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The Vacillations of Poppy Carew
This lively and entertaining romp through England and Africa.
The Vacillations of Poppy Carew opens with two key the departure of Poppy’s thoroughly detestable lover, Edmund, for a richer woman, and the death of her father who, to the irritation of the nursing staff, dies in the midst of raucous laughter.
Poppy follows her father’s dying wish and organizes a “fun” funeral complete with black-plumed horses and a suspicious number of glamorous women. Present at the funeral are three men who are determined to become her suitors. However, the treacherous Edmund shows up as well and, discovering that Poppy is now heiress to a fortune, abandons his new love interest and whisks Poppy off to Africa, where she embarks on a series of chaotic adventures.
Will she escape Edmund’s clutches? If so, with whom of her three suitors will she escape?
The Vacillations of Poppy Carew opens with two key the departure of Poppy’s thoroughly detestable lover, Edmund, for a richer woman, and the death of her father who, to the irritation of the nursing staff, dies in the midst of raucous laughter.
Poppy follows her father’s dying wish and organizes a “fun” funeral complete with black-plumed horses and a suspicious number of glamorous women. Present at the funeral are three men who are determined to become her suitors. However, the treacherous Edmund shows up as well and, discovering that Poppy is now heiress to a fortune, abandons his new love interest and whisks Poppy off to Africa, where she embarks on a series of chaotic adventures.
Will she escape Edmund’s clutches? If so, with whom of her three suitors will she escape?
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1986
41 people are currently reading
281 people want to read
About the author
Mary Wesley
63 books181 followersMary Wesley, CBE was an English novelist. She reportedly worked in MI5 during World War II. During her career, she became one of Britain's most successful novelists, selling three million copies of her books, including 10 best-sellers in the last 20 years of her life.
She wrote three children's books, Speaking Terms and The Sixth Seal (both 1969) and Haphazard House (1983), before publishing adult fiction. Since her first adult novel was published only in 1983, when she was 71, she may be regarded as a late bloomer. The publication of Jumping the Queue in 1983 was the beginning of an intensely creative period of Wesley's life. From 1982 to 1991, she wrote and delivered seven novels. While she aged from 70 to 79 she still showed the focus and drive of a young person.
Her best known book, The Camomile Lawn, set on the Roseland Peninsula in Cornwall, was turned into a television series, and is an account of the intertwining lives of three families in rural England during World War II. After The Camomile Lawn (1984) came Harnessing Peacocks (1985 and as TV film in 1992), The Vacillations of Poppy Carew (1986 and filmed in 1995), Not That Sort of Girl (1987), Second Fiddle (1988), A Sensible Life (1990), A Dubious Legacy (1993), An Imaginative Experience (1994) and Part of the Furniture (1997). A book about the West Country with photographer Kim Sayer, Part of the Scenery, was published in 2001. Asked why she had stopped writing fiction at the age of 84, she replied: "If you haven't got anything to say, don't say it.
From Mary Wesley
She wrote three children's books, Speaking Terms and The Sixth Seal (both 1969) and Haphazard House (1983), before publishing adult fiction. Since her first adult novel was published only in 1983, when she was 71, she may be regarded as a late bloomer. The publication of Jumping the Queue in 1983 was the beginning of an intensely creative period of Wesley's life. From 1982 to 1991, she wrote and delivered seven novels. While she aged from 70 to 79 she still showed the focus and drive of a young person.
Her best known book, The Camomile Lawn, set on the Roseland Peninsula in Cornwall, was turned into a television series, and is an account of the intertwining lives of three families in rural England during World War II. After The Camomile Lawn (1984) came Harnessing Peacocks (1985 and as TV film in 1992), The Vacillations of Poppy Carew (1986 and filmed in 1995), Not That Sort of Girl (1987), Second Fiddle (1988), A Sensible Life (1990), A Dubious Legacy (1993), An Imaginative Experience (1994) and Part of the Furniture (1997). A book about the West Country with photographer Kim Sayer, Part of the Scenery, was published in 2001. Asked why she had stopped writing fiction at the age of 84, she replied: "If you haven't got anything to say, don't say it.
From Mary Wesley
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 59 reviews
October 19, 2022
Romantic stories are not really something that draw me, but this one, so similar in flavor (but without the magical elements) to Andre Alexis’s
Ring
, has something extra. I stuck with it because the characters were unique and charming; in the opening scene, protagonist Poppy Carew sits by her father’s deathbed in a way that is surprising, charming, and demands that the reader stay for the whole book to see what happens.
What happens is a sprawling tale of funerals, lovers, seductive locales, and bad decisions that I thought would work wonderfully for a British TV series, and apparently others felt the same because it was produced for the BBC. I haven’t watched it, but may eventually.
And maybe it drives most of our species.
Unlike most women I’ve talked to, I was grateful for menopause. It was like waking up from a bad dream—mainly pleasure-craving that I believed at the time was true desire rather than fluctuating hormones. At age almost-72, I prefer being directed (rather than driven) by a more transcendent engine.
Interestingly, this 1986 novel was written when author Mary Wesley (1912–2002, aka Mary Aline Siepmann) was 74. My guess is she wrote it because the material charmed her and she knew it would sell. She only began writing in 1970, at the age of 58, when she was widowed and destitute, and she ended up selling three million copies of her books, including ten bestsellers in the last twenty years of her life. Brava, Mary!
What happens is a sprawling tale of funerals, lovers, seductive locales, and bad decisions that I thought would work wonderfully for a British TV series, and apparently others felt the same because it was produced for the BBC. I haven’t watched it, but may eventually.
I need pleasure she [Poppy] thought. A meal of pleasure, a creative bout, a crash course. There had been precious little pleasure of late with Edmund [her former partner]. If she admitted the truth it had always been a bit rare and if there was any going Edmund scoffed it. (221)This little bit is the engine of need that drives the entire novel.
And maybe it drives most of our species.
Unlike most women I’ve talked to, I was grateful for menopause. It was like waking up from a bad dream—mainly pleasure-craving that I believed at the time was true desire rather than fluctuating hormones. At age almost-72, I prefer being directed (rather than driven) by a more transcendent engine.
Interestingly, this 1986 novel was written when author Mary Wesley (1912–2002, aka Mary Aline Siepmann) was 74. My guess is she wrote it because the material charmed her and she knew it would sell. She only began writing in 1970, at the age of 58, when she was widowed and destitute, and she ended up selling three million copies of her books, including ten bestsellers in the last twenty years of her life. Brava, Mary!
August 23, 2018
I read this because it was highly recommended to me. It is well written, good observations of the realities of life, featuring people of all ages and lots of animals. It is just that it is not very plot heavy. For the length of the book, it felt like not very much was happening. Some things did, I guess, but it was life at the pace of real life. I guess I like some artificial ness. I like plots and suspense.
February 27, 2007
I had never heard of Mary Wesley until I asked an Englishman if he had seen "The Vacillations of Poppy Carew" and he answered "no, but I read it". It was an adapatation of a novel! What good luck! And what a good find. Since then I have read most of her novels and they are all charming, insightful, touching, and quite often funny. They are not readily available in the U.S. but I did find many of them at the public library here in New York. I also managed to find a good batch of them at a used bookstore in the U.K.
Poppy Carew is a young woman who has let life sweep her along. Suddenly she's faced with loss, change, and the ability to make some kind of decision about the direction of her life. Clearly unused to doing such a thing, she vacillates between her options, muses on her life so far, and gets a few snogs in with some interesting men. It feels really banal to describe this book in this way. There are so many charming details peppered throughout the book - the tape of birdsong, the 'drowning' incident, the French equipage and its use. All her books have similar interest.
The author gained a lifetime of experience before she began writing novels, and it shows. Her books are written for grown-ups. And it is an excellent fix if you are jonesing for something British.
Poppy Carew is a young woman who has let life sweep her along. Suddenly she's faced with loss, change, and the ability to make some kind of decision about the direction of her life. Clearly unused to doing such a thing, she vacillates between her options, muses on her life so far, and gets a few snogs in with some interesting men. It feels really banal to describe this book in this way. There are so many charming details peppered throughout the book - the tape of birdsong, the 'drowning' incident, the French equipage and its use. All her books have similar interest.
The author gained a lifetime of experience before she began writing novels, and it shows. Her books are written for grown-ups. And it is an excellent fix if you are jonesing for something British.
November 8, 2022
This was the 2nd time I read this book, but didn't remember it well and didn't think I'd done it justice the first time. I was right. It has Wesley's usual strong and quirky female characters and a plot this is nicely crafted and neatly resolved. I'm always suprised by Wesley because for some reason I expect her books to be quaint (maybe it's the covers), and they're very contemporary.
November 26, 2007
I generally like Mary Wesley's books - they're my snuggly, comfort reads. I think is probably my least favourite - so many of the characters were intensely irritating rather than the endearingly quirky that Wesley usually evokes. Disappointing.
January 7, 2017
I like Wesley's books but I was not a fan of this one. I almost put it down halfway through but managed to trudge trough and finish it. It was filled with weak characters and, for the most part, lacked the scandal and intrigue that is her hallmark.
June 7, 2020
(I would award this book 3.5/5 if I could, but it seems I can't!)
This was the 4th novel for adult readers that Mary Wesley published, of a total of 10, and the 4th I read. No, I'm not quite as methodical as you may think! - that's explained at the outset of my review of "Second Fiddle" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8... ...
The first point I'd suggest is that this was perhaps the author's first clearly defined *comedy*.
Even though, if you know Wesley at all, this story too is never without depth, complexity or some very dark areas of human life - it starts after all with an odd death, & odder funeral - it proceeds at a rapid pace, brisker even than "Harnessing Peacocks". Psychologically too, it moves along more "on the surface" than most of her novels. Furthermore, the eponymous main protagonist is - or at least is shown to us readers - less inclined to contemplative soul-searching than perhaps any other of this writer's female central characters. I'll come back to Poppy in a bit.
What however above all marks this novel out as a "comedy" is the classical sense of that term: for me, it's the first so far to move (in mysterious ways) towards what may well be an unambiguously ... happy ending.
(Or so it seems! One can rarely be entirely certain of the development of Wesley's shifting, socially and psychologically kaleidoscopic novels!)
Very few of the ten novels end unambiguously UN-happily (there is one very obvious exception!); but the general tendency is rather towards emotional cliffhanger endings, with lives still in the balance. This much has been achieved, and/or decided, e.g. towards the end, two people meet - once again, or for the first time, or at long last - but how will this turn out, after the last words of the novel come to a close? And often, we are left a bit unsure at the end of it all, wondering, perhaps hoping. As if in such cases it's left to the reader to take up the pen & ink, and sketch in for her/himself the subsequent fate & fortunes of the character(s) presented in the denouement.
An interesting aspect of this novel, to me at least, is that it seems the novelist makes fun of her main character.
True, Matty (in "Jumping the Queue") is subjected to a brutish time, in a concatenated comedy from hell, in that first novel for adult readers. Surely there is some working-out there by the author of deep hurt, emotional wounds & still-burning aggressions from severe emotional difficulties suffered in her own life. If the horrendous hand Matty is dealt in life may seem sadistic on Wesley's part, I wonder if in fact there's not a therapeutic procedure at work there:
A fictitious character is after all NOT a real person (I tried to make a point about "dis-identification techniques" in Wesley's novels in a previous review). And the intolerable, numbing extent to which Matty is cruelly deprived, and cheated, and deprived again in her life may strangely have a liberative value: in helping free the writer, and readers too, from vicious-cycle ruts of unrelieved suffering in our own hearts and minds. Is this too complex?
Back to the fourth novel, "The Vacillations ...", the comedy at Poppy's expense is of a lighter hue. Ms Carew too is put through the mill emotionally-psychologically, and used heartlessly by others, in this novel (unusually) only by mean. By one man ruthlessly (the complete cad), by others merely thoughtlessly, selfishly, inconsiderately. We can - via the traditional empathetic "identification" with fictional characters - feel with Poppy, sympathise with her tribulations & vicissitudes, her repeat experiences of male chauvinism (for want of a better term): and wish her a better life than the one obsessively mapped out for her by others who - in the end - think only of themselves. ...
However,I feel there are also elements of "dis-identification" at work - alienation may be a more common word - which, for what it's worth, I believe the novelist intends.
Given every opportunity finally to break free of the cad that has callously torn up her heart - and even if it is to spite that cad's new girlfriend; even if the sex he imposes on her is ... well, perhaps acceptable; even if the Cad is terribly handsome and very occasionally charming (when he "turns on the charm", and is not his usual repulsive, charmless, gimme-gimme self) - why on earth does she give him yet another chance to use & abuse her totally - body, mind and spirit - to please only his own desires and vanities? Why too does she also let other men sort her feelings and her body, sort her mind, once it is clear this is really not working for her?
Needy? - perhaps. Stuck in a subservient, submissive, supposedly "natural"female role of obedience? -maybe. But sooner or later, surely most of us readers - and as far as this matters, I believe this is also the novelist's sense and design - start calling: this is INSANE, Poppy Carew! And you're insane to let them keep dominating you and using you, this obviously - this outlandishly.
Two caveats: it's not that Poppy is without self-interest, too. Vital, self-affirming self-interest is viewed in Wesley's novels - or so I deduce from characters, plot developments & outcomes - as a healthy thing, a good thing. (Not so either a hypocritical denial of this, or a monstrous taking over, puppet manipulation & domination of others.)
Second, the key problem is not having a lively sexual interest. Sexual appetite, desire & an untroubled glad enjoyment of sex appear in Wesley as life-asserting, part of life lived to its fullest. Different however is a (desperate) acceptance of sex essentially to please others, or worse: hopeless submission to the desires of others, including - not uncommonly in Wesley's stories - sexual abuse. The latter, though often passed over quickly in the pages, tend to be a source of grim, enduring emotional-psychological wounds & untrusting silence, which prove difficult to heal).
The thing with Poppy Carew is that she imediately appears a bright young woman, with strong feelings & physical and emotional sensibilities, and with all the intelligence, spark & drive to fend for herself, look after her her life and seek happiness on her own terms - who however keeps allowing herself to be compromised & stunted, who keeps falling for blandishments, and falling under the thumb and will of a variety of men.
She thus comes across, more often than she might, as a flighty, for men all too easily controlled flibbertigibbet - the name "Poppy Carew" itself, with its sound of light but superficial ebullience, might even suggest a habitual - for her fortunes however potentially fatal - "ditziness".
And in that context, "Vacillations" in the title might emerge as a satirical euphemism for "Imbecilities".
Not that Poppy is an idiot - far from it - but she keeps selling herself short, with men in particular.
Of course Ms Carew is not the first central character to be ridiculed by an author. Gustave Flaubert for example took a pioneering, merciless rise out of Frédéric in "L'Éducation Sentimentale", exposing a huge gulf between the character's subjective self-perception & demonstrable, objective fact (and how others, including the reader, might view him).
Mary Wesley is nowhere near so merciless. She presents her part-heroine as essentially engaging, likeable, intelligent & (potentially) full of character.
But: OH, WHAT IS SHE DOING?!? - And that, I feel, is the fulcrum of the book.
Like at least three other central characters in Wesley's novels, Poppy comes very gradually to full self-knowledge - and to a recognition that she's been deceiving herself for ages as to what she really values and wants in life.
To explain this further would be a proper "spoiler", so I will leave that there.
Suffice it to say: the search for self-understanding (Poppy's story might be called an "accidental Bildungsroman"!), & an eventual discovery of one's true feelings and fullest desires, is a wonderful, vital if sometimes bittersweet element in Wesley's novels.
And where such a self-epiphany finds an opportunity to fulfil such discovered wishes, to live a properly "earthed" dream - not some fantastical, airy-fairy dreamland, whilst led by the nose by others, but a gladly chosen, wholehearted life, often involving getting one's hands dirty with practical work, too - the novel can conclude in an unambiguously happy ending.
That sense of comedy - a hard-won, eventual happy ending - is certainly a great relief & release in the plot of this novel: and not only for Poppy herself.
Personally, I would not call this novel one of my five favourite Mary Wesley novels - but that rather bespeaks the excellence of other, for me even more enjoyable works, than suggesting I did not enjoy this one!
A couple of points to end with:
Where others felt exasperation with other Wesley novels (it's sad if they found no characters at all sympathetic - could this be partly because they expect to find, or seek, too complete an identification with main characters, with no satirical, ironic, comic or "therapeutic" space between?), I did feel quite a bit, during the course of this plot: "Oh come ON Poppy - COME ON!" When she struck a blow for freedom, I have to admit I smiled broadly. Also at her courage.
One element that detracted a little from my reading: I read the paperback edition. A weakness for me in Mary Wesley's first few novels (up to the 6th - "Second Fiddle" - if I recall rightly, where this is suddenly, miraculously cured), paragraph spacing might be clearer:
At times a night or week passes, or a change of location, or it may be someone else speaking - and if it's not the same paragraph continued, then that change of time, place, speaker is not set apart on the page with any great clarity. An extra line - or a dividing bar of some sort for time or place shifts - would be useful. I am unsure if this was the author's oversight, or simply poor typesetting!
This was the 4th novel for adult readers that Mary Wesley published, of a total of 10, and the 4th I read. No, I'm not quite as methodical as you may think! - that's explained at the outset of my review of "Second Fiddle" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8... ...
The first point I'd suggest is that this was perhaps the author's first clearly defined *comedy*.
Even though, if you know Wesley at all, this story too is never without depth, complexity or some very dark areas of human life - it starts after all with an odd death, & odder funeral - it proceeds at a rapid pace, brisker even than "Harnessing Peacocks". Psychologically too, it moves along more "on the surface" than most of her novels. Furthermore, the eponymous main protagonist is - or at least is shown to us readers - less inclined to contemplative soul-searching than perhaps any other of this writer's female central characters. I'll come back to Poppy in a bit.
What however above all marks this novel out as a "comedy" is the classical sense of that term: for me, it's the first so far to move (in mysterious ways) towards what may well be an unambiguously ... happy ending.
(Or so it seems! One can rarely be entirely certain of the development of Wesley's shifting, socially and psychologically kaleidoscopic novels!)
Very few of the ten novels end unambiguously UN-happily (there is one very obvious exception!); but the general tendency is rather towards emotional cliffhanger endings, with lives still in the balance. This much has been achieved, and/or decided, e.g. towards the end, two people meet - once again, or for the first time, or at long last - but how will this turn out, after the last words of the novel come to a close? And often, we are left a bit unsure at the end of it all, wondering, perhaps hoping. As if in such cases it's left to the reader to take up the pen & ink, and sketch in for her/himself the subsequent fate & fortunes of the character(s) presented in the denouement.
An interesting aspect of this novel, to me at least, is that it seems the novelist makes fun of her main character.
True, Matty (in "Jumping the Queue") is subjected to a brutish time, in a concatenated comedy from hell, in that first novel for adult readers. Surely there is some working-out there by the author of deep hurt, emotional wounds & still-burning aggressions from severe emotional difficulties suffered in her own life. If the horrendous hand Matty is dealt in life may seem sadistic on Wesley's part, I wonder if in fact there's not a therapeutic procedure at work there:
A fictitious character is after all NOT a real person (I tried to make a point about "dis-identification techniques" in Wesley's novels in a previous review). And the intolerable, numbing extent to which Matty is cruelly deprived, and cheated, and deprived again in her life may strangely have a liberative value: in helping free the writer, and readers too, from vicious-cycle ruts of unrelieved suffering in our own hearts and minds. Is this too complex?
Back to the fourth novel, "The Vacillations ...", the comedy at Poppy's expense is of a lighter hue. Ms Carew too is put through the mill emotionally-psychologically, and used heartlessly by others, in this novel (unusually) only by mean. By one man ruthlessly (the complete cad), by others merely thoughtlessly, selfishly, inconsiderately. We can - via the traditional empathetic "identification" with fictional characters - feel with Poppy, sympathise with her tribulations & vicissitudes, her repeat experiences of male chauvinism (for want of a better term): and wish her a better life than the one obsessively mapped out for her by others who - in the end - think only of themselves. ...
However,I feel there are also elements of "dis-identification" at work - alienation may be a more common word - which, for what it's worth, I believe the novelist intends.
Given every opportunity finally to break free of the cad that has callously torn up her heart - and even if it is to spite that cad's new girlfriend; even if the sex he imposes on her is ... well, perhaps acceptable; even if the Cad is terribly handsome and very occasionally charming (when he "turns on the charm", and is not his usual repulsive, charmless, gimme-gimme self) - why on earth does she give him yet another chance to use & abuse her totally - body, mind and spirit - to please only his own desires and vanities? Why too does she also let other men sort her feelings and her body, sort her mind, once it is clear this is really not working for her?
Needy? - perhaps. Stuck in a subservient, submissive, supposedly "natural"female role of obedience? -maybe. But sooner or later, surely most of us readers - and as far as this matters, I believe this is also the novelist's sense and design - start calling: this is INSANE, Poppy Carew! And you're insane to let them keep dominating you and using you, this obviously - this outlandishly.
Two caveats: it's not that Poppy is without self-interest, too. Vital, self-affirming self-interest is viewed in Wesley's novels - or so I deduce from characters, plot developments & outcomes - as a healthy thing, a good thing. (Not so either a hypocritical denial of this, or a monstrous taking over, puppet manipulation & domination of others.)
Second, the key problem is not having a lively sexual interest. Sexual appetite, desire & an untroubled glad enjoyment of sex appear in Wesley as life-asserting, part of life lived to its fullest. Different however is a (desperate) acceptance of sex essentially to please others, or worse: hopeless submission to the desires of others, including - not uncommonly in Wesley's stories - sexual abuse. The latter, though often passed over quickly in the pages, tend to be a source of grim, enduring emotional-psychological wounds & untrusting silence, which prove difficult to heal).
The thing with Poppy Carew is that she imediately appears a bright young woman, with strong feelings & physical and emotional sensibilities, and with all the intelligence, spark & drive to fend for herself, look after her her life and seek happiness on her own terms - who however keeps allowing herself to be compromised & stunted, who keeps falling for blandishments, and falling under the thumb and will of a variety of men.
She thus comes across, more often than she might, as a flighty, for men all too easily controlled flibbertigibbet - the name "Poppy Carew" itself, with its sound of light but superficial ebullience, might even suggest a habitual - for her fortunes however potentially fatal - "ditziness".
And in that context, "Vacillations" in the title might emerge as a satirical euphemism for "Imbecilities".
Not that Poppy is an idiot - far from it - but she keeps selling herself short, with men in particular.
Of course Ms Carew is not the first central character to be ridiculed by an author. Gustave Flaubert for example took a pioneering, merciless rise out of Frédéric in "L'Éducation Sentimentale", exposing a huge gulf between the character's subjective self-perception & demonstrable, objective fact (and how others, including the reader, might view him).
Mary Wesley is nowhere near so merciless. She presents her part-heroine as essentially engaging, likeable, intelligent & (potentially) full of character.
But: OH, WHAT IS SHE DOING?!? - And that, I feel, is the fulcrum of the book.
Like at least three other central characters in Wesley's novels, Poppy comes very gradually to full self-knowledge - and to a recognition that she's been deceiving herself for ages as to what she really values and wants in life.
To explain this further would be a proper "spoiler", so I will leave that there.
Suffice it to say: the search for self-understanding (Poppy's story might be called an "accidental Bildungsroman"!), & an eventual discovery of one's true feelings and fullest desires, is a wonderful, vital if sometimes bittersweet element in Wesley's novels.
And where such a self-epiphany finds an opportunity to fulfil such discovered wishes, to live a properly "earthed" dream - not some fantastical, airy-fairy dreamland, whilst led by the nose by others, but a gladly chosen, wholehearted life, often involving getting one's hands dirty with practical work, too - the novel can conclude in an unambiguously happy ending.
That sense of comedy - a hard-won, eventual happy ending - is certainly a great relief & release in the plot of this novel: and not only for Poppy herself.
Personally, I would not call this novel one of my five favourite Mary Wesley novels - but that rather bespeaks the excellence of other, for me even more enjoyable works, than suggesting I did not enjoy this one!
A couple of points to end with:
Where others felt exasperation with other Wesley novels (it's sad if they found no characters at all sympathetic - could this be partly because they expect to find, or seek, too complete an identification with main characters, with no satirical, ironic, comic or "therapeutic" space between?), I did feel quite a bit, during the course of this plot: "Oh come ON Poppy - COME ON!" When she struck a blow for freedom, I have to admit I smiled broadly. Also at her courage.
One element that detracted a little from my reading: I read the paperback edition. A weakness for me in Mary Wesley's first few novels (up to the 6th - "Second Fiddle" - if I recall rightly, where this is suddenly, miraculously cured), paragraph spacing might be clearer:
At times a night or week passes, or a change of location, or it may be someone else speaking - and if it's not the same paragraph continued, then that change of time, place, speaker is not set apart on the page with any great clarity. An extra line - or a dividing bar of some sort for time or place shifts - would be useful. I am unsure if this was the author's oversight, or simply poor typesetting!
January 31, 2016
Based on the title, I suspected I would have a negative reaction to this book but I decided to give it a shot despite my reservations. Sadly, I should have judged the book by it's cover and left it because holy smoke, I got SO irritated reading it. I liked very few of the characters and felt very little attachment to or understanding of them...or possibly I understood some of their motivations but had no tolerance for their behavior. My biggest complaint by far was I *really* didn't like how everyone just glosses over (SPOILER!!) Edmund beating up Poppy. Really? And God knows why Venetia wants to be with him. Willy is supposed to be likable and I guess in some ways he is but he also comes off as kind of controlling and naive. He knows nothing about this girl and he's just suddenly in love with her to the point that he follows her to Africa (we're never actually told which state) and joins her on her return trip and she just goes along with him, I guess she's naive too, and then he just kind of decides that they're together. At one point she's whining to herself that he didn't *ask* her what she wants...well then SAY WHAT YOU WANT.
Simply? This story felt like an awful lot of love-related mind games and drama and dysfunctional relationships trying to be tinted to rose because well, everyone ends up happy right?
Simply? This story felt like an awful lot of love-related mind games and drama and dysfunctional relationships trying to be tinted to rose because well, everyone ends up happy right?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 5, 2020
Loved this book, and I know I will be more by this author!
December 24, 2025
More comfort reading, can't beat drifting into a Mary Wesley book, cosy by the fire.
November 8, 2022
This is a charming and lusty tale which is sure to please
February 2, 2013
I had expected something with more charm I guess. It's ok, but did not sweep me off my feet. Most annoying was how everyone knew each other or of each other... I know the uk is small, but hardly so small that strangers meeting each other invariably have tons of friends or parents friends in common. Made London feel like too cozy a village.
December 14, 2016
I seem to have embarked on a Mary Wesley-fest; this always having been one of my favourites and therefore irresistible, given a long evening on my own. Interesting to see, to realise how much of her writing style has influenced mine and in some ways is currently unfashionable in its plethora of characters and multiple points of view. Wonderfully entertaining.
July 31, 2019
What a dreadful novel. It's set in a featureless white room, and the characters are disembodied voices. There's no plot. It’s nothing but people chatting for 300 pages. Ick.
It's impossible to picture the story. The main character has men throwing themselves at her, but she’s promiscuous or something and wastes her opportunités.
It's impossible to picture the story. The main character has men throwing themselves at her, but she’s promiscuous or something and wastes her opportunités.
January 2, 2008
Mary Wesley's stories are populated by quirky personalities. Some you'll like and some you won't, but all of them you'll believe. I read Poppy Carew in a weekend maybe fifteen years ago and it's still a favorite of mine. Why? Because it made me laugh.
May 5, 2012
I enjoyed this a lot. Funny and charming. A romance with brains. My only quibble would be the heroine who drifts along with whatever happens and constantly gets dragged off by the men in her life. She's not exactly a feminist role model.
June 26, 2013
Wesley was an incredibly good writer, and always surprises. I loved so much about this book, but was a bit tired of it by the end. Just the last thirty pages or so. Still, amazing writer. I love some of her other books more, though.
September 19, 2015
Lucky for me Mary Wesley wrote a stack of novels. I discovered her fiction last year, and while packing for five days on a Maine Windjammer I added this one to the pile. Even though The Vacillations of Poppy Carew was written about 30 years ago it held my attention and kept me entertained.
June 20, 2015
One of the funniest books I have ever had the pleasure to read.
July 26, 2017
Promising opening, but loses momentum and focus.
May 7, 2023
I had never heard of Mary Wesley, till I stumbled upon this novel. Increasingly, I find that a lot of women novelists born in the early 20th Century, were writing some absolutely compelling and charming books, well into the 80s and 90s, but aren't as famous as they should be. This is one of those-very well written account of 20-something Poppy trying to find herself, after the death of her beloved father. The book's very funny, and the characters well-written and believable-from overbearing ( and violent and horrible) Edmund, her ex whom she's well rid off ( or is she?), Fergus of Fergus Fun Funerals, completely self-possessed Venetia Colyer, Poppy's rival for the affections of Edmund, and an assortment of other characters. The women are all depicted with empathy, and warmth, and you find yourself completely caught up in Poppy's life, and wanting her to make the right choices-something that isn't always easy, when you find yourself gravitating to the safety of the known, because you think at least there you know the pitfalls!
So why have I knocked off one star? I absolutely hated the ending. GIven the intelligent, and always feminist writing throughout in this book, I was very surprised with the way Mary Wesley chose to end the book, and would have far preferred a different ending. Despite that, all of Mary Wesley's books are on my TBR!
So why have I knocked off one star? I absolutely hated the ending. GIven the intelligent, and always feminist writing throughout in this book, I was very surprised with the way Mary Wesley chose to end the book, and would have far preferred a different ending. Despite that, all of Mary Wesley's books are on my TBR!
January 26, 2023
Poppy Carew has been dumped by her unpleasant boyfriend Edmund and to compound her misery, her father dies quite suddenly. Poppy's relationship with her father has been difficult in recent years due to his disapproval of Edmund.Poppy's mother died when she was a baby, and due to her father's frequent absences from home she has been mostly brought up by housekeepers. Now lone in the world, Poppy is desperate for love. Unexpectedly rich because of her father's somewhat mysteriously acquired fortune, Poppy is determined to carry out his last wish to be buried by Furnival's Fun Funerals. In the days that follow she attracts the attention of the funeral director and his cousin, both of whom appear to her to be potential lovers, only to be distracted again when the money grabbing Edmund turns up at the funeral to reclaim Poppy (or her money !). Finally a knight in shining armour in the form of one of the funeral guests, Willy Guthrie, enters the picture. Can Willy save Poppy and make her happy ?
Written in Mary Wesley's inimitable style, this is a lovely, funny book.
Written in Mary Wesley's inimitable style, this is a lovely, funny book.
July 2, 2024
This is another comedy of manners. Poppy Carew, a twenty-something, becomes intimate with her father only while he is on his deathbed and as she meets many of his friends at the funeral. She is just emerging from an unrewarding relationship, realizing that she must define herself. Despite an intellectual realization that her boyfriend has cut her off from female friendship she does not seek it out, thinking rather that she will find self-definition in recreational sex. Fortunately or unfortunately for her, someone who is good at recreational sex falls in love with her at first sight and by the end of the novel we are given to understand that he will determine the direction of her life. Not that he would obstruct friendships with other women, particularly.
July 14, 2019
Very good as always, not sure why it’s taken me 30 years to read it. I remember there was a TV adaptation on when I was at university. I didn’t remember anything about it though, really, except Poppy’s Italian frock. Expertly constructed and full of great characters, even if everyone is very posh. The thought of what all the useful houses and little flats in London would be worth these days is rather depressing. Nice to see the marvellous Calypso from The Camomile Lawn again. (‘London? I adore London! So many parties!’)
October 23, 2021
MW started writing novels for adults when she was in her 70s! But she has a very modern take on things.
She is an astute observer of people, judging by the way she creates her characters, and I liked the characters in this book too. Mostly set in gentrified England. Old homes, horses, London...
I feel that her books are stand-alone novels but she has characters appearing across her books and I quite like that.
Good plot, interesting characters, London/rural setting, humorous story, enjoyable read
This one is quite funny.
Now to find another...
She is an astute observer of people, judging by the way she creates her characters, and I liked the characters in this book too. Mostly set in gentrified England. Old homes, horses, London...
I feel that her books are stand-alone novels but she has characters appearing across her books and I quite like that.
Good plot, interesting characters, London/rural setting, humorous story, enjoyable read
This one is quite funny.
Now to find another...
Read
February 27, 2022This was a short novel (3 hours), but entertaining. The writing is post-WW2, possibly late 1950s or early 1960s, and some of the sensibilities show that.
Poppy is grieving the loss of her 10 year relationship when her father dies. Suddenly men are swarming all over her a d she swings from one mood to another regarding which man to be with. Travels to Africa, pig farms with happy pigs and car accidents feature.
Poppy is grieving the loss of her 10 year relationship when her father dies. Suddenly men are swarming all over her a d she swings from one mood to another regarding which man to be with. Travels to Africa, pig farms with happy pigs and car accidents feature.
September 27, 2019
A fun read, short, complete chapters skip around lively characters and situations. There's some lyrical moments, such as Calypso's walk through her garden, and I sensed Mary Wesley's wisdom in the minds of the older characters. The foggy ending reminded me how much thicker fog was back in the 70s. I don't think it could be used as a plot device nowadays.
October 26, 2021
Не роман, а калейдоскоп набросков -- интересные по отдельности персонажи не складываются в один текст. Героиня картонная. Тетушку Калипсо я встречаю уже в как минимум третьем романе, причем это каждый раз другой и при этом один и тот же персонаж; как и героиня, впрочем. Только и радости, что от непереводимой шутки про форель.
May 23, 2020
Very entertaining; mostly amoral characters who lurch from event to event in their lives without thinking about the consequences - until it really matters I suppose. Lots of bizarre and quirky set pieces. Nice ending. the most interesting person is Poppy's mother in law to be.
December 17, 2020
I love this woman's writing! It is so very much my era. The carelessness with the baby, the insistence of the men to all be free, and the descriptions of how some of the women allowed themselves to be treated.
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