Fenny (original 1953; edition 1987)

“Fenny” is a deeply charming, enormously readable novel, which opens with the Fenny of the title (Ellen Fenwick) a young English school teacher coming to Italy as a governess to the granddaughter of an actress that she admires. The Fenny who arrives at Villa Meridiana in the summer of 1933 having recently lost her mother, has endured seven years teaching at a Yorkshire high school and is ripe for change. For a while Ellen – who soon becomes Fenny -finds acceptance and peace in the beauty of her surroundings. However Fenny must soon face emotions which are completely new to her, as she falls in love and finds that the relationships of people around her are not always what they seem. Fenny and Juliet the child to whom she is governess, very quickly develop a close and touching relationship, but there are changes and upheavals for the family and they leave Italy. Fenny deciding to stay in Italy pledges to keep in touch with young Juliet. Three years later Ellen is working for another family she had first encountered while working at Villa Meridiana. She is drawn to wanting to help Shand, the teenage son of her employer whose deep unhappiness and longing to get back to America concerns her. The backdrop to the story of Fenny and the families she works for is the terrifying rise of fascism in Italy and the coming of war. There comes a time when Fenny must really face up to what is happening, and make decisions about her own safety.
Fenny’s relationship with her two charges continues over many years. While she herself faces hardship and fear during the war years, she learns things about life which she can pass to the adult children she loves so deeply. In the course of the novel we see Fenny develop from an inexperienced young woman with much to learn, into a strong mature woman who survived the turbulent war years in Italy.
The novel spans the years of 1933 to 1949 and through these years we see the changes that occur in Italy as the fascist party takes firmer hold, and war looms on the horizon. There is one particular short scene – witnessed by Fenny and young Shand - of a middle aged clerk being dragged off by a group of black shirts that I thought was beautifully and frighteningly described. Throughout the novel it is easy to see the affection that Lettice Cooper had for Italy and for Florence in particular. For me this was the perfect reading experience, I loved the setting, the characters are marvellous creations – although two of the Italian women Fenny encounters are horribly selfish and manipulative – but fascinating for all that. Fenny is a real joy of a read. ( )

I enjoyed this very much. There's nothing startling about it - it's written in a very clear, transparent prose and deals mostly with private life albeit in an environment (Italy before, during and after the war) where the public world occasionally comes crashing in. This is a novel about a woman growing up, making emotional mistakes, and ultimately leading a life that is as good as she can make it within the confines of what is possible for a single woman of limited means in the mid 20th century. It's realism is, in many ways, quietly devastating. I finished it wanting to read more!

I am ashamed to say that this is the first time since my university days that I have read a novel in a day. But let it not be said that I only did so because I was full of cold and capable of nothing else than sitting on the sofa with a good book. I picked up Fenny because I wanted to read anything by Lettice Cooper, and it was the only title on the shelf that I had by her that I hadn't read (the other being The New House, which I only read two months ago), and once started, I couldn’t put it down.

The great thing about LT, and in particular joining a group that shares your interests and passions (for me that group is the Virago Group) is that you gain access to an ever expanding world of authors and enthusiastic readers. I am still working my through the original publication list of Virago Modern Classics (around 500 titles). These are mostly out of print, some rarer than others, but for me and many of the members of the group, acquiring and reading titles from that list has become an adventure. I now own over 200 VMC’s.

With so many authors and titles to choose from, my selection process has been mostly random, with the exception of those works by Winifred Holtby. Spurred on by a piece on Woman’s Hour about her I realised that I had never read any of her works and turned to my shelf to find that I had all but one of her titles. She has since become a favourite of mine, not just because I have enjoyed her novels but because she was more than a novelist, she was a humanitarian, a socialist, a journalist, a poet and a lover of life.

Born a year earlier than Holtby, Lettice Cooper was also from Yorkshire, also a socialist and also involved with the journal Time and Tide, albeit for a much shorter period, and four years after Holtby had died. Unlike Holtby, Cooper enjoyed a long life, living until she was 96 having written twenty adult novels as well as fourteen children’s stories and countless review articles.

Fenny (first published in 1953), is the story of a young English school teacher who, after the death of her mother, for whom she was the sole carer, decides to take the opportunity to travel to Florence for a six month post as governess to an English family and their only daughter. At Villa Meridiana Fenny’s world temporarily expands but can she grow with it? The backdrop of the Tuscan landscape, the Italian character, the growth of fascism and the threat of war are all interwoven in this simpatico portrait of a gradually emerging self-awareness. ( )

http://www.lonelymountain.net/books/apr07.html#coopertnhf ( )