Helen SimonsonReviews

I absolutely loved the book [b:Major Pettigrew's Last Stand|6643090|Major Pettigrew's Last Stand|Helen Simonson|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320539020s/6643090.jpg|6837577], so when I heard that author Helen Simonson wrote a second book I was thrilled to have the chance to read an early copy. Unfortunately, this book was a huge disappointment.

Simonson's charm and wit, which made "Pettigrew" so enjoyable, are present in this book but they are buried among superfluous pages and words. Rather than stand out they are lost in the shuffle. There are far too many characters -- most of them indistinguishable from each other. Eventually I stopped trying to keep them straight. The elements of a good plot exist here, but the story just muddles along. I've read instruction manuals that were more exciting.

This might have been an entirely different book with more ruthless editing. At 496 pages I'm wondering how much got left on the cutting room floor. It easily could have been half the length -- which might have let the charm shine through and given space for the worthwhile characters to be developed. At one point in the story there is reference to a book: it was a dense tome, printed in close-set type, as if the printer had struggled to squeeze its impossible length into some manageable slab of pages. I felt that was apropos here!

While the book left much to be desired, it did provide much food for thought on the subject of refugees. As part of the story, the villagers need to decide whether to take in Belgian refugees, and what form of hospitality to provide them. I couldn't help but think of the parallels with today's Syrian refugees.

I do hope this book is an aberration and that Simonson continues to write. I would certainly read her future books. Many other reviewers seem to like this book, so readers should consider other reviews, and not just mine.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for a galley of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I received a galley via NetGalley.

Fantastic historical fiction. Though a bit slow to start, the story soon revs up. Set in a British beachside resort in the aftermath of World War I, the ardently feminist tale touches on deep issues with incredible finesse and heart. The treatment of disabled veterans is addressed, as is sexism (oh so much sexism), classism, and racism. Constance is the main character, a young woman of compassion and business savvy, but the entire cast is delightful, especially Mrs. Fog, who develops in such a surprising and touching way. I'll be recommending this one for my local book clubs!

Helen Simonson’s new book is a great comfort read. Set in 1919 at the end of the Great War, readers meet a cast a characters at a seaside hotel and the some of the village residents. It is a small community so there aren’t many secrets that aren’t found out.

Constance, our main character is at the hotel to chaperone and help Mrs. Fog, who is recovering from an illness. Constance has lost both parents and has been at the mercy of her mother’s best friend from girlhood. However the friend has a bit of a mean streak and is not looking out for Constance’s best interests.

While residing at the hotel both Mrs. Fog and Constance agree to pursue their own interests and give each other some freedom. Constance meets a group of young people and is befriended by Poppy. Poppy is innovative and has started a motorcycling taxi service for women. She also aspires to start a flying club for women.

Unfortunately, the war has put a dent in the family wealth and it is up to her brother Harris to try and get their finances set right. Harris has been devastated by a war injury but he is ready to prove himself worthy of his position.

Mixed in with all the nice characters were a few naughty ones who kept the story exciting. I just loved how their politeness often caught them out. This was such an enjoyable read.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Dial Press for allowing me to read an advance copy. I am happy to recommend this book to other readers.

Charming and very enjoyable.

Helen Simonson’s latest novel put me in a sort of trance. The story and writing style transported me to World War I era England. But unlike much World War I fiction, I did not feel like I was reading about contemporary people living 100 years in the past. These characters seemed to actually live and breathe a different air. They were clearly not of today. I felt I was watching them through some wavy antique glass. It was not an entirely comfortable or even enjoyable feeling, which is why I have given the novel a 4/5. Wonderfully written, but a bit unsettling and disconcerting.

I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

The cover of Helen Simonson's new book, The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club, immediately caught my eye. The title and cover image promised a great read!

Simonson has set her book in 1919 postwar England. Men are coming back to their homes, their families - and their jobs. Women have filled those roles during the war and many of the women don't want to quit - and many of them can't afford to not work.

One of those willing to work at a much more challenging job is Constance. But right now she is a companion to an older woman, living in a luxury hotel at Hazelbourne-on-Sea.

"I was doing something important. Now we are all expected to go home to the kitchen or drawing room".

Simonson's setting is wonderfully detailed and easy to imagine. She has also captured the mores of the time period - proper behaviour, doing as you're expected, listening to your elders and so much more. The expectations of the time are so constrictive. The dialogue was so well written and fun to read. Oral jousting while not stepping out of line!

But then Constance meets Poppy and her family and Poppy turns Constance's life upside down, introducing her to other forward thinking women. Simonson does a wonderful job depicting the women's' lives, hopes, dreams, wishes and the drive to keep trying to have more and do more.

There's much more to the plot of The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club - and it's much more fun to discover it yourself. If you enjoy historical fiction, add this to the your list!

Poppy runs a taxi and delivery service and hopes to add flying lessons soon. She employs local women. But now that the men are home from the Great War, everyone expects women to go back to worrying about manners and clothes. But, Poppy refuses to relinquish what little freedom she has uncovered.

Oh! These characters are so great! I just love Poppy! But honestly, it takes all of these young characters to make this story entertaining. Each character, Poppy, Iris, Constance and Harris, have a great story surrounding them. The way these people learn to ignore the noise, so to speak, just made this book so wonderful! Talk about non-conformity!

Need an adorable tale about strong women…THIS IS IT! Grab your copy today.

I received this novel from the publisher for a honest review.

This is one of those books I didn't want to end. Believable plot, lovable characters, strong sense of place, true to life dialogue and beautiful prose combine to make this an excellent read. Ms. Simonson hits it out of the park with this one.

Social change and relationships post WWI

During World War I Constance Haverhill had been the unpaid estate manager and general dogsbody for her mother’s friend and supposed patron Lady Mercer. Constance and her mother lived in a small game-keeper’s cottage on the estate in return for a myriad of duties they both performed to keep Clivehill running smoothly. The end of the war brought that arrangement to a close. It’s now 1919 and Constance’s mother has passed away from Influenza. Constance’s sister-in-law is irrationally blaming Constance for the death of her children from the flu epidemic. Lady Mercer has had Constance’s belongings packed up and stored unknown to her whilst she’s supposedly on holidays at Brighton. Constance is to all intents and purposes is homeless.
In reality she’s caring for Lady Mercer’s mother, Mrs. Fog who’s fortunately very different from her overbearing, inconsiderate, self absorbed, class conscious daughter.
It’s in the Meredith Hotel that Constance comes into contact with the Wirralls. There’s the independent Poppy who forms a motorbike club and a taxi service, her brother Harris—a returned Air Force pilot amputee, and their mother Lady Wirral, who once graced the stage. (There’s so much more to Lady Wirral than is obvious.)
Constance seems to become involved in everything, from Poppy’s motor bike taxi service, Poppy’s plan to help her brother move forward by getting him to restore a Sopworth Camel (highly doubtful)and fraught with danger. Later Constance helps the family with their businesses and estate finances.Then there’s Mrs. Fog’s mysterious childhood friends the de Champney’s.
Constance is a brilliant and intelligent young woman who’s lost faith in her abilities.
I do wish she’d stood up for herself early on with the very insensitive Lady Mercer.
What will the future hold for her? I despaired!
On the romance side of things the situation opens up for Constance only to be put aside due to old fashioned ideas of doing what’s expected. Oh no!
An interesting novel set against the background of social class disparities, and trying to find oneself in a changed world. There are other secondary characters who I really felt for. Dear Mr. Klaus Zeiger the head waiter who had been interned during the war due to his German heritage being one.
Brought to the fore is the plight of the women who now are asked to give up their independence with the men returning. That genie wasn’t going back into the bottle!
The novel becomes even more intriguing as these supporting characters help paint a picture and build up the well-weighted background to the book’s thrust.

A Random House ARC via NetGalley.
Many thanks to the author and publisher.

Simonson’s last novel The Summer before the War is set in 1914 before the beginning of World War I; this novel is set in the summer of 1919 just after the end of that war.

Constance Haverhill is sent as a lady’s companion to Mrs. Eleanor Fog, an old family friend who is convalescing at a hotel in Hazelbourne-on-Sea. After the summer, Constance will have to find a position to support herself but in the meantime she finds herself mixing with the elites who live in the hotel. In particular, she meets Poppy Wirrall, an unconventional young woman, the leader of a group of independent-minded motorcycle-riding women, and her brother Harris, a fighter pilot trying to adjust to life as an amputee.

The book focuses on the challenges of post-war life, especially those faced by women. During the war, women took jobs left vacant by men who were off fighting; these jobs allowed women to show their competence and gave them both responsibility and freedom. With the end of the war, however, women are expected to give up these jobs to returning soldiers. Constance, for instance, managed a large estate but is told she is now no longer needed; Poppy expresses her frustration: “’I got used to feeling life was urgent and I was doing something important. Now we are all expected to go home to the kitchen or drawing room.’” Mention is made of the Restoration of Pre-War Practices Act which legislated certain jobs could be held only by men. Those women left widowed are expected to survive on an insufficient pension whereas those who are unmarried find a limited supply of potential husbands after the deaths of so many young men.

Women also experience misogyny. Constance admits that when showing her wartime employer “’how well his estate was doing . . . I forgot men don’t like women to be too competent. I should have been more circumspect.’” Men and women are certainly judged differently. One man’s comments are jokingly dismissed as overbearing but a woman points out that “’when I am overbearing, which I often like to be, they call me an absolute shrew.’” It’s best that women “’simper and faint and hide our abilities in all things worldly.’” Constance is careful “never to share her opinion, especially with a man” because she knows that if a woman says anything of import, “It was as if when offering a dog a biscuit, the dog had thanked them and begun to quote from the Encyclopaedia Britannica.”

Of course men must also adapt to changes. Those who survived the battlefield and the influenza pandemic have to integrate back into society. Injured men like Harris find themselves being treated as incapable of resuming work; Harris, for example, wants to continue to fly planes but is discouraged from doing so: “’They look at me as if my brain has gone missing along with the leg. Or rather they refuse to look at me at all.’” He also struggles with survivor’s guilt. Men who suffered serious injury are hidden away from society. In a parade celebrating victory and peace, attempts are made not to include the seriously wounded as if to prove one woman’s opinion that “’it seems as if the dead are more convenient than the wounded.’”

Classism is addressed. Men of lower classes who might have proven during wartime that “competence, decency, and grit were not the sole purview, or even the natural gifts, of the well-born” have to return to lives in which they are no longer seen as equals. And as a woman who has to earn a living to survive, Constance does not have the freedom of the wealthy. For instance, Poppy, because of her wealth and social class, is able to engage in activities not available to Constance: “Respectability was the currency in which Constance knew she must trade for the foreseeable future. She . . . did not have Poppy’s wealth and position from which to defend herself against notoriety.”

The book also touches on xenophobia and racism. At the hotel there’s a waiter named Klaus Zeiger, a German-born naturalized citizen. At the beginning of the war, he was kept in an internment camp, and after the war, because of lingering anti-German sentiment, he tries to keep a low profile. “’British India and the independent princely states together contributed over a million men to this war,’” but an Indian delegation is prevented from marching in the Peace Parade in London. One Indian pilot mentions that when he applied to the Flying Corps, he was told to become an air mechanic instead: “Some imputed weakness of my race, or perhaps a disinclination to train and empower a colonial.’” There is also racism against blacks; a visiting American expresses particularly odious views: “’Relationships across the races being, we believe, against the laws of the state and nature.’”

This book will be described as a gentle, quiet read but its charm is not a disguise for fluff. Though its plot, especially the romance, is predictable, the book captures the mood of the world after the First World War. It is the novel’s social commentary that I will remember. It’s an entertaining book that provides food for thought.

Note: I received an eARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

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I was delighted by this novel and set aside all other books to read it.

I loved it for the witty epigrammatic insights of the characters. I loved it for the sensitive portrayal of the post WWI world of Britain. There are the war wounded men, struggling with horrific disfigurement and trauma, unable to obtain employment because no one wanted to be confronted with the human cost of the war, and because they were considered mentally as well as physically handicapped. Spunky women who had kept Britain together were being forced out of jobs after the government classifies the jobs as for men only. I loved it for the wonderfully drawn characters. So often, I was reminded of Jane Austen, that master of the comedy of manners and reversals of fortune in affairs of the heart.

In 1919, Constance Haverhill is a companion to her mother’s dear friend, connected by regard and not by mere economics, summering at a seaside resort. Come fall, she must find employment or become dependent on her brother, who had inherited the family farm. During the war, she had run an estate, her accounting and management skills top notch. But that job was going back to a man.

Constance meets the iconoclastic Poppy and her women friends who hope to continue their independence with a motorcycle transport business. These daredevil ladies include a mechanic and a motorcycle racer. Poppy hopes to expand the business by adding flying lessons for ladies; her brother Harris was a pilot in the war, returning home without a leg. He is morose and surly; his fiance had thrown him over, unable to face a crippled husband.

The war had left two million disabled and over forty thousand amputees, many of the men maimed with no prospects for employment or love, Constance learns when she visits the local convalescent center filled with veterans. Constance and Harris face the same challenges, unable to find employment. “People are unable to see beyond what they deem our limitations,” Harris concedes.

With the introduction of an American Southerner and a man from India with a secret, the story addresses racism on both sides of the pond.

Constance is drawn into Poppy’s exciting circle and her welcoming family, taking risks she would never have imagined. But even they fail her, their wealth sheltering them from their worst actions. Her prospects growing dim, Constance outwardly keeps her place while secretly she is breaking limits, daring to hope for a fuller life.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book.

A pleasant enough holiday read. Major Pettigrew overcomes his somewhat stuffy, if enjoyable, background in the shires to befriend and ultimately marry Asian shopkeeper , Mrs. Ali. The end.

I don't read many fiction books anymore, but this one drew me to it. I was not disappointed. It was a look back at the time when many traditions were overthrown by what became known as the "Great War" and what we now know as World War I.
Throughout the book my main thought was.... why hasn't PBS/ BBC made this a movie/ mini series yet? Also there would be ways to write a sequel. I would happily read that as well.

Victoria Shields says, along with the NYT: "Funny, barbed, delightfully winsome storytelling . . . As with the polished work of Alexander McCall Smith, there is never a dull moment . . . It's all about intelligence, heart, dignity and backbone." English fiction.

Romance

The best parts of this novel is the satire spoken not in jest but earnestly “ I can’t wait to tour the model trench” said Eleanor” Beatrice Nash told me they have bookshelves and willow furniture and that they read poetry every night before taps”. !!!
This novel also shows the awful attitude towards women at this time “Spinsters aren’t suppose to enjoy themselves said Daniel. I think they live to be useful.” Or this one “Compounding lack of funds with intelligence, she makes herself unmarriageable.” The constrictions on women are a theme in this novel. Beatrice, our main character, helped her father live as a writer yet when he died he put his estate” in trust” not allowing her to manage it alone. And poor Celeste, the Belgian refugee, agrees to go to a convent as that is demanded by her father.
Social etiquette, gossip and a person’s station in life are also recurring themes.
The last part of the novel is about the war itself and Hugh and Daniel, Harry and Snout in France. Here too rank and protocol determine outcomes like for poor Snout. And in the end, after death has claimed many in war one is left to wonder, why is all that important when we are all just people who love and mourn½

Debut novel. Widower in England finds happiness with Pakistani widow. Funny and heart warming.

I read somewhere that this book was great for people who missed Downton Abbey and I think that was a good tip.

I'm always pleased with a smart, independent woman and Beatrice was no different. I enjoyed the goings on of the small English town in the run up to WWI.

Town politics, romance, scandal, war.....it's all here.

I'm about a third of the way in. It's so cute! I totally love it. Still loved it by the end. Just a quaint, sweet book.

This started out so much like a golden age cozy that I found myself wondering who would be found murdered in the library. The ridiculous village sniping gives way to tragic wartime realities along the way to a beautifully developed ending. I loved it.

Old Filth completely overshadowed this book. The story was formulaic; the club women were fools. I put it down 2/3 the way through and returned to books by Jane Gardam.

I really enjoyed Major Pettigrew's Last Stand so I think my expectations were too high for this book. I was expecting a slightly more light-hearted story.

This was a light, fun read. The story opens with Major Pettigrew, a very proper English gentleman living in an English village, feeling sad that his brother had died. But events move swiftly in this book. The author introduces us to a cast of characters from England, Pakistan, and America, from gentlemen, to shopkeepers, immigrants, bankers, and society ladies to name just a few. The story alternates between heartwarming and hilarious. If you're in the mood for amusing, this is the book to read.

A nice little read, but not compelling.

Major Pettigrew like all my favorite "grumpy old man" protagonists continued to grow on me throughout the story. If you liked Ove in [b:A Man Called Ove|18774964|A Man Called Ove|Fredrik Backman|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1405259930s/18774964.jpg|21619954] you'll like this slightly softer Major Pettigrew too as he grows out of his stubbornness, expands his world, and welcomes in love.