One of the Family

by Monica Dickens

Edwardian London is the colourful backdrop to this portrait of a large, middle-class family and the stranger who charms them all, but who is to darken their lives with tragedy. At the centre of the family is Leonard Morley, proud of his house in Chepstow Villas and of his job at Whiteley's.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction

348 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

From the publisher: MONICA DICKENS, born in 1915, was brought up in London and was the great-granddaughter of Charles Dickens. Her mother's German origins and her Catholicism gave her the detached eye of an outsider; at St Paul's Girls' School she was under occupied and rebellious. After drama school she was a debutante before working as a cook. One Pair of Hands (1939), her first book, described life in the kitchens of Kensington. It was the first of a group of semi autobiographies of which Mariana (1940), technically a novel, was one. 'My aim is to entertain rather than instruct,' she wrote. 'I want readers to recognise life in my books.' In 1951 Monica Dickens married a US naval officer, Roy Stratton, moved to America and adopted two daughters. An extremely popular writer, she involved herself in, and wrote about, good causes such as the Samaritans. After her husband died she lived in a cottage in rural Berkshire, dying there in 1992.
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Reviews

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was as equally odd as the first one I read (novel). There's a lot that's too sensationalist (especially as we careen to the finish) but although the plot was a bit wacky at times, the characters, her writing, and details about life at the beginning of the 1900s drove me on to finish it in almost a single read. I can predict that people might hate this book, though (but no spoilers)

[Janis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sensational ending...unexpected and tragic and a bit unreal..too much poetic justice tends to become facile...not as well written as her earlier books, and more or less story driven... there were good moments...the rise of feminism was explored, but in the end the women did the conventional thing and married..Dickie and Madge, Flora, and Bella were well developed, but Jack showed how little Dickens knew about deafness...Toby was an enigma..every time you thought you were getting a handle on him he slipped out of your grasp...
As I said before, too many blind alleys, and one way streets...the reader is continually left hanging as Dickens fails to follow a plot line and abandons it mid stream...frustrating book but somewhat entertaining..

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoy British writers of this period. This one was a tad dull, yet still worth reading.

[Pascale · Rating 3 out of 5]

A charming, cozy family saga centered on the 4 children of a famous novelist (Hugo, Leonard, Vera and Edwina) and their descendants. The book starts as Leonard, the devoted employee of a Harrods like emporium, receives yet another anonymous letter threatening his beloved boss William Whiteley. Dull and dutiful Leonard doesn't know what to do, and fails to prevent the tragedy: a young man who believes himself to be the bastard son of wealthy Mr. Whiteley shoots him dead after failing to shake him down. After the trial, a friend of the family discovers that one of Leonard's rivals was responsible for prompting the disturbed young man to blackmail Whiteley. This friend of the family is Tobias Taylor, a very personable Welshman who pretends to be a medical doctor in spite of having been thrown out of medical school. Yet Tobias is by way of a conscientious quack. Having acquired some notions of psychology and of the properties of plants, he genuinely tries to help the people who come to him to the best of his abilities. Ingratiating himself with a solid bourgeois family like the Morleys is more than a clever gambit for him, whose sole surviving relative is a mother with Alzheimer's disease, and apart from saving Leonard's job for him, he has a mostly beneficial effect on all of them too. That is, until he impregnates clumsy, insecure Bella and fails to diagnose little Dicky's acute appendicitis for what it is, causing the eleven year old boy to die. Grief-stricken by his responsibility in this tragedy, Tobias flees London, but unwittingly causes another accident. Now thoroughly crushed, he settles in the wounded ferryman's cottage, unable to make any more plans for himself. Bella traces him back and begs him to marry her, but Tobias is not remotely in love with her. Eventually a deaf protégé of Leonard's daughter Madge kills Tobias to avenge Dicky's death. Although some readers have trashed this plot as melodramatic, I enjoyed being in the hands of a competent novelist who knows how to deliver a satisfactory narrative.

[Rosanne Dormer · Rating 2 out of 5]

The overall idea of this novel appealled to me - a tale about a family of varied characters and the picture of life in middle class London at the start of the 1900s.

There was also a mystery presented right from the beginning. However, it seemed to take a long time for anything to really start happening. When the action picked up, some of the occurrences seemed quite shocking, presented as they were in a very matter of fact way.

I felt rather uncomfortable about the language used to describe a young man with speech and hearing disabilities. Describing him as being like a monkey seemed insulting - I expect that this comes across because generally people in current times (2022) are now more sensitive about describing disability, race, sexual orientation etc.

Overall I found the book rather frustrating to read, because I didn't feel any particular empathy with the characters - I think the family dynamics were probably well described, but the lack of genuine warmth and care between many of the family members just seemed depressing. Maybe I was not in the right frame of mind to read a story about such harsh relationships.

Some of the scenes with the Thames ferry or London streets reminded me of Charles Dickens' works, or of a Thomas Hardy novel, with that brooding sense of foreboding. That's fine if the reader is in the mood for it! Maybe in these early post COVID days I was looking for something more engaging and uplifting!

[Orinoco Womble (tidy bag and all) · Rating 3 out of 5]

John Galsworthy meets E. M. Forster with a touch of the Anthony Trollopes.
I kept reading and reading waiting for I knew not what. Dickens writes good prose, but prose can't carry a novel, as I have said before.
When I finished the book I felt rather dissatisfied, just as I had when I finished The Forsyte Saga. The whole thing just seemed to wind down, not with a bang but with a whimper. Seeing that many GR readers have rated or added it without saying anything about it, I believe I'm not alone.