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The World My Wilderness
Banished by her mother to England, Barbara is thrown into the ordered formality of English life. Confused and unhappy, she discovers the wrecked and flowering wastes around St Paul's, where she finds an echo of the wilderness of Provence and is forced to confront the wilderness within herself.
254 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1950
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1322 people want to read
About the author
Rose Macaulay
71 books119 followersEmilie Rose Macaulay, whom Elizabeth Bowen called "one of the few writers of whom it may be said, she adorns our century," was born at Rugby, where her father was an assistant master. Descended on both sides from a long line of clerical ancestors, she felt Anglicanism was in her blood. Much of her childhood was spent in Varazze, near Genoa, and memories of Italy fill the early novels. The family returned to England in 1894 and settled in Oxford. She read history at Somerville, and on coming down lived with her family first in Wales, then near Cambridge, where her father had been appointed a lecturer in English. There she began a writing career which was to span fifty years with the publication of her first novel, Abbots Verney, in 1906. When her sixth novel, The Lee Shore (1912), won a literary prize, a gift from her uncle allowed her to rent a tiny flat in London, and she plunged happily into London literary life.
From BookRags: http://www.bookrags.com/biography/ros...
From BookRags: http://www.bookrags.com/biography/ros...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 96 reviews
June 15, 2018
This is Rose Macaulay’s penultimate novel and she had begun writing novels almost 50 years earlier. The backdrop of the novel is post-war London and the ruins caused by the Blitz. Macaulay is an interesting character in her own right; her family tree is fascinating and includes academics, abolitionists and the great Whig historian T B Macaulay. She read history at Somerville College Oxford and was a lifelong feminist. During the Blitz her London flat was destroyed, including her library; she had to rebuild from scratch.
The inter relationships in this novel are quite complex. The central character is Barbary Deniston who is 17. In the summer of 1945 she is living with her mother Helen Michel in the South of France, where she has spent the war. Helen’s second husband, Maurice had been a minor collaborator during the war and had recently been drowned in mysterious circumstances. Barbary spends much of her time with her step brother Raoul (Maurice’s son). During the latter part of the war she and Raoul have been helping the Maquis and pretty much running wild. She has been packed up by the Gestapo and interrogated and, it is hinted, raped. Helen has a son by Maurice who is now a toddler. Barbary’s father, Gulliver, lives in London with his new wife Pamela.
The novel begins as Barbary and Raoul are being sent to London, Barbary to stay with her father and Raoul with his uncle. There is an almost unstated feel that Barbary and Raoul knew something about the death of Maurice. The implication is that Barbary will stay with her father for quite some time. Her mother Helen has maintained very few boundaries for her children and is something of a Bohemian. Her father is very different and she finds life in his household much more restrictive; she also dislikes his new wife. Barbary and Raoul discover the bombed out wilderness around St Pauls and spend time with its occupants, who are also often on the edges of society. They have an innate mistrust of authority and like those they meet do not wish to participate in conventional society. They take over an empty flat and Barbary paints in a ruined church. As time goes on Barbary becomes increasingly alienated from her London family and starts to fall foul of the authorities. An accident brings circumstances to a head and there is a denouement with a few interesting twists.
It is an enjoyable novel and Barbary is an endearing protagonist. The actual Church in the novel where Barbary takes refuge is St Giles Cripplegate. Barbary finds the ruins comforting and creates her own space, a home there and there is a redemptive and healing theme; in the sense of coming to terms with the past. For Barbary there is trauma relating to her time with the Maquis; things done to her and things she has done. The dislocation of the setting mimics Barbary’s own dislocation and its wildness attracts her as much as the order of her father’s household and social circle repels her. This is a beautifully written and nuanced tale and there is a good deal going on below the surface. There is a remarkable scene when an old priest stumbles into the ruined church, clearly still disturbed by his experiences in the Blitz; he flings himself to the ground and is clearly very distressed; he is rescued by a younger priest who comes to find him.
This is worth looking out and Macaulay makes one feel some sympathy, even for the more unsympathetic characters; an interesting read.
The inter relationships in this novel are quite complex. The central character is Barbary Deniston who is 17. In the summer of 1945 she is living with her mother Helen Michel in the South of France, where she has spent the war. Helen’s second husband, Maurice had been a minor collaborator during the war and had recently been drowned in mysterious circumstances. Barbary spends much of her time with her step brother Raoul (Maurice’s son). During the latter part of the war she and Raoul have been helping the Maquis and pretty much running wild. She has been packed up by the Gestapo and interrogated and, it is hinted, raped. Helen has a son by Maurice who is now a toddler. Barbary’s father, Gulliver, lives in London with his new wife Pamela.
The novel begins as Barbary and Raoul are being sent to London, Barbary to stay with her father and Raoul with his uncle. There is an almost unstated feel that Barbary and Raoul knew something about the death of Maurice. The implication is that Barbary will stay with her father for quite some time. Her mother Helen has maintained very few boundaries for her children and is something of a Bohemian. Her father is very different and she finds life in his household much more restrictive; she also dislikes his new wife. Barbary and Raoul discover the bombed out wilderness around St Pauls and spend time with its occupants, who are also often on the edges of society. They have an innate mistrust of authority and like those they meet do not wish to participate in conventional society. They take over an empty flat and Barbary paints in a ruined church. As time goes on Barbary becomes increasingly alienated from her London family and starts to fall foul of the authorities. An accident brings circumstances to a head and there is a denouement with a few interesting twists.
It is an enjoyable novel and Barbary is an endearing protagonist. The actual Church in the novel where Barbary takes refuge is St Giles Cripplegate. Barbary finds the ruins comforting and creates her own space, a home there and there is a redemptive and healing theme; in the sense of coming to terms with the past. For Barbary there is trauma relating to her time with the Maquis; things done to her and things she has done. The dislocation of the setting mimics Barbary’s own dislocation and its wildness attracts her as much as the order of her father’s household and social circle repels her. This is a beautifully written and nuanced tale and there is a good deal going on below the surface. There is a remarkable scene when an old priest stumbles into the ruined church, clearly still disturbed by his experiences in the Blitz; he flings himself to the ground and is clearly very distressed; he is rescued by a younger priest who comes to find him.
This is worth looking out and Macaulay makes one feel some sympathy, even for the more unsympathetic characters; an interesting read.
January 2, 2021
I found my copy of this book at a youth group used-book sale a few years ago. It was wedged in a jumble, with no dust jacket on its 1950 bones. I would have passed over it without a second thought, but I caught the author's name on the spine: Rose Macaulay. Where did I . . .? Where did I . . .? Ah-ha: The Towers of Trebizond, which had kept me so thoroughly entertained.
So, fifty cents later, she was mine. Yet, in the exchange between buyer and book, this one made no purchase on me at the first several attempts. And in retrospect, I don't know why. This time, over the flip of a calendar year, I made it through the early description of garden and found collaborator by the second page. We reading fishes must have our own bait.
At the heart of this story is 17 year-old Barbary, but from there it gets complicated. The book opens in 1946 and Barbary is living on a French estate with her mother, Helen aka Mummy. Barbary's father, Gulliver, is a well-heeled lawyer in London. The parents are divorced, Helen having slunk off to France with Barbary before the war and stayed there. She met and married Maurice Michel, which proved grounds enough for divorce. So Gulliver marries the considerably younger and athletic Pamela, who soon favors him with son, David. There's one in the oven, too. Meanwhile, back in France, Helen and Maurice also procreated, a boy named Raoul. There is also Roland, Maurice's son from a prior marriage. And there's the older child of Helen and Gulliver, Richie, who was captured by the Germans during the War, escaped and made it back to England, but not before hiding out at the Michel estate. Richie was not the only resistance fighter protected by Maurice, who never ratted out so much as a single Jew. Yet, he did quite well playing otherwise nice with the invaders and with Vichy. In the fuzzy judgment of post-War France, that could be enough to be thought a collaborator. Maurice has drowned though. Now his cousin Lucien, although married, has come sniffing around Helen.
Whew. That's a lot of characters to introduce - and that only a fraction - which might explain why this novel is tough to pierce. If it helps, David, Roland, and even Raoul are almost unnecessary, and are more props than characters.
I said Barbary is at the heart of the novel, and many reviewers are entranced by her. She is, true, the common denominator, a good starting point to define the other spokes . . .
. . . Oh, but it's Helen, who got my attention. We meet her first through one of her paintings: a reclining nude of her portly second father-in-law. She has a languid beauty, or at least I think so, because she invariably is reclining, and men cannot resist her. Perhaps, because she is unabashedly amoral. Here's a pinch of dialogue between her and Richie, discussing her latest fraud:
"I think you're so odd, Mamma. Because you really are a scholar; and yet you've none of a scholar's conscience."
"I've no conscience of any kind, my dear. It seems to have been left out of me. It's a pity; I should have been a nicer person if I had one."
Still, she could be self-reflective: When did people - women - outgrow love affairs? Fifty? Sixty? She was capable of maternal wisdom: "Don't you go and marry a stupid woman, my dear. I should be a bad mother-in-law to her. What would matter much more, you would probably end by being a bad husband." And she had a worldview: Honor: what a spiky, uncomfortable thing it can be. I expect the young are wise to be dropping it.
So I close this book without a cover. Nor much of a plot. And Barbary, olive-skinned Barbary? I did not fret if she survived her fall. But Gulliver sat across from Helen: His eyes could not leave her face, her body, the curve of the hand that rested on her knee. Or was that even Gulliver?
I am a reader often bored by the introduction of such literary devices as, say, a character's dream, or a slice of poem. But unable to take my eyes away from the curve of Helen's hand, her knee, I was ready for this:
But heart, there is no comfort, nor a grain;
Time can make her beauty, over again,
Because of that great nobleness of hers;
The fire that stirs about her when she stirs
Burns but more clearly. O she had not these ways
When all the wild summer was in her gaze.
O Heart! O heart! if she'd but turn her head,
You'd know the folly of being comforted.
So, fifty cents later, she was mine. Yet, in the exchange between buyer and book, this one made no purchase on me at the first several attempts. And in retrospect, I don't know why. This time, over the flip of a calendar year, I made it through the early description of garden and found collaborator by the second page. We reading fishes must have our own bait.
At the heart of this story is 17 year-old Barbary, but from there it gets complicated. The book opens in 1946 and Barbary is living on a French estate with her mother, Helen aka Mummy. Barbary's father, Gulliver, is a well-heeled lawyer in London. The parents are divorced, Helen having slunk off to France with Barbary before the war and stayed there. She met and married Maurice Michel, which proved grounds enough for divorce. So Gulliver marries the considerably younger and athletic Pamela, who soon favors him with son, David. There's one in the oven, too. Meanwhile, back in France, Helen and Maurice also procreated, a boy named Raoul. There is also Roland, Maurice's son from a prior marriage. And there's the older child of Helen and Gulliver, Richie, who was captured by the Germans during the War, escaped and made it back to England, but not before hiding out at the Michel estate. Richie was not the only resistance fighter protected by Maurice, who never ratted out so much as a single Jew. Yet, he did quite well playing otherwise nice with the invaders and with Vichy. In the fuzzy judgment of post-War France, that could be enough to be thought a collaborator. Maurice has drowned though. Now his cousin Lucien, although married, has come sniffing around Helen.
Whew. That's a lot of characters to introduce - and that only a fraction - which might explain why this novel is tough to pierce. If it helps, David, Roland, and even Raoul are almost unnecessary, and are more props than characters.
I said Barbary is at the heart of the novel, and many reviewers are entranced by her. She is, true, the common denominator, a good starting point to define the other spokes . . .
. . . Oh, but it's Helen, who got my attention. We meet her first through one of her paintings: a reclining nude of her portly second father-in-law. She has a languid beauty, or at least I think so, because she invariably is reclining, and men cannot resist her. Perhaps, because she is unabashedly amoral. Here's a pinch of dialogue between her and Richie, discussing her latest fraud:
"I think you're so odd, Mamma. Because you really are a scholar; and yet you've none of a scholar's conscience."
"I've no conscience of any kind, my dear. It seems to have been left out of me. It's a pity; I should have been a nicer person if I had one."
Still, she could be self-reflective: When did people - women - outgrow love affairs? Fifty? Sixty? She was capable of maternal wisdom: "Don't you go and marry a stupid woman, my dear. I should be a bad mother-in-law to her. What would matter much more, you would probably end by being a bad husband." And she had a worldview: Honor: what a spiky, uncomfortable thing it can be. I expect the young are wise to be dropping it.
So I close this book without a cover. Nor much of a plot. And Barbary, olive-skinned Barbary? I did not fret if she survived her fall. But Gulliver sat across from Helen: His eyes could not leave her face, her body, the curve of the hand that rested on her knee. Or was that even Gulliver?
I am a reader often bored by the introduction of such literary devices as, say, a character's dream, or a slice of poem. But unable to take my eyes away from the curve of Helen's hand, her knee, I was ready for this:
But heart, there is no comfort, nor a grain;
Time can make her beauty, over again,
Because of that great nobleness of hers;
The fire that stirs about her when she stirs
Burns but more clearly. O she had not these ways
When all the wild summer was in her gaze.
O Heart! O heart! if she'd but turn her head,
You'd know the folly of being comforted.
March 3, 2023
I have been unsure on how I want to rate this book! In such situations I ask myself to answer one question, but I must answer very quickly. “How do I feel toward the book?” I am looking for my gut response. “Yeah, it’s OK” was my answer. My rating must therefore be two stars.
First a few words about the plot: The story is set in London, the Scottish Highlands and Provence, France. It’s the summer of 1945, so immediately after the Second World War. The story has readers thinking about the consequences of war, often on a personal level. It looks at how we judge collaborators. It looks at the emotional tug at our heart on seeing the destruction of churches and other national sites. After such a war, is our perception of violence and authority forever changed? In simple words, if the governments of nations have gotten us into this terrible war, is not one’s trust in governments now diminished? Should we, can we, rely on governmental authority as we did before? These questions arise as we observe how different members of a family and others in society have been irrevocably changed by the war.
OK, here follows what I like and dislike:
I like that characters and relationships are drawn realistically. Disputes and problems remain even at the story’s end. Problems are not resolved and tied up with pretty bows.
We observe the physical destruction of parts pf London, particularly around St. Paul’s Cathedral. In the midst of the destruction nature steps in. We observe here two different forces, civilization and wilderness, in combat against each other. I like the author’s descriptive prose, but it remains unclear which of the two forces the author is favoring.
The family under the microscope has been torn and patched back to together again several times. Divorces followed by new marriages have made the family structure complicated. Siblings no longer live together; half-brothers and half-sisters are the norm. Keeping straight how the adults and kids are related to each other is difficult. For 1945, this seems to me somewhat unusual. You might say the author was ahead of her time!
A seventeen-year-old girl, Barbary by name, is one of the central characters. To me she seems extremely childish and immature. In London she attends the Slade School of Art. but her artistic ability is scarcely evident. We are told she paints a mural in a bombed Anglican Church. Her mother is artistic and this we do visually see in the paintings on the walls of her house in Provence. I found this a tease. We ae led to believe we are going to get a book about art and artists, and yet this falls through.
My biggest problem comes to this--the book focuses on different topics and then leaves them hanging in midair. Parental control and responsibility, religion, art and poetry are touched upon but only touched upon. The reader is left wondering what message the author is attempting to convey. This irritated me immensely, particularly in relation to how collaboration with the Nazis and the Vichy authorities is dealt with. I do not think it is a question of the English and the French viewing collaboration differently!
Arne Svanberg reads the audiobook I listened to. I have given his narration two stars. His calm, level tone does not properly express the anger that must have been bubbling to the surface at least some of the time. Always he speaks cooly and calmly. I could easily distinguish the words spoken, but no trace of emotion could be heard. Just a little emotion would have gone a long way in giving us a better narration.
Expressing in words what has been going around in my head makes me sure a two-star rating is right for me. On the positive side, the book does prod the reader to think. I’m willing to try another book by the author. Hopefully, it will be less open ended.
**********************
*The World My Wilderness 2 stars
*Dangerous Ages TBR
First a few words about the plot: The story is set in London, the Scottish Highlands and Provence, France. It’s the summer of 1945, so immediately after the Second World War. The story has readers thinking about the consequences of war, often on a personal level. It looks at how we judge collaborators. It looks at the emotional tug at our heart on seeing the destruction of churches and other national sites. After such a war, is our perception of violence and authority forever changed? In simple words, if the governments of nations have gotten us into this terrible war, is not one’s trust in governments now diminished? Should we, can we, rely on governmental authority as we did before? These questions arise as we observe how different members of a family and others in society have been irrevocably changed by the war.
OK, here follows what I like and dislike:
I like that characters and relationships are drawn realistically. Disputes and problems remain even at the story’s end. Problems are not resolved and tied up with pretty bows.
We observe the physical destruction of parts pf London, particularly around St. Paul’s Cathedral. In the midst of the destruction nature steps in. We observe here two different forces, civilization and wilderness, in combat against each other. I like the author’s descriptive prose, but it remains unclear which of the two forces the author is favoring.
The family under the microscope has been torn and patched back to together again several times. Divorces followed by new marriages have made the family structure complicated. Siblings no longer live together; half-brothers and half-sisters are the norm. Keeping straight how the adults and kids are related to each other is difficult. For 1945, this seems to me somewhat unusual. You might say the author was ahead of her time!
A seventeen-year-old girl, Barbary by name, is one of the central characters. To me she seems extremely childish and immature. In London she attends the Slade School of Art. but her artistic ability is scarcely evident. We are told she paints a mural in a bombed Anglican Church. Her mother is artistic and this we do visually see in the paintings on the walls of her house in Provence. I found this a tease. We ae led to believe we are going to get a book about art and artists, and yet this falls through.
My biggest problem comes to this--the book focuses on different topics and then leaves them hanging in midair. Parental control and responsibility, religion, art and poetry are touched upon but only touched upon. The reader is left wondering what message the author is attempting to convey. This irritated me immensely, particularly in relation to how collaboration with the Nazis and the Vichy authorities is dealt with. I do not think it is a question of the English and the French viewing collaboration differently!
Arne Svanberg reads the audiobook I listened to. I have given his narration two stars. His calm, level tone does not properly express the anger that must have been bubbling to the surface at least some of the time. Always he speaks cooly and calmly. I could easily distinguish the words spoken, but no trace of emotion could be heard. Just a little emotion would have gone a long way in giving us a better narration.
Expressing in words what has been going around in my head makes me sure a two-star rating is right for me. On the positive side, the book does prod the reader to think. I’m willing to try another book by the author. Hopefully, it will be less open ended.
**********************
*The World My Wilderness 2 stars
*Dangerous Ages TBR
February 8, 2019
I began ‘The World My Wilderness’ feeling rather lukewarm about it, as the opening pages confused me with descriptions of two women without making it clear which was which. Once the plot moved from rural France to London, though, it became very compelling. The setting and themes have a curious similarity to Space Below My Feet, the memoir of a young woman who deserted from the ATS immediately after WWII to live rough and climb mountains. The main character of ‘The World My Wilderness’ is Barbary, a young woman who lived with her family in occupied France during WWII and struggles to adjust to postwar London. Her piratical name is indicative of her nature; helping the marquis fight the Nazis during wartime has traumatised and hardened her. Despite the comfort of living with her father (who divorced her mother and remarried), she camps in ruins and steals whenever possible. I appreciated Macaulay’s depiction of the Second World War’s legacy in England as the absolute opposite of ennobling. Instead, rationing and privation has made everyone dishonest and suspicious, most criminal, and some violent. The book’s main message seems to be that the war smashed the veneer of civilisation, not just in the places most obviously occupied and destroyed, but more fundamentally. The social contract was ripped up and seemingly well brought up young ladies like Barbary got mixed up in sabotage and murder.
Unlike Space Below My Feet, which is fundamentally an optimistic account of female freedom, ‘The World My Wilderness’ is pessimistic about Barbary’s future. It’s clear to her family that she had some intensely traumatic experiences during the war, which the reader finds out included being raped and tortured. Subsequently running away from her family and shoplifting don’t make her happy, because she cannot escape what she went through. The narrative examines this, and the responses of her family, with considerable subtlety. The characters are all very well observed and their moods and awkwardness entirely convincing. Two other notable features are the treatment of religion and of the built environment. In the former case, I was reminded of Brideshead Revisited as Catholicism is seen as a comforting way to turn against the frightening present and hark back to the golden-hued past. Various characters seem ready to believe in hell but disinterested in other Christian doctrine, including a traumatised priest. The tradition and ritual of religion seem to offer only limited comfort in the wake of world war, yet for some this is better than nothing.
As for the built environment, Macaulay’s most beguiling writing is reserved for the haunted ruins of bombed-out London, where Barbary and her disreputable pals lurk all day. The lyrical, effusive descriptions of an urban fabric being reclaimed by nature bring to mind After London: or, Wild England. These sequences also reminded me that London was so denuded of people during WWII that it only returned to its pre-war population level about five years ago.
I found this novel to be a surprising and thought-provoking reflection on the war’s domestic legacy. Barbary and her family are fascinating characters and it is notable that no soldiers appear, other than a few deserters. The war’s impact on civilians and society is examined in a clever, original way. It is made clear that individuals and society cannot return to their happier pre-war state, although Macaulay does not suggest that recovery is impossible. When the book was first published in 1950, though, it must still have seemed a long way away.
Unlike Space Below My Feet, which is fundamentally an optimistic account of female freedom, ‘The World My Wilderness’ is pessimistic about Barbary’s future. It’s clear to her family that she had some intensely traumatic experiences during the war, which the reader finds out included being raped and tortured. Subsequently running away from her family and shoplifting don’t make her happy, because she cannot escape what she went through. The narrative examines this, and the responses of her family, with considerable subtlety. The characters are all very well observed and their moods and awkwardness entirely convincing. Two other notable features are the treatment of religion and of the built environment. In the former case, I was reminded of Brideshead Revisited as Catholicism is seen as a comforting way to turn against the frightening present and hark back to the golden-hued past. Various characters seem ready to believe in hell but disinterested in other Christian doctrine, including a traumatised priest. The tradition and ritual of religion seem to offer only limited comfort in the wake of world war, yet for some this is better than nothing.
As for the built environment, Macaulay’s most beguiling writing is reserved for the haunted ruins of bombed-out London, where Barbary and her disreputable pals lurk all day. The lyrical, effusive descriptions of an urban fabric being reclaimed by nature bring to mind After London: or, Wild England. These sequences also reminded me that London was so denuded of people during WWII that it only returned to its pre-war population level about five years ago.
Still the ghosts of the centuries-old merchant cunning crept and murmured among weeds and broken stones, flitted like bats about dust-heaped, gaping rooms. But their companion ghosts, ghosts of ancient probity, honourable and mercantile and proud and tough, that had lived side by side with cunning in the stone ways, and in the great blocks of warehouses and offices and halls, had deserted and fled without trace, leaving their broken dwellings to the creeping jungle and the crafty shades.
I found this novel to be a surprising and thought-provoking reflection on the war’s domestic legacy. Barbary and her family are fascinating characters and it is notable that no soldiers appear, other than a few deserters. The war’s impact on civilians and society is examined in a clever, original way. It is made clear that individuals and society cannot return to their happier pre-war state, although Macaulay does not suggest that recovery is impossible. When the book was first published in 1950, though, it must still have seemed a long way away.
August 11, 2018
If this had been by a male author, and about a 17 year old boy rather than a girl, it would be considered the ultimate post-war bildungsroman and on every high school reading list.
February 7, 2023
Although there were many similarities in the structure of this book and Crewe Train -- the "savage" teenage girl, the fractured family life which forces her to live in "Civilised" London, rather than the freer Continental rural life -- the tone and denouement are very different. Crewe Train is light and pleasantly witty and satirical. This book shows a society broken by war, selfishness, class differences and irremediable conflict.
I loved the portrayal of broken postwar London, with the professional class living well with servants while the bombed out sections lie in ruins and provide space for wildflowers, animals, shattered priests, thieves, spivs and misfits. There are lovely passages describing the the ruins of homes, businesses and churches, with flowers growing in the shattered walls, cracked streets and bomb craters, watched on by ghosts of an older city. She captured the wreckage caused by war, and how life goes on but is changed by the degraded environment.
The families are equally shattered by the experience of war and resistance, of the separation of families by battle lines and divided loyalties and experiences. (It did take several rereads of some paragraphs for me to sort out the family relationships and parentage of the children, but I'm never good at that!) The cracks in the family lines are not smoothed over with balmy words and tolerance. New wives are jealous of old ones, children are neglected and abandoned, toddlers fight and traumatic experiences are not dissolved even with care.
In terms of the writing, this is another novel that I appreciated more in parts than as a unified whole. I had the sense that it was constructed more with an overall vision and discrete scenes, rather than a work with all parts seamlessly joined and leading to an inevitable conclusion, which is why I gave it 3*. But I still enjoyed the writing, the story and the style, and I liked the fact that the characters were not fully drawn and their actions not fully explained.
I loved the portrayal of broken postwar London, with the professional class living well with servants while the bombed out sections lie in ruins and provide space for wildflowers, animals, shattered priests, thieves, spivs and misfits. There are lovely passages describing the the ruins of homes, businesses and churches, with flowers growing in the shattered walls, cracked streets and bomb craters, watched on by ghosts of an older city. She captured the wreckage caused by war, and how life goes on but is changed by the degraded environment.
The families are equally shattered by the experience of war and resistance, of the separation of families by battle lines and divided loyalties and experiences. (It did take several rereads of some paragraphs for me to sort out the family relationships and parentage of the children, but I'm never good at that!) The cracks in the family lines are not smoothed over with balmy words and tolerance. New wives are jealous of old ones, children are neglected and abandoned, toddlers fight and traumatic experiences are not dissolved even with care.
In terms of the writing, this is another novel that I appreciated more in parts than as a unified whole. I had the sense that it was constructed more with an overall vision and discrete scenes, rather than a work with all parts seamlessly joined and leading to an inevitable conclusion, which is why I gave it 3*. But I still enjoyed the writing, the story and the style, and I liked the fact that the characters were not fully drawn and their actions not fully explained.
July 4, 2020
A very strange book. My first experience with Rose Macaulay and maybe not the best one to start with.
Barbary is a young, irresponsible seventeen year old who is sent to stay with her father and his new partner Pamela in London in the house she and her parents lived together. Her life for the last few years has consisted of running carefree in France living with her mother with no responsibilities. Barbary is a peculiar character, like an older, sarcastic and bohemian version of William Brown. Despite living in a beautiful house, she chooses to spend evenings sleeping in an abandoned flat in the ruins of the bombed buildings near St Paul's cathedral and sketching pictures to sell on the street instead of studying at the Slade School of Art. Sending her to Scotland to stay with relatives doesn't go well either and she runs away back to London. in fact She also gets into trouble hanging out with the wrong crowd which leads to a terrifying accident. There is much talk of how the war has affected the younger generation, what sort of mindset they are now in and how their characters have been shaped due to the various atrocities.
Some parts of the story are enjoyable, whilst others were too 'deep' for me and the last few chapters left a bitter taste in my mouth. I'll maybe try one of her other stories that's light and frothy.
Barbary is a young, irresponsible seventeen year old who is sent to stay with her father and his new partner Pamela in London in the house she and her parents lived together. Her life for the last few years has consisted of running carefree in France living with her mother with no responsibilities. Barbary is a peculiar character, like an older, sarcastic and bohemian version of William Brown. Despite living in a beautiful house, she chooses to spend evenings sleeping in an abandoned flat in the ruins of the bombed buildings near St Paul's cathedral and sketching pictures to sell on the street instead of studying at the Slade School of Art. Sending her to Scotland to stay with relatives doesn't go well either and she runs away back to London. in fact She also gets into trouble hanging out with the wrong crowd which leads to a terrifying accident. There is much talk of how the war has affected the younger generation, what sort of mindset they are now in and how their characters have been shaped due to the various atrocities.
Some parts of the story are enjoyable, whilst others were too 'deep' for me and the last few chapters left a bitter taste in my mouth. I'll maybe try one of her other stories that's light and frothy.
March 25, 2019
Rose Macaulay is an author whom I enjoy, but have read barely anything by. I decided to purchase a copy of her 1950 novel, The World My Wilderness, late last year, and sat down to begin it on a drizzly spring afternoon. This book, her first novel published in a decade, is revered as Macaulay's 'most sophisticated novel', which 'explores brilliantly the spiritual dilemmas of the post-war world.' The green-spined Virago edition (not pictured) which I read contains a rather fantastic introduction by Penelope Fitzgerald, one of my favourite authors.
The World My Wilderness begins in 1946, a year after the end of the Second World War. Our protagonist is seventeen-year-old Barbary Deniston, who has 'grown up in the sunshine of Provence with her voluptuous, indolent but intelligent mother, allowed to run wild with the Maquis, experiencing collaboration, betrayal - and death.' After little consideration, Barbary and her stepbrother Raoul are 'banished' to England by her mother. Whilst Raoul goes to stay with an uncle, Barbary is consequently 'thrown into the ordered formality of English life with her distinguished father and conventional stepmother.' Barbary is profoundly unhappy with this turn of events, and wants nothing more than to return to her carefree existence in France. When wandering in London one day, Barbary discovers 'the wrecked and flowering wastes around St. Paul's. Here, in the bombed heart of London, she finds an echo of the wilderness of Provence and is forced to confront the wilderness within herself.'
The World My Wilderness is, in this manner, a coming-of-age novel. Whilst Barbary does not have what could amount to a sexual awakening, she becomes far more aware of her self, and the sometimes limited power which she has in her life. When she meets her estranged father for the first time in seven years, he sees her as something of a disappointment, thinking her a 'queer elf' and 'the same little tramp' as she appeared as a ten-year-old. She is given her old bedroom in the London house, where she and her family lived before her mother fled with her to France, but it has changed immeasurably: 'Engulfed and assaulted by the resurrecting past, Barbary sat on the new bed, tears pricking against her eyes; her face disintegrated into the quivering chaos of sorrow.' Barbary is both determined and naïve; she is convinced that her parents, both separated for seven years, and both with young children by new partners, will get back together.
From the first page, in finely sculpted and rather sumptuous prose, Macaulay sets her scenes so deftly and vividly. She introduces of Barbary's home, The Villa Fraises, in the following way: 'The villa... was strawberry pink, with green shutters shaped like leaves, and some green bogus windows and shutters, with painted ladies looking out of them, but most of the windows were real, and had balconies full of shrubs and blue pots and drying bathing suits and golden cucumbers in piles. There was a flat terraced roof with vine trellises on it, and outside the villa stone steps climbed up to the roof. The garden was crowded with shrubs and flowers and orange and lemon trees, and pomegranates and magnolias and bougainvilleas and vines.'
Macaulay presented me with a view of London I am entirely unfamiliar with, and which feels wonderfully alive, even in its desolation. I very much appreciated the stark, uncompromising landscapes which she built, which are quite at odds with the grand and unspoilt buildings I know of around St. Paul's Cathedral. She writes of the roaming Barbary and Raoul do around London together, loath as they are to have to spend any more time with their respective families. They spend a lot of time climbing into bombed and abandoned buildings, and meeting other drifters along the way. Macaulay describes one of the spaces they claim as their own like so: 'In the boards there was a gap large enough to squeeze through; they did so, and stood, with no roof but the sky, while pigeons whirred about them and the wind blew in their faces, on a small plateau, looking down over the wrecked city.'
Macaulay also captures her characters, and their movements, exceedingly well. When Barbary goes to check on her sleeping baby brother at the beginning of the book, for instance, and is interrupted by her rather formidable mother, Macaulay writes: 'Barbary slipped from the room, as quiet as a despondent breath. She and Raoul had acquired movements almost noiseless, the slinking steps, the affected, furtive glide, the quick, wary glancing right and left, of jungle creatures.' The conversations which the author captures between characters are involved and in depth, and really help to develop the family dynamics, which shift and mould over time.
Of The World My Wilderness, Fitzgerald writes: 'The book disturbed [Macaulay's] readers, because it was no what they expected. The most successful of her early novels had been social satires... The World My Wilderness sowed that the power of ridicule, after all, was not the most important gift she had.' Fitzgerald goes on to highlight the similarities between Barbary's life in the novel, and Macaulay's own. She is also perceptive about Macaulay's heroine, whom the author herself described as 'rather lost and strayed and derelict'. Fitzgerald writes that 'she is not a wanderer by nature, it is only that she needs a home that she can trust.' In a searching paragraph close to the end of her introduction, she notes: 'However faulty the main characters may be, there is one striking fact about them; their mistakes are not the result of caring nothing about each other, but of caring too much.'
In some ways, The World My Wilderness is rather a bleak novel, which has been so well situated both socially and historically. I really enjoyed the discussions between characters, particularly with regard to the political situation in Britain and France, and the changing face of Europe. The World My Wilderness, as well as being quite dark and sometimes maudlin, is a wise book; at times, it is almost profound. I did not find the ending of the novel overly satisfying, but felt that it fitted in well with the story. I am keen to seek out more of Macaulay's fiction in the very near future, and look forward to meeting more of her wonderfully crafted characters.
The World My Wilderness begins in 1946, a year after the end of the Second World War. Our protagonist is seventeen-year-old Barbary Deniston, who has 'grown up in the sunshine of Provence with her voluptuous, indolent but intelligent mother, allowed to run wild with the Maquis, experiencing collaboration, betrayal - and death.' After little consideration, Barbary and her stepbrother Raoul are 'banished' to England by her mother. Whilst Raoul goes to stay with an uncle, Barbary is consequently 'thrown into the ordered formality of English life with her distinguished father and conventional stepmother.' Barbary is profoundly unhappy with this turn of events, and wants nothing more than to return to her carefree existence in France. When wandering in London one day, Barbary discovers 'the wrecked and flowering wastes around St. Paul's. Here, in the bombed heart of London, she finds an echo of the wilderness of Provence and is forced to confront the wilderness within herself.'
The World My Wilderness is, in this manner, a coming-of-age novel. Whilst Barbary does not have what could amount to a sexual awakening, she becomes far more aware of her self, and the sometimes limited power which she has in her life. When she meets her estranged father for the first time in seven years, he sees her as something of a disappointment, thinking her a 'queer elf' and 'the same little tramp' as she appeared as a ten-year-old. She is given her old bedroom in the London house, where she and her family lived before her mother fled with her to France, but it has changed immeasurably: 'Engulfed and assaulted by the resurrecting past, Barbary sat on the new bed, tears pricking against her eyes; her face disintegrated into the quivering chaos of sorrow.' Barbary is both determined and naïve; she is convinced that her parents, both separated for seven years, and both with young children by new partners, will get back together.
From the first page, in finely sculpted and rather sumptuous prose, Macaulay sets her scenes so deftly and vividly. She introduces of Barbary's home, The Villa Fraises, in the following way: 'The villa... was strawberry pink, with green shutters shaped like leaves, and some green bogus windows and shutters, with painted ladies looking out of them, but most of the windows were real, and had balconies full of shrubs and blue pots and drying bathing suits and golden cucumbers in piles. There was a flat terraced roof with vine trellises on it, and outside the villa stone steps climbed up to the roof. The garden was crowded with shrubs and flowers and orange and lemon trees, and pomegranates and magnolias and bougainvilleas and vines.'
Macaulay presented me with a view of London I am entirely unfamiliar with, and which feels wonderfully alive, even in its desolation. I very much appreciated the stark, uncompromising landscapes which she built, which are quite at odds with the grand and unspoilt buildings I know of around St. Paul's Cathedral. She writes of the roaming Barbary and Raoul do around London together, loath as they are to have to spend any more time with their respective families. They spend a lot of time climbing into bombed and abandoned buildings, and meeting other drifters along the way. Macaulay describes one of the spaces they claim as their own like so: 'In the boards there was a gap large enough to squeeze through; they did so, and stood, with no roof but the sky, while pigeons whirred about them and the wind blew in their faces, on a small plateau, looking down over the wrecked city.'
Macaulay also captures her characters, and their movements, exceedingly well. When Barbary goes to check on her sleeping baby brother at the beginning of the book, for instance, and is interrupted by her rather formidable mother, Macaulay writes: 'Barbary slipped from the room, as quiet as a despondent breath. She and Raoul had acquired movements almost noiseless, the slinking steps, the affected, furtive glide, the quick, wary glancing right and left, of jungle creatures.' The conversations which the author captures between characters are involved and in depth, and really help to develop the family dynamics, which shift and mould over time.
Of The World My Wilderness, Fitzgerald writes: 'The book disturbed [Macaulay's] readers, because it was no what they expected. The most successful of her early novels had been social satires... The World My Wilderness sowed that the power of ridicule, after all, was not the most important gift she had.' Fitzgerald goes on to highlight the similarities between Barbary's life in the novel, and Macaulay's own. She is also perceptive about Macaulay's heroine, whom the author herself described as 'rather lost and strayed and derelict'. Fitzgerald writes that 'she is not a wanderer by nature, it is only that she needs a home that she can trust.' In a searching paragraph close to the end of her introduction, she notes: 'However faulty the main characters may be, there is one striking fact about them; their mistakes are not the result of caring nothing about each other, but of caring too much.'
In some ways, The World My Wilderness is rather a bleak novel, which has been so well situated both socially and historically. I really enjoyed the discussions between characters, particularly with regard to the political situation in Britain and France, and the changing face of Europe. The World My Wilderness, as well as being quite dark and sometimes maudlin, is a wise book; at times, it is almost profound. I did not find the ending of the novel overly satisfying, but felt that it fitted in well with the story. I am keen to seek out more of Macaulay's fiction in the very near future, and look forward to meeting more of her wonderfully crafted characters.
June 28, 2011
This is a story set in immediate post war London. A young woman, Barbary ( why are heroines so often saddled with ridiculously pretentious names...apologies to any Barbarys reading this by the way), comes to live with her father from whom her mother has been divorced for quite some years. Incidentally her mother, Helen, is one of those literary creations where the writer wants to create a character who is incredibly attractive to all men in every situation in order to complicate the plot or in order to attempt to engender a veneer of sophistication but does this purely and simply by telling you that ' Helen is unbelievably attractive to anything on two legs with a willy and a pulse '....I paraphrase you understand but you catch my drift. Its lazy writing. Macaulay does not show anything approaching a real person in this novel. Barbary is so stupidly naive as to render it impossible to believe she managed to survive the war whilst supposedly assisting the resistance, her step brother Raoul speaks as if self taught from a dictionary or grammar book and I found myself not being able to believe a single character. Its one thing to suspend belief its quite another to have to remove all sense of reality. The overall concept was, I think, the struggle of the uncivilized or unfettered Barbary removed from her joyously free life in rural France to fit in to the stultifying rules and manners of 1940's London. This was symbolized by the wilderness of the title which had come to rule supreme over bombed and devastated London. She finds a dubious freedom in amidst the artificiality only by escaping into a transitory wild ruin which will, in the end, be quashed and tamed as ' civilization' reasserts itself. I say i think because it was total pretension from start to finish and I am not totally certain whether that is its premise. Helen and her estranged husband who does, inevitably, still adore her from afar (Yawn, yawn), have a final show down over where and how Barbary is going to live. A twist which is ridiculously drawn out of Helen's elegant and indolent handbag ties up the loose end in an unexpected way but the unexpected is not that of the ' oh goodness, how clever. What an ingenious plot development ' but rather ' Oh in the name of all that's holy, that's stupid '. I wasn't keen.
August 16, 2022
This book packs a punch. The back cover says: “one of the best novels written about the immediate post-war period”. I believe it. Barbary’s character shows the devastating trauma of living as a teenager in occupied southern France during WWII. The depiction of her PTSD in post-war London when she comes to live with her father and his young wife is heartbreaking. I think the fundamental question of the novel is whether anything good can come from ruins. I have underestimated the ruin of the world in May and August 1945. I think the novel ends with the possibility that Barbary may get a second chance at childhood, a chance to be secure and carefree instead of lawless and scared and old before she was ever young.
There is a fascinating mix of side characters in this. Every character is sympathetic, even if not likable. Sir Gulliver is misguided but I understand why he does the things he does. His young wife Pamela has enough self knowledge amongst her vanity to be pitiable. Richie is a peacemaker, a man trying to walk the line between his intense and charismatic parents. And Helen is fabulous. She commands both a room and the scene whenever she appears in the novel. She is her own version of lawless and yet she’s captivating and even noble.
Highly recommend.
There is a fascinating mix of side characters in this. Every character is sympathetic, even if not likable. Sir Gulliver is misguided but I understand why he does the things he does. His young wife Pamela has enough self knowledge amongst her vanity to be pitiable. Richie is a peacemaker, a man trying to walk the line between his intense and charismatic parents. And Helen is fabulous. She commands both a room and the scene whenever she appears in the novel. She is her own version of lawless and yet she’s captivating and even noble.
Highly recommend.
October 14, 2016
The World my Wilderness is a wonderful novel, set in the fragile post-war world still reeling from the difficulties and betrayals of the war years, it is a novel which explores beautifully, the damage parents do to their children.
It is 1946 and Barbary Deniston has been living in France with her beautiful, indolent mother Helen throughout the war years. Their home at the Villa Fraises in Collioure, an area occupied by the Germans during the war is a place of relaxed freedom and sunshine. Helen, divorced from Barbary’s father, married a wealthy Frenchman widely seen as a Nazi collaborator.
“Barbary slipped from the room, as quiet as a despondent breath. She and Raoul had acquired movements almost noiseless, the sinking step, the affected, furtive glide, the quick wary glancing right and left, of jungle creatures.”
full review: https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2016/...
Barbary and her stepbrother Raoul, have run wild together, associating with the defiant and dangerous local Maquis (Resistance) who defied the Germans and betrayed the collaborators. Here, Barbary learnt about danger, betrayal and death, and in the hands of the Gestapo; sexual assault. A free spirited artist, hedonistic Helen’s attention these days is largely taken up with Roland the young son she had with her second husband, Barbary is often ignored. With her husband recently drowned in highly suspicious circumstances, Helen decides to pack Barbary off to England to her father and stepmother, Barbary’s elder brother who had remained in London after his mother fled to France, arrives to collect his wild and untaught sister. Raoul travels with her, packed off to an uncle, Helen freed at last of two responsibilities.
It is 1946 and Barbary Deniston has been living in France with her beautiful, indolent mother Helen throughout the war years. Their home at the Villa Fraises in Collioure, an area occupied by the Germans during the war is a place of relaxed freedom and sunshine. Helen, divorced from Barbary’s father, married a wealthy Frenchman widely seen as a Nazi collaborator.
“Barbary slipped from the room, as quiet as a despondent breath. She and Raoul had acquired movements almost noiseless, the sinking step, the affected, furtive glide, the quick wary glancing right and left, of jungle creatures.”
full review: https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2016/...
Barbary and her stepbrother Raoul, have run wild together, associating with the defiant and dangerous local Maquis (Resistance) who defied the Germans and betrayed the collaborators. Here, Barbary learnt about danger, betrayal and death, and in the hands of the Gestapo; sexual assault. A free spirited artist, hedonistic Helen’s attention these days is largely taken up with Roland the young son she had with her second husband, Barbary is often ignored. With her husband recently drowned in highly suspicious circumstances, Helen decides to pack Barbary off to England to her father and stepmother, Barbary’s elder brother who had remained in London after his mother fled to France, arrives to collect his wild and untaught sister. Raoul travels with her, packed off to an uncle, Helen freed at last of two responsibilities.
December 6, 2012
Poor Rose.
Rose Macaulay’s home was bombed one night during the Blitz. She was away, but all her books, everything, was destroyed. She was emotionally crippled by the war and quit writing for several years. With Penelope Fitzgerald in tow, she wandered the bomb craters of London like a tourist taking in the landmarks. The heroine of the present novel haunts the same locales.
"Savagery waited so close on the margins of life; one day it would engulf all: yet another civilization would go down into darkness, so historians and philosophers said, to join les autres, those sunk civilizations of past ages which can be dimly seen, magnificent wrecks, lying fathoms deep in the seas of time."
That pretty well captures the tone of The World My Wilderness: merciless, unremitting, horrible. What the war spared in the landscape, it destroyed in people. Some of the themes and the protagonist herself remind us of Macaulay’s wonderful earlier novel, Crewe Train, but hope is impossible now, love is a joke, the characters are flattened and debased, and all the remarkable wit and vitality of Macaulay’s storytelling and prose have been drained from her pen.
There are a few memorable passages, but the book is a failure – a failure except for the fact that she wrote it at all and would go on from such a low point to write, six years later, her masterpiece in The Towers of Trebizond.
Rose Macaulay’s home was bombed one night during the Blitz. She was away, but all her books, everything, was destroyed. She was emotionally crippled by the war and quit writing for several years. With Penelope Fitzgerald in tow, she wandered the bomb craters of London like a tourist taking in the landmarks. The heroine of the present novel haunts the same locales.
"Savagery waited so close on the margins of life; one day it would engulf all: yet another civilization would go down into darkness, so historians and philosophers said, to join les autres, those sunk civilizations of past ages which can be dimly seen, magnificent wrecks, lying fathoms deep in the seas of time."
That pretty well captures the tone of The World My Wilderness: merciless, unremitting, horrible. What the war spared in the landscape, it destroyed in people. Some of the themes and the protagonist herself remind us of Macaulay’s wonderful earlier novel, Crewe Train, but hope is impossible now, love is a joke, the characters are flattened and debased, and all the remarkable wit and vitality of Macaulay’s storytelling and prose have been drained from her pen.
There are a few memorable passages, but the book is a failure – a failure except for the fact that she wrote it at all and would go on from such a low point to write, six years later, her masterpiece in The Towers of Trebizond.
November 3, 2022
So men's will to recovery strove against the drifting wilderness to halt and tame it; but the wilderness might slip from their hands
What an interesting voice. This book was a view at 'the wilderness of people' who survived the IIWW, in France and England. Could one have been as calm and civilized as before the war? The war changed people. How you cope with years of awful experiences? There are many books about it. This one, in a unique way, showed ruins of cities, families, beliefs, people. Besides destructions of war, there was also 'ordinary' hurt, sadness (not caused by the war in any way). And yet, somehow, one had to cope. And they did. I am in awe of those brave people who had to live then.
Let's see, what are those four footling freedoms we used to hear about - freedom to eat, freedom to speak, freedom to get about - what's the other? Freedom from fear, that's it. Well, who's going to have freedom from fear with those bleeding M.P.'s snooping round after him?
PS There were parts with too many details about streets, destroyed shops, etc. Because of them, I was losing my interest sometimes.
Nonetheless, 4.5 stars, that, for some reason, (I can't explain it, I just feel so), I am not rounding it up. But definitely, I recommend it.
March 14, 2019
4.5 Stars
Beautiful, haunting and evocative, The World My Wilderness is something of a rediscovered gem, set as it is in the challenging years following the end of WW2. As a novel, it explores the fallout from fractured family relationships – particularly in terms of their impact on children, needlessly caught up in the damaging effects of war.
As the novel opens, seventeen-year-old Barbary Deniston and her mother, Helen Michel, are in the South of France where they have been living during the war. Helen – a rather enigmatic yet lazy creature with artistic leanings – no longer lives with Barbary’s father, Sir Gulliver Deniston, following the couple’s divorce some years earlier. Two other children also reside at Villa Fraises (the Michels’ home in Collioure): Barbary’s step-brother, Raoul (the son of Helen’s second husband, Maurice Michel), and baby Roly (born to Helen and Maurice). To complicate matters further, Maurice is no longer alive, having drowned in suspicious circumstances following rumours of a collaboration with the Occupiers.
To read the rest of my review, please click here:
https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2019...
Beautiful, haunting and evocative, The World My Wilderness is something of a rediscovered gem, set as it is in the challenging years following the end of WW2. As a novel, it explores the fallout from fractured family relationships – particularly in terms of their impact on children, needlessly caught up in the damaging effects of war.
As the novel opens, seventeen-year-old Barbary Deniston and her mother, Helen Michel, are in the South of France where they have been living during the war. Helen – a rather enigmatic yet lazy creature with artistic leanings – no longer lives with Barbary’s father, Sir Gulliver Deniston, following the couple’s divorce some years earlier. Two other children also reside at Villa Fraises (the Michels’ home in Collioure): Barbary’s step-brother, Raoul (the son of Helen’s second husband, Maurice Michel), and baby Roly (born to Helen and Maurice). To complicate matters further, Maurice is no longer alive, having drowned in suspicious circumstances following rumours of a collaboration with the Occupiers.
To read the rest of my review, please click here:
https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2019...
August 8, 2016
4,5 stars. My review: https://theblankgarden.wordpress.com/...
March 26, 2010
Living in Provence during World War II, Barbary Deniston has grown accustomed to running wild with the maquis. After her French collaborator stepfather drowns, Barbary's indolent, beautiful mother Helen sends her to England to live with her father and his second wife. Barbary has a hard time growing accustomed to the formality of her new life, but among the ruins of bombed London, she finds a new wilderness.
Macaulay is less witty here than in The Towers of Trebizond (the only other book of hers I've read yet), but she manages to create sympathy for all her contrasting characters, from wild Barbary and her lazy mother to her upright father. It's a book of contrasts, really, not just between characters but between civilized and uncivilized, wild and tame, sometimes all in the same place.
Macaulay is less witty here than in The Towers of Trebizond (the only other book of hers I've read yet), but she manages to create sympathy for all her contrasting characters, from wild Barbary and her lazy mother to her upright father. It's a book of contrasts, really, not just between characters but between civilized and uncivilized, wild and tame, sometimes all in the same place.
May 14, 2009
Barbary (obvious name) ran with the French Maquis through WWII. A number of terrible things happened, besides that she obviously was not "brought up", put in school, taught to be a lady. Her produced character is wild, secretive, and suspicious. When she is sent to London to live with her civilized father, Cambridge brother, and traditional stepmother, she cannot deal with the order and rules of their world, and retreats into the shells of bombed buildings, with their society and practices. The clash between these halves is clear but subtle and satisfying.
I liked seeing the ruins of post-Blitz London put simultaneously in the context of new, war-formed characters and history. I liked the story. I did not like the second to last chapter, in which Barbary's divorced parents thrash out what should happen with her. The late reveal of new history undoes a lot of interesting things about Barbary and her character, and makes her dependent where she should be a new growth.
I liked seeing the ruins of post-Blitz London put simultaneously in the context of new, war-formed characters and history. I liked the story. I did not like the second to last chapter, in which Barbary's divorced parents thrash out what should happen with her. The late reveal of new history undoes a lot of interesting things about Barbary and her character, and makes her dependent where she should be a new growth.
February 27, 2023
This was an intriguing book. The story starts off in post-WWII Provence France where 40ish English expatriate Helen lives with her daughter, 17-year old Barbary, and her stepson Raoul. Helen’s former husband and Barbary’s father, barrister Sir Gulliver, lives in London with their son Richie. The French and the London duos had not seen one another since before the war. Raoul is the son of Helen’s French paramour, Maurice, who she lived with from just prior to the war and who drowned around the end of it. Maurice and Helen had a very young son named Roly. The family connections are complicated.
Helen and Sir Gulliver make a child exchange for each other to get to know their other child better. So, Helen ships Barbary off to Sir Gulliver in London and he ships Richie to her. Another primary purpose of the exchange is to help civilize Barbary, who has learned anti-social survival skills from living through the Nazi occupation and hanging with outlaw members of the resistance.
Upon arriving in London, Barbary avoids or is intolerant of activities planned by her father and instead chooses to spend her time with her step-brother Raoul (staying with his deceased father’s London family members) in a section of the bombed out post-war London ruins. a place that suits her more primitive outlook and desires. In the ruins, Barbary associates with low-life denizens who she bonds with but, due to their values, wisely doesn’t completely trust.
The story flips between Barbary’s adventures and those of Helen’s back in Provence with Richie and Maurice’s cousin and her current lover, Lucien. It all makes for some very intriguing settings, especially the bombed out ruins of post WWII London, along with an inventive plot and equally intriguing characters. While I initially had trouble with the writing flow it eventually read fluidly, and the events move the story along at a good pace. There are even two reveals at the end that add extra emotional impact to the story. This story has a lot going for it.
Yet I never got fully engaged with this story. I think it’s because, despite being intriguing characters, Hellen and Barbary’s personalities were extremely off-putting to me. Helen describes herself as “lawless, self-indulgent and dishonourable.” While Barbary’s similar traits were often explained away as resulting from her experiences while surviving the Nazi occupation, they actually seemed more ingrained in her, a mirroring of her mother’s values and traits. As I disliked their innate personality traits, the fate of Helen and Barbary did not fully engage me which lessened the story’s impact on me. I also had difficulty ever picturing Barbary as 17 years old and instead, even while knowing her intended age, continuously visualized her as about a 13 year old.
As I liked the storyline, the settings and the variety of characters, this was a pleasant and interesting read, but one that was limited in its impact by my failure to engage with the two main characters. Still, a good 3-star read.
Helen and Sir Gulliver make a child exchange for each other to get to know their other child better. So, Helen ships Barbary off to Sir Gulliver in London and he ships Richie to her. Another primary purpose of the exchange is to help civilize Barbary, who has learned anti-social survival skills from living through the Nazi occupation and hanging with outlaw members of the resistance.
Upon arriving in London, Barbary avoids or is intolerant of activities planned by her father and instead chooses to spend her time with her step-brother Raoul (staying with his deceased father’s London family members) in a section of the bombed out post-war London ruins. a place that suits her more primitive outlook and desires. In the ruins, Barbary associates with low-life denizens who she bonds with but, due to their values, wisely doesn’t completely trust.
The story flips between Barbary’s adventures and those of Helen’s back in Provence with Richie and Maurice’s cousin and her current lover, Lucien. It all makes for some very intriguing settings, especially the bombed out ruins of post WWII London, along with an inventive plot and equally intriguing characters. While I initially had trouble with the writing flow it eventually read fluidly, and the events move the story along at a good pace. There are even two reveals at the end that add extra emotional impact to the story. This story has a lot going for it.
Yet I never got fully engaged with this story. I think it’s because, despite being intriguing characters, Hellen and Barbary’s personalities were extremely off-putting to me. Helen describes herself as “lawless, self-indulgent and dishonourable.” While Barbary’s similar traits were often explained away as resulting from her experiences while surviving the Nazi occupation, they actually seemed more ingrained in her, a mirroring of her mother’s values and traits. As I disliked their innate personality traits, the fate of Helen and Barbary did not fully engage me which lessened the story’s impact on me. I also had difficulty ever picturing Barbary as 17 years old and instead, even while knowing her intended age, continuously visualized her as about a 13 year old.
As I liked the storyline, the settings and the variety of characters, this was a pleasant and interesting read, but one that was limited in its impact by my failure to engage with the two main characters. Still, a good 3-star read.
March 26, 2023
Estem davant d'una novel·la d'aquelles que es va coent a foc lent. Després d'un inici en el qual aniran apareixent una munió de personatges i parentescs familiars en poques pàgines que pot fer la sensació de ser una mica complicat de seguir, la història agafa un meravellós crescendo i gairebé sense adonar-te'n et veus immers per complet en ella.
Tenim a la Barbary, una adolescent que ha passat part de la seva infància vivint al sud de França en els anys de Segona Guerra Mundial amb la Helen, la seva mare, que va abandonar al seu marit a Anglaterra per refer la seva vida a França amb un altre home. La Barbary creix doncs en un context difícil i salvatge, on cal buscar-se la vida per subsistir i alhora lluitar contra l'invasor, que és el que ella fa unint-se al maquis.
Havent complit els disset i amb la guerra finalitzada, la mare decideix enviar-la a Londres amb el seu pare —un advocat que té la intenció d'educar-la en unes altres maneres més refinades—, però tenint en compte del món salvatge d'on prové la Barbary, l'adaptació no serà gens fàcil. A més, tampoc l'ajudarà massa un entorn familiar força viciat a causa de la complicada relació amb la nova companya del seu pare. Tot això fa que la Barbary, sempre de la mà del Raoul —el seu germanastre també enviat a Londres, en aquest cas, per viure amb la família del seu difunt pare—, cerqui el món que sempre ha conegut, amb els perills que això comporta en un context de postguerra. Precisament, aquestes maneres de fer la duran a situacions extremes que desencadenaran esdeveniments inesperats, obligant a la resta de personatges d'aquesta història a prendre decisions transcendents.
Una història, com dic, apassionant i narrada de manera brillant; uns personatges molt ben construïts que conviden a ficar-te en la seva pell i reflexionar sobre què haguessis fet tu en el seu cas, i uns paratges que conserven la seva bellesa malgrat la devastació, fan d'aquesta obra una delícia de llegir. Quina gran descoberta aquesta escriptora i aquesta història que sens dubte es quedarà molt temps amb mi.
Tenim a la Barbary, una adolescent que ha passat part de la seva infància vivint al sud de França en els anys de Segona Guerra Mundial amb la Helen, la seva mare, que va abandonar al seu marit a Anglaterra per refer la seva vida a França amb un altre home. La Barbary creix doncs en un context difícil i salvatge, on cal buscar-se la vida per subsistir i alhora lluitar contra l'invasor, que és el que ella fa unint-se al maquis.
Havent complit els disset i amb la guerra finalitzada, la mare decideix enviar-la a Londres amb el seu pare —un advocat que té la intenció d'educar-la en unes altres maneres més refinades—, però tenint en compte del món salvatge d'on prové la Barbary, l'adaptació no serà gens fàcil. A més, tampoc l'ajudarà massa un entorn familiar força viciat a causa de la complicada relació amb la nova companya del seu pare. Tot això fa que la Barbary, sempre de la mà del Raoul —el seu germanastre també enviat a Londres, en aquest cas, per viure amb la família del seu difunt pare—, cerqui el món que sempre ha conegut, amb els perills que això comporta en un context de postguerra. Precisament, aquestes maneres de fer la duran a situacions extremes que desencadenaran esdeveniments inesperats, obligant a la resta de personatges d'aquesta història a prendre decisions transcendents.
Una història, com dic, apassionant i narrada de manera brillant; uns personatges molt ben construïts que conviden a ficar-te en la seva pell i reflexionar sobre què haguessis fet tu en el seu cas, i uns paratges que conserven la seva bellesa malgrat la devastació, fan d'aquesta obra una delícia de llegir. Quina gran descoberta aquesta escriptora i aquesta història que sens dubte es quedarà molt temps amb mi.
March 3, 2023
Interesting story set in the aftermath of WWII. Barbary Dennison has been living with her mother Helen and stepfather in France, living a rather wild life without supervision, including running with the maquis. When her stepfather drowns, she returns to London to spend time with her father and his second wife Pamela, but finds their ‘civilised’ life stifling and gravitates to the ruined buildings around St Paul’s where she can recreate the lawlessness and survival skills of her past.
Macaulay’s style here is rather disconcerting - her characters are sketchily drawn and Barbary in particular is startlingly immature for a young woman with her wartime experiences, and the narrative consists of a series of significant episodes rather than a coherent plot. Her main aim appears to be to explore the theme of wildness and civilisation, contrasting their effects literally in the landscapes of London and France, figuratively within marriage and within the individual. She recognises that even among those who choose civilisation, there is a longing towards the wild and uncontrolled, but that this attraction can be destructive.
This was my first book by Macaulay and I enjoyed her sharp observations and occasional moments of dark humour, and her descriptions of ruined London as nature encroaches on the bombed buildings were excellent, but my overall enjoyment was reduced because of the jarring effect of the main character. I preferred the sections that dealt with the tensions between Sir Gulliver and his past and present wives, which were perceptively written and unconventional. Overall I liked it and would read more by her.
Macaulay’s style here is rather disconcerting - her characters are sketchily drawn and Barbary in particular is startlingly immature for a young woman with her wartime experiences, and the narrative consists of a series of significant episodes rather than a coherent plot. Her main aim appears to be to explore the theme of wildness and civilisation, contrasting their effects literally in the landscapes of London and France, figuratively within marriage and within the individual. She recognises that even among those who choose civilisation, there is a longing towards the wild and uncontrolled, but that this attraction can be destructive.
This was my first book by Macaulay and I enjoyed her sharp observations and occasional moments of dark humour, and her descriptions of ruined London as nature encroaches on the bombed buildings were excellent, but my overall enjoyment was reduced because of the jarring effect of the main character. I preferred the sections that dealt with the tensions between Sir Gulliver and his past and present wives, which were perceptively written and unconventional. Overall I liked it and would read more by her.
November 3, 2015
Rose Macaulay is an author I’ve been meaning to explore for some time, but have only just got round to reading. If The World My Wilderness is representative of the rest of her work, then I have some richly rewarding experiences ahead of me. This wonderful novel is one of the best and most moving books I have read in a long time. It is the story of Barbary, a seventeen year old girl who has spent the war running wild with the maquis in Provence. Her mother is a sensual, devil-may-care artist, who, having divorced Barbary’s father, has been living a life of some ease in Vichy France. Her most recent husband has been murdered for perceived collaboration at the end of the war. Barbary is (much against her will) sent to live with her father and his new wife in London. The clash of cultures, and the messy complexities of family relationships are brilliantly handled, as is the way Barbary finds salvation of a sort amongst the urban ‘maquis’ of the bombed out ruins and wild scrub of the area around St Paul’s Cathedral.
I loved the psychological depth of Macaluay’s writing, and the haunting descriptions of the bombed out remains of the City of London. The passages describing Barbary’s exploration of this landscape are almost hallucinatory in nature, and are enormously affecting.
It’s a real shame that this book isn’t better known.
I loved the psychological depth of Macaluay’s writing, and the haunting descriptions of the bombed out remains of the City of London. The passages describing Barbary’s exploration of this landscape are almost hallucinatory in nature, and are enormously affecting.
It’s a real shame that this book isn’t better known.
January 28, 2019
Lifted out of the narrative, I really enjoyed the sequences where Barbary and Raoul were taking claim of the surreal bombed-out landscape of postwar London, trying to replicate their wild childhood in rural France: in a half destroyed office building, in a cafe bunker, in a church. But the rest was a struggle, with every character introduced by way of a detailed physical description and a summary of their traits, like stage notes, and almost every scene (it felt) built around on a face-to-face discussion between two players. The effect was deadening, sucking the joy out of the good bits.
May 28, 2012
Macaulay wonderfully evokes war ruins haunted with ghosts and poetry. Her characters, also haunted by loss and violence, are memorable and complex. Some of them seem more sympathetic than others, but Macaulay doesn't really take sides. Rather she reveals them from different perspectives and subtly undermines initial impressions.
February 7, 2017
Of Rose Macaulay's considerable oeuvre, I had hitherto only read her final and most famous novel, The Towers of Trebizond . This, indeed, is probably my favourite novel of all time. The World my Wilderness , her penultimate novel, was bound to suffer by comparison. It cannot really be considered juvenilia in the usual sense of the word, as Macaulay was in her late sixties when she wrote it (she was 75 when she published The Towers of Trebizond ), but I think it's fair to say that this is a less mature work.
The most striking difference between the final two novels is one of tone. The Towers of Trebizond is by no means entirely a frolic (although it is too often read as one), and is indeed not even a very optimistic book. But The World my Wilderness , despite a few very funny passages, is altogether bleaker.
The tone are set by two epigraphs. The first, attributed to 'Anon' but actually by Macualay herself, is the 'source' of the title: 'The world my wilderness, its caves my home,/ Its weedy wastes the the garden where I roam,/ Its chasm'd cliffs my castle and my tomb'. The second, much longer epigraph is from 'The Waste Land'. Both are appropriate: this indeed a book about weedy wastes and waste lands.
Some of these wastes are all too literal. When the characters in The Towers of Trebizond are driven to despair, they so in sunny Mediterranean climates. But, although The World my Wilderness begins on the Côte d'Azure, most of it takes place in the bombed-out ruins of central London in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. This is the post-war London familiar to readers of Barbara Pym, where even 'respectable' people lead lives that are at best drab and pretty often squalid and miserable.
The physical wastelands find their mirror in the wastes of the characters' lives. Things are broken that can never be mended: the protagonist's childhood, her parents' marriages (both the one to each other and the ones with the subsequent spouses), and society itself.
The Towers of Trebizond ends on note of despair but with the distinct, albeit unrecognized, possibility of hope. I don't think there's much hope at all in The World my Wilderness .
The most striking difference between the final two novels is one of tone. The Towers of Trebizond is by no means entirely a frolic (although it is too often read as one), and is indeed not even a very optimistic book. But The World my Wilderness , despite a few very funny passages, is altogether bleaker.
The tone are set by two epigraphs. The first, attributed to 'Anon' but actually by Macualay herself, is the 'source' of the title: 'The world my wilderness, its caves my home,/ Its weedy wastes the the garden where I roam,/ Its chasm'd cliffs my castle and my tomb'. The second, much longer epigraph is from 'The Waste Land'. Both are appropriate: this indeed a book about weedy wastes and waste lands.
Some of these wastes are all too literal. When the characters in The Towers of Trebizond are driven to despair, they so in sunny Mediterranean climates. But, although The World my Wilderness begins on the Côte d'Azure, most of it takes place in the bombed-out ruins of central London in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. This is the post-war London familiar to readers of Barbara Pym, where even 'respectable' people lead lives that are at best drab and pretty often squalid and miserable.
The physical wastelands find their mirror in the wastes of the characters' lives. Things are broken that can never be mended: the protagonist's childhood, her parents' marriages (both the one to each other and the ones with the subsequent spouses), and society itself.
The Towers of Trebizond ends on note of despair but with the distinct, albeit unrecognized, possibility of hope. I don't think there's much hope at all in The World my Wilderness .
March 24, 2021
Disappointed. Not my type of book at all. All the characters, apart from the main two, Helen and her daughter Barbary, were just names with no attempt to give then any real depth or to flesh them out. Even Helen and Barbary were not filled out enough. Perhaps because of this I had no interest in anyone in the book. They all seemed to be unpleasant, unlikeable, totally selfish and self centred, boorish and stupid. The authors descriptions of the South of France and London were interesting to begin with, but then her continual listing of streets and buildings of pre 2nd World War London before they were all destroyed by the Blitz, became tedious and added nothing to the atmosphere nor the story except to show off the authors knowledge of those pre war streets and buildings.
The ending, as in so many books, was formulaic and a total cop out. I had to rush through in order to get to the end and then sighed with great relief that I didn't have to read anymore.
I have not read any of her earlier books so I started with this (from the library) which is apparently her most successful. I believe Rose Macaulay has a reputation for being a good, but not great, writer so I shall try one of her earlier novels to see whether she lives up to her reputation. I hope she does.
The ending, as in so many books, was formulaic and a total cop out. I had to rush through in order to get to the end and then sighed with great relief that I didn't have to read anymore.
I have not read any of her earlier books so I started with this (from the library) which is apparently her most successful. I believe Rose Macaulay has a reputation for being a good, but not great, writer so I shall try one of her earlier novels to see whether she lives up to her reputation. I hope she does.
January 18, 2015
We carry the wilderness made by our broken lives inside us, and find it wherever we go. Barbary and Richie most personify the fallout in this insightful study of troubled lives, forgiveness and alienation, mashed into unnatural configurations by emotional ravages of war that live on after the peace treaties are signed. Behind the larger tapestry the more personal trauma of broken marriages, threatened love, betrayal and forgiveness entwine with the chaos WW II inflicted on all who lived through it, whatever their roles. You won't enjoy this book if you look to find yourself in it, unless you can imagine yourself in places where meaning dissolves. Equally unsentimental in its portrayal of the wounded and the strong; unabashed in confessions of selfishness; the story still proves the importance of love and, provided we can find a way to live with what cannot be changed -- hope.
June 16, 2023
I read the Towers of T about 50 years ago but still remember it. A friend gave me this recently because I was going to Collioure so I read the book in or near where part of it is set. I found it absolutely fascinating. I know so little about France during WW2 but the more I do know, the more difficult it seems to get a grip on. So many shadows, so many decisions people had to take which might have disastrous consequences. And I know even less about the aftermath of war in London. But again of course there must have been shadowy figures, somehow managing to get by, living “off grid” as we would say now. So interesting about how many people were scarred by war, even though there are no scars visible.
Highly recommended
Highly recommended
August 31, 2023
DNF. Bit of a backstory to this one. Every Friday I use a random number generator I found in cyberspace to determine which book I will read next. Spin the wheel if you like. I purchase one book per week using this method. Well, I found this one on ebay for $19.36, clicked order, then I found a cheaper one for around 16 dollars, so I had to cancel the previous order for $19.36. Then I went to my local second-hand bookstore for something to do and believe it or not, I found a copy of this book just lying on top of the books on the shelf for $4.50! And praise the lord for this because I found it to be a load of rubbish. Especially in comparison to "Crewe Train." I'm never ceased to be amazed how quality can vary so much within one author's oeuvre.
March 17, 2019
This story, rich with imagery and characters that stick with you, leaves hope that from devastation, lack of morality and lost honour, we are still redeemable. Values run deep, and The World My Wilderness shores up my faith in most people to do the right thing by each other.
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April 9, 2023Una noia criada entre maquis i resistents a l'ocupació nazi francesa que ha de marxar a viure a Londres amb el seu pare i no acaba d'adaptar-se a la vida en una gran ciutat, lluny de la seva mare i en un entorn absolutament diferent on no se sent tan lliure
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