Company Parade (original 1934; edition 1982)

At the end of WW I, Hervey Russell leaves her young son with a caretaker in the country and goes to make her fortune in London. She has already written one novel, and knows that she is destined to be famous. She doesn't understand why her husband, Penn is in no hurry to demobilise from the Air Force and resume his career as a school teacher. Hervey finds steady work as a novice copywriter, mentored by a crippled war vet.

Hervey (as well as most of the younger characters in the book) has no firm plan with how to get on with her life, or even what she wants out of life, other than to do the best she can for her young son, Richard, and the fierce desire to become 'famous'. The novel is a wonderful kaleidoscope of the hard life in London immediately after WW I, and the aimlessness and frustrations of the returning vets and young working people.

The first of a planned five part series (only three were written), by Storm Jameson. Her writing is realistic and detailed. Her people are far from perfect, but very human. ( )

Company Parade is the story of Hervey Russell, who leaves her little son at the end of the First World War, in order to make a better home for him and to give him the opportunities he deserves. She gets a job as an advertising copy writer on the basis of a first novel and manages to endure separation by working and by spending time with two old friends (Class of 1913), Philip and T.S. Hervey is a person of contradictions: brilliant, defiantly shy, ambitious, passionate, self-assertive, almost pathetically diffident and placating. She shares her friends' radicalism; she anticipates and fears her husband's demobilization; she misses her son; she yearns and determines to make her mark in the world. The novel expands around Hervey into the lives of other equally interesting characters.
Jameson's prose is lovely - quiet and individual with arresting turns of phrase which do not interrupt the narrative flow. I'm struck by a short paragraph in which Hervey is walking to interview for a job. "When the day came she put on a newly bought hat. This was a mistake." The paragraph progresses as Hervey walks slowly and rehearses her answers to questions until we read, "Here she caught sight of herself in a shop window in Mount Street and straightened her hat. It is easy to imagine that you are a success; it is not so easy to imagine that your hat is on straight when it is in fact over one ear." This perfectly captures the vulnerability of a talented, insecure young woman, and I find it wonderful.
Company Parade was intended to be the first of five or six novels in which Storm Jameson would "depict the contemporary scene," that of England following WWI. In the end she wrote only three books, saying "The deep reason why I abandoned Mirror in Darkness {her title for the series}... was a stifled instinct that I was working against the grain of my talent." Whatever she meant, I felt none of the characters really came to life. They were complex, believable, interesting, but lacking some spark of vitality without which a book never becomes an alternate reality. I will certainly read the other two books in the series and am very happy to have discovered Storm Jameson. ( )

Set in the years just after WWI, Company Parade is about a young writer, Hervey Russell, who comes to London to work as an advertising copywriter. Her husband is in the Air Force still, and her young son is still in Yorkshire. This is a novel with good characterization, although I thought Hervey was a little hypocritical; she doesn’t feel guilty about her relationship with Jess Gage, but she’s really hurt when she finds out that her husband has had an affair… but I did love the author’s descriptions of London, especially the Piccadilly area. ( )