Hester Roon

‘Hester Roon’ is set over the first eighteen years of the title character’s life. It opens when she’s newly born, though for the opening chapters she’s left in the background, with the emphasis being on her mother.

Ellie Roon is a single mother who works for a despicable pub landlord. She also lives in the pub.

Through Ellie’s daily life, the author brings to life the toil and misery of the lowest members of the working class. It’s an endless grind for small pay with little or no social life.

Much of the novel is set at the pub, with occasional wanderings off into the local area. I like this setting the best and miss it when, about halfway through the novel, the teenage Hester is compelled to leave. We see her go from place show more to place in England until she eventually ends up in the West Indies.

The story is set from the 1750s through to the 1770s, and while the characters are fictional, some of the events in the latter part of the book are based on real events.

The narrative is a bit slow to get going, owing to too much description and explanations instead of drama and action. I wondered for a while if I wasn’t going to enjoy it, but at length we get some character interaction, and I soon became engaged. So, don’t stop reading if you find the first few pages a bit slow – it’s well worth sticking with.

Hester is most interesting. She’s not perfect, not evil, but human with flaws and attributes, and therefore believable. She has a vengeful streak but is good at heart. She has a hard life but manages to survive many situations that would make some people emotionally crumble.

Norah Lofts was particularly good at creating believable characters. She expertly brings them all to life in this entertaining novel.

I can only fault her on two things, one of which is using too much explanation or reporting on events. She’s superb at drama and dialogue, so I can’t understand why she didn’t rely on these attributes consistently.

The other thing I didn’t like was – on three occasions, if I recall correctly – inserting historical notes in brackets, of which the fictitious ones should’ve been added at the end in an epilogue (or cut altogether), and the factual one should’ve been included at the end in an author’s note. Including this sort of thing takes the reader out of the story, destroying all feelings of escapism. When reading a chapter set around 1770, I don’t want an aside telling me that ‘In 1936, etc., etc.’

Don’t be put off by these criticisms, though, if you’re thinking of reading ‘Hester Roon’. About 90 per cent or more of this novel is brilliant.

This is the seventh novel I’ve read by Norah Lofts. After the first one, she became an author whose works I wanted to read more of. After the second, she entered my Top Ten favourite authors. By the time I’d read six, she was in my Top Three. After reading ‘Hester Roon’, she’s become my favourite author. She has a style like no one else I’ve read.

She has a way of drawing you into her stories and, at times, the writing is so absorbing, it leaves certain scenes imprinted in my mind like memories; as though I was there witnessing what her larger-than-life characters were doing. show less