
March 19, 2022
It was OK, but not as good as ‘Miss Mole’! 2.5 stars
Usual complaint from me if I am not all that jazzed about a book...too long for the story it tells. A bunch of people from the upper echelons of society in England, circa I think early 1900s when horses and cars were competing with one another for transportation.
A young woman, Lydia, who is married dumps her husband for another man and is living with him, and two of her sisters, Dora and Mabel,
And that’s about it. 288 pages of small print. My eyes hurt.
Review:
• http://preferreading.blogspot.com/201...
Note:
• John Bayley wrote the Introduction for this Virago Modern Classic edition. He says that ‘for those meeting her books for the first time William is certainly the one to start with.’ I think 'Miss Mole' would be the book to start out with, but that is just my opinion. 🤨 🧐
Usual complaint from me if I am not all that jazzed about a book...too long for the story it tells. A bunch of people from the upper echelons of society in England, circa I think early 1900s when horses and cars were competing with one another for transportation.
A young woman, Lydia, who is married dumps her husband for another man and is living with him, and two of her sisters, Dora and Mabel,
And that’s about it. 288 pages of small print. My eyes hurt.
Review:
• http://preferreading.blogspot.com/201...
Note:
• John Bayley wrote the Introduction for this Virago Modern Classic edition. He says that ‘for those meeting her books for the first time William is certainly the one to start with.’ I think 'Miss Mole' would be the book to start out with, but that is just my opinion. 🤨 🧐
September 4, 2015
This novel tells the story of William Nesbitt, his wife Kate and their five children.
Four of whom are married, the youngest daughter still living at home.
The oldest daughter Lydia is Williams favourite .
Family life where once a year they all come together for Kate's birthday.
That is until Lydia disgraces the family.
Janet the youngest so wants to have a life of her own but now feels she can't leave.
Beautifully written with well drawn characters .
Oh to have a bowl of tulips!
I loved this one and don't you wish William was your Dad?
Four of whom are married, the youngest daughter still living at home.
The oldest daughter Lydia is Williams favourite .
Family life where once a year they all come together for Kate's birthday.
That is until Lydia disgraces the family.
Janet the youngest so wants to have a life of her own but now feels she can't leave.
Beautifully written with well drawn characters .
Oh to have a bowl of tulips!
I loved this one and don't you wish William was your Dad?
March 20, 2017
I found this incredible book on a shelf in a hotel room, it was an old hardbound book so old and ancient I believe the place was using it as decoration. This was in a hill station hotel in southern India, nestled in a rainforest, and the book had that ancient Englishness about it. I had tried a few of the other books on the shelf out, but when I read the first words of this book I knew that it had potential.
Yet potential doesn't do it justice... the book captivated me. Young weaves an incredible spell upon the reader, formal and knowing and so loving with her characters. The creation of Radstowe, the town where the book takes place, is done so completely that you feel as though you have been there. Science fiction writers create whole worlds, yet she does here, too. The detail and the care and the complexity that she creates of this place is amazing.
Yet it is her characters that suprise you and stay with you long after you put the book down. Particularly the title character, William.
This book is everything I rarely read - a book about a sprawling family, set in Olde England, centered upon a "scandal".... honestly just reading that sentence makes me cringe. If I can love this book - and I did love it, so much I almost stole it from that hotel after finishing it - than really anyone can love it.
One more thing - E.H. Young had a fascinating life, and appears to modern people as one of their own, shipwrecked within her past. She lived out side of rules and her books should be rediscovered. When I realized how hard it was to find her books, particularly this one, it made me wonder at how someone so brilliant could be so completely forgotten.
Yet potential doesn't do it justice... the book captivated me. Young weaves an incredible spell upon the reader, formal and knowing and so loving with her characters. The creation of Radstowe, the town where the book takes place, is done so completely that you feel as though you have been there. Science fiction writers create whole worlds, yet she does here, too. The detail and the care and the complexity that she creates of this place is amazing.
Yet it is her characters that suprise you and stay with you long after you put the book down. Particularly the title character, William.
This book is everything I rarely read - a book about a sprawling family, set in Olde England, centered upon a "scandal".... honestly just reading that sentence makes me cringe. If I can love this book - and I did love it, so much I almost stole it from that hotel after finishing it - than really anyone can love it.
One more thing - E.H. Young had a fascinating life, and appears to modern people as one of their own, shipwrecked within her past. She lived out side of rules and her books should be rediscovered. When I realized how hard it was to find her books, particularly this one, it made me wonder at how someone so brilliant could be so completely forgotten.
August 27, 2012
I only discovered E H Young for myself in 2011 – I read Miss Mole, The Misses Mallets and The Vicar’s daughter last year, and have had this novel and two other EH Young novels waiting for me on my tbr for a while. I think might well be my favourite E H Young to date. The novel is set in Radstowe, a fictional town E H Young used in her novels, and was apparently based upon Clifton in Bristol.
William of the title is William Nesbitt, an ageing successful business man, happily married to Kate for many year, they have five grown up children. Mable married to John, Walter married to Violet, Dora married to Herbert, Lydia living in London and married to Oliver, while Janet the youngest remains unmarried and living at home. Kate Nesbitt has her own idea of how her children should live their lives, how they should behave toward their husbands and children; they often unsettle and worry her. William however is a remarkable father, he tries hard to understand his children, but more than that he seems to properly understand that they need to make their own way in the world. That all he can do is support them.
It had been different when they were all young and at school. She had felt then that they were her own, but perhaps she had been mistaken, perhaps she had not known their secret selves, and she remembered, for the first time for years, how she had once found Lydia crying in the nursery and had not been able to find out what her trouble was. It seemed to her that what she had missed then might be evading her still. She had given birth to five bodies and she would always be a stranger to their souls. This was a terrible thought and it would have been more terrible still if she had known that it was William's too.
Lydia seems to stand out from the family – she is loved by them all – although there appears to be a slightly more uneasy relationship with her sister Janet, but it is with William that she has a particularly special relationship. She calls her father “William” always with a touch of easy affectionate humour; she knows absolutely that he will not turn his back on her, no matter what she does. So it is to William that Lydia inevitably turns when she decides to leave her husband Oliver, and go off to live with another man. At this time of course this was a dreadful thing, and could ruin a woman and indeed her whole family socially. Lydia’s behaviour is treated very differently by William and his wife Kate. William is left confused and saddened by his wife’s reaction – this woman with whom he has shared his life for so long.
“He was in the presence of a stranger, someone quicker than himself in this matter, someone hard and inflexible, who surely had not borne his lovely daughter. He knew that for the moment her pain was controlled by her desire for action and her need to have the facts themselves in her grasp, but her hardness against Lydia stiffened him against herself.”
Yet despite their differing perspectives, William continues to care for his wife deeply, his is concerned when she is ill, when Kate travels to Lydia’s new home to confront her daughter, William follows, knowing she will be in distress and confusion and knowing she’ll have need of him. He is a wise and wonderful man, and is really just as interfering as Kate, but in a much gentler way, and his understanding of his children seems almost modern. Kate must come to her own acceptance of the situation, and William understands this too.
William and Kate’s youngest daughter Janet – is a more elusive character – she declares she will not marry, and yet neither William nor the reader quite believes this. William sets out to help his spikey youngest child to find her way in matters of the heart with quiet observation and just a nudge or two in the right direction.
This is such a lovely novel, it is a wonderfully realistic and sharply observed picture of family life and makes me look forward enormously to the two I have waiting for me on my overflowing tbr shelves.
William of the title is William Nesbitt, an ageing successful business man, happily married to Kate for many year, they have five grown up children. Mable married to John, Walter married to Violet, Dora married to Herbert, Lydia living in London and married to Oliver, while Janet the youngest remains unmarried and living at home. Kate Nesbitt has her own idea of how her children should live their lives, how they should behave toward their husbands and children; they often unsettle and worry her. William however is a remarkable father, he tries hard to understand his children, but more than that he seems to properly understand that they need to make their own way in the world. That all he can do is support them.
It had been different when they were all young and at school. She had felt then that they were her own, but perhaps she had been mistaken, perhaps she had not known their secret selves, and she remembered, for the first time for years, how she had once found Lydia crying in the nursery and had not been able to find out what her trouble was. It seemed to her that what she had missed then might be evading her still. She had given birth to five bodies and she would always be a stranger to their souls. This was a terrible thought and it would have been more terrible still if she had known that it was William's too.
Lydia seems to stand out from the family – she is loved by them all – although there appears to be a slightly more uneasy relationship with her sister Janet, but it is with William that she has a particularly special relationship. She calls her father “William” always with a touch of easy affectionate humour; she knows absolutely that he will not turn his back on her, no matter what she does. So it is to William that Lydia inevitably turns when she decides to leave her husband Oliver, and go off to live with another man. At this time of course this was a dreadful thing, and could ruin a woman and indeed her whole family socially. Lydia’s behaviour is treated very differently by William and his wife Kate. William is left confused and saddened by his wife’s reaction – this woman with whom he has shared his life for so long.
“He was in the presence of a stranger, someone quicker than himself in this matter, someone hard and inflexible, who surely had not borne his lovely daughter. He knew that for the moment her pain was controlled by her desire for action and her need to have the facts themselves in her grasp, but her hardness against Lydia stiffened him against herself.”
Yet despite their differing perspectives, William continues to care for his wife deeply, his is concerned when she is ill, when Kate travels to Lydia’s new home to confront her daughter, William follows, knowing she will be in distress and confusion and knowing she’ll have need of him. He is a wise and wonderful man, and is really just as interfering as Kate, but in a much gentler way, and his understanding of his children seems almost modern. Kate must come to her own acceptance of the situation, and William understands this too.
William and Kate’s youngest daughter Janet – is a more elusive character – she declares she will not marry, and yet neither William nor the reader quite believes this. William sets out to help his spikey youngest child to find her way in matters of the heart with quiet observation and just a nudge or two in the right direction.
This is such a lovely novel, it is a wonderfully realistic and sharply observed picture of family life and makes me look forward enormously to the two I have waiting for me on my overflowing tbr shelves.
December 4, 2024
When I started reading this, or at least when it got into its stride, I found it insanely irritating. I couldn’t believe that penguin had chosen this book as one of its first 10. It is essentially a blow by blow and thought by thought dissection of a family domestic drama. Sounds dreadful, doesn’t it? And yet by halfway through I found I was enjoying it. And by the end I found I had thoroughly enjoyed it. It really was rather clever. A lot of psychological insight. Decent writing of both male and female characters. And rather sweet in the end.
May 6, 2017
I seem to have developed some sort of troubled relationship with E H Young, admiring her writing style and undeniable talent, while often finding her characters' actions perplexing.
Kate is a mother of grown children made miserable by the fact that her adult children don't act as she thinks they should. William, the subject of the novel, is their father and thinks himself a fine fellow. He seems to harbor some mild contempt for two of his children, is utterly obsessed with the third, and puzzled by the fourth. Unlike his wife, he meddles in their lives, but in sub rosa fashion. He is smug, delights in manipulating his children and longs to be popular with them. He is mildly contemptuous of his wife because of her limitations., but loves her all the same.
It was a puzzling read.
Kate is a mother of grown children made miserable by the fact that her adult children don't act as she thinks they should. William, the subject of the novel, is their father and thinks himself a fine fellow. He seems to harbor some mild contempt for two of his children, is utterly obsessed with the third, and puzzled by the fourth. Unlike his wife, he meddles in their lives, but in sub rosa fashion. He is smug, delights in manipulating his children and longs to be popular with them. He is mildly contemptuous of his wife because of her limitations., but loves her all the same.
It was a puzzling read.
August 4, 2013
I loved this book. I wish William was my dad. I wish I was Lydia. I definitely wish I had bowls of tulips, and jasmine at my windows.
I especially liked how finely, how subtly, how cleverly EH Young crafted her characters. I liked slowly changing my mind as some of them (even the almost-dullest) grew just like everyone does in real life. There was a time when I felt impatient with the so not-modern issue apparently at the centre of the book. But I kept on, and realised (just in case I'd forgotten) how little love and life ever really change.
I especially liked how finely, how subtly, how cleverly EH Young crafted her characters. I liked slowly changing my mind as some of them (even the almost-dullest) grew just like everyone does in real life. There was a time when I felt impatient with the so not-modern issue apparently at the centre of the book. But I kept on, and realised (just in case I'd forgotten) how little love and life ever really change.
Read
February 22, 2020One of those richly detailed, satisfying family novels that only the English can write, with every character finely drawn and some quite comically. And while it’s not a Hallmark card ending, it’s quietly optimistic.
November 21, 2020
William and Kate Nesbitt are a middle-aged, happily married couple who live in considerable comfort thanks to William's successful business ventures. They have five children, most of whom are married and also well-off, and several grandchildren. Their large family is close-knit and contented - or so it seems. However, when one of their children commits an act which is scandalous by the standards of the day (the book is set in the 1920s), various tensions erupt between family members and their happy family life suddenly seems more precarious than they had realised. In particular, William and Kate realise they have very different responses what has occurred.
Although the book is titled William, much of the narrative is devoted to Kate and her struggles to adapt to the imperfections revealed to her.
"Everything, the whole world, seems to have gone wrong," she cries from the depths of her bewilderment.
"No," replies one of her daughters, "but we are seeing it, for the first time, as it is."
And it is that knowledge that Kate must come to terms with. This is an easy-to-read book with likeable characters and astute observations about some of the assumptions we make about family. Highly recommended.
Although the book is titled William, much of the narrative is devoted to Kate and her struggles to adapt to the imperfections revealed to her.
"Everything, the whole world, seems to have gone wrong," she cries from the depths of her bewilderment.
"No," replies one of her daughters, "but we are seeing it, for the first time, as it is."
And it is that knowledge that Kate must come to terms with. This is an easy-to-read book with likeable characters and astute observations about some of the assumptions we make about family. Highly recommended.
November 30, 2019
I'm surprised readers have found this charming. I started off enjoying the novel about a middle-aged couple and their 5 children - all married save one. I thought it would develop interestingly as characters developed and different marriages contrasted. However, about half way through the book, it veered off into a frankly creepy description of the father's relationship with daughter Lydia. One reason I struggled was that I couldn't see why he found her so wonderful - she seemed selfish and patronising to me. And why did she always call her father by his first name, when none of the other children did? All the other characters rather fell by the wayside after this change of direction in the book.
A minor point and not necessarily a criticism? This book was written only 7 years after the end of WW1 and you would not know it had happened from this book even though it seems to be dealing with society in a small town.
A minor point and not necessarily a criticism? This book was written only 7 years after the end of WW1 and you would not know it had happened from this book even though it seems to be dealing with society in a small town.
October 12, 2009
This is one of my (many) almost-forgotten books. Read it really young when stealing into my best friend's dad's Penguin collectibles. He was fanatic about paperback Penguins and had an incredible collection, most of which I read slowly growing up and some of which--as this one--I was able to find years later.
February 3, 2018
Perhaps a 3.8 because of a slow start. Interesting novel about family relationships between parents and their adult children. Hard to believe it was published in 1925, because it seems modern in many ways. E.H. Young did a really good job portraying how the parents struggle between wanting to protect their children from unhappiness versus allowing them the freedom to live their own lives.
March 27, 2021
I just keep thinking that the next EH Young I read can't be as good as the last. And she proves me wrong every time.
February 25, 2025
melodramatic. couldn't finish it.
June 14, 2025
I've decided I'm not a great fan of Edwardian literature. They explain so much so carefully, feelings in particular, that you've no idea what emotion they're trying to convey.
May 30, 2016
didn't read last ~20 pages.
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