When Laura’s older sister Mildred dies after a lengthy illness, she takes quiet pride in the minister identifying Laura as “the sister who with exemplary devotion did not spare herself in the long months of nursing.” Laura stands to inherit the family estate, but having put her life on hold for so long, she can barely come to terms with the possibilities now available to her. Laura’s younger brother George, long ostracized from the family, returns to make amends but does he have other motives? You can bet he does.

As Laura looks back on her life it becomes clear she was ruled first by a stern father and then by an equally tyrannical sister. Suppressed memories and family lies have taken a significant toll. Laura’s journey from awareness to action is slow, but satisfying. ( )

I loved this quiet novel about a middle-aged woman who finds her life suddenly changed when her invalid sister dies. Laura has been caring for Mildred for 6 years and has led a completely sheltered and isolated existence, completely controlled by the domineering Mildred. When Mildred dies, Laura inherits their large home and estate and her life begins to have motion. A long lost brother returns, bringing up memories of a friend of his who she loved in her youth and bringing to light a family secret that could change how Laura has viewed her whole adult life. Laura will have to decide for herself how she wants her life to look from here on out.

This is a simple novel with a simple plot that gives plenty of room for a deeply drawn character and situation. It's one of my favorite kinds of novel and reminded me of Barbara Pym, Anita Brookner, and Penelope Fitzgerald. I'll be on the lookout for more books by [[Janet McNeill]] who doesn't seem to have much currently in print in the U.S. ( )

Opening in a well-to-do household in N Ireland, at the funeral of older sister Mildred, the story follows her weakened younger sister (and carer) Laura. Long used to living nervously under Mildred's criticism and demands, she now finds herself wealthy and independent...but still tremulous and quashed by thoughts of the deceased...and, falling prey to three new faces: officious do-gooder, Miss Parks, hoping to take up residence here; scapegrace brother George, unwelcome while Mildred lived; and the widowed family solicitor.
In flashbacks, the author takes us back to Laura's brief spell at art college...and the outcome.....And leaves the reader with the awareness that the oppressive control of her father, then her sister, and the "watching" house she inhabits, mean she will never break away from their influence... ( )

The Percivals are a wealthy Northern Irish Protestant family. As McNeill’s novel opens, eldest daughter Mildred’s funeral casket is being removed from Marathon, the spacious family home after a small, private funeral. The family is in decline; its influence has weakened, and, as a result, few attend the ceremony. Timid, middle-aged Laura, who tended to the acid-tongued, domineering Mildred for the last six years of her life, refuses to look on as her sister’s small funeral cortege passes through the gates of the estate before moving on to the cemetery. Mildred did not approve of women attending interments.

Even as the cars make their way onto the main road, Mildred and Laura’s estranged younger brother, George, drives toward the family home he hasn’t entered in years. George was the longed-for male heir, the last of the Percival children. His birth ended his mother’s life, and his wild, black-sheep ways were a great disappointment to the family patriarch, who has been dead for twenty years now. George is the only one of the Percivals to marry, and well beneath him, at that. He now thinks he can insinuate himself, his social-climbing wife, and wily daughter back into the family home so they can all live in style. After all, the house is far too large for Laura, who has been left everything.

Others, too, hope for a slice of Laura’s inheritance or at least a display of her largesse. Mildred’s former teacher, Miss Parks, an odious gentlewoman who has fallen on hard times, inserted herself into the Marathon household during Mildred’s last month. She hopes to make herself indispensable to poor, dear Laura, who suffered a nervous breakdown at the time of her father’s death, and (fingers crossed) may suffer another now that Mildred is dead. Miss Parks then won’t have to return to her damp bedsit; she’ll simply stay on at comfortable Marathon. The Percivals’ solicitor, the aging Mr. McAlister, also sees opportunity. Long displeased with his haughty and self-righteous housekeeper, he would prefer that Hannah, the Percivals’ cook, prepare his meals. He suggests that Laura marry him as a cure for loneliness (though the reader knows he really wants a decent dinner.)

Laura quickly realizes that “Mildred’s death had not solved the problems which she had expected it to solve.” In fact, it makes Laura revisit her past and confront some hard truths about her wasted life. Secrets are slowly and skillfully revealed by the author. The biggest one concerns the extent of Mildred’s stranglehold on her younger sister.

This is a fine, psychologically rich novel, but I had difficulty accepting the conclusion and the apparent compassion Laura is willing to extend to the hateful Mildred. To me, the novels’s resolution was weak and unconvincing. ( )

Tea at Four o’clock is a psychologically astute novel of family tyranny and dominance, the title deliberately misleading with its connotations of cosiness. Set in the author’s native Belfast it is the story of a woman’s cautious attempt to reclaim the life she sacrificed to her exacting family.

Now middle aged, Laura Percival has spent her life at the Percival family mansion Marathon, in thrall to first her father, and later her elder sister Mildred. Laura and Mildred’s brother George, having incurred his father’s wrath and disapproval left the family home twenty years earlier, never to return. Having nursed the exacting, bullying Mildred for the last few years, Laura is left bewildered in her sudden freedom when Mildred dies. Mildred a woman who demanded that tea should be served at precisely four o’clock each day, that the plants should be watered each Thursday, exacted a disabling obedience from Laura. On the day of Mildred’s funeral, Laura takes a small amount of pride in the Rev McClintock’s word of praise – in her “…exemplary devotion (who) did not spare herself in the long months of nursing” Living temporarily at Marathon with Laura is Miss Parks, a strident figure once Mildred’s teacher, who had moved in to help, quickly making herself indispensable and now has little intention of moving back to her bedsitting room on the other side of Belfast. Miss Parks, showing a convenient devotion to the memory of Mildred and her habits sets out to continue the management of Laura, having not reckoned on the reappearance of George Percival on the very day that Mildred is laid to rest.

“George’s memories of his home had been dominated so strongly, and for so long, first by his father and then by Mildred, that he had thought little of Laura during his years of absence. Any picture he had of her was of a quiet child who in her obedience to her father’s or Mildred’s bidding had seemed to accomplish much more than George ever had by his flouting of it.”

George has been living in another part of Belfast, in a smaller kind of house altogether, his wife rather common wife Amy and their daughter Kathie have never met George’s sisters, and have naturally always had an enormous curiosity about Marathon and its inhabitants. Having spotted the announcement of Mildred’s death in the newspaper, Amy persuades him to go to the house and attend the funeral; George arrives just in time to see the funeral cars leave the house, knowing the funeral is over, George decides to reacquaint himself with the sister who is left alone now in the old family house. George’s motives are suspected by both the reader and the family solicitor Mr McAlister, who has his own designs on Laura. George is not easily repulsed, and to the extreme irritation of Miss Parks spends a lot of time over the next few days with Laura.

In trying to reclaim the life she has given to others, Laura must confront and understand the past, the part she and others played in the consequences which resulted from her one aborted bid for independence. McNeill’s masterly at slowly revealing the truth of both the past and the present, and ultimately Laura cannot help but be seen as having been complicit in her own oppression.

“During Mildred’s illness the hour after lunch had always been treasured, an oasis, a withdrawal into herself, a renewal of courage while the invalid rested. Now the necessity of idleness confronted Laura and became a weight, a terror. What was there for her to do? She glanced through the newspaper, reading the words, but understanding little of what she read. At last, in an agony of loneliness she went down the passageway into the kitchen.”

Told in flashback, we see Laura as a young woman, an art student, who meets Tom, a friend of George’s in her art class. Forever after, Laura is haunted by the ambiguity of the words he spoke to her once twenty years earlier, “I never told you I loved you.” Now Tom is dead, having gone to America and married the first woman he met, his son another young artist is visiting Belfast, and Laura hurries along to meet him. George would like to move his family into Marathon, and rather thinks he too can manage Laura, however Laura turns out to be not quite so easily managed. The novel ends spectacularly with McNeill gently twisting the knife just one last time. ( )