An Imaginative Experience

A strange, sweet little novel about a young woman dealing with a terrible history and a recent tragedy and her inadvertent effect on an introspective man whose wife has just left him. This is a book full of well-sketched characters, wry humor, and unexpected wisdom. Wesley may not be a profound novelist but her exploration of the everyday and commonplace is spot on and surprisingly moving. Where some authors create the equivalent of minutely-detailed oil paintings, I tend to think of Mary Wesley as a watercolor artist who brings forth the outline of reality in a few simple strokes.

One of the best novels I've read; pretty certain I love it.

Wesley is a wizard in showing the gist and vulnerability of her characters; making them instantly real and either likeable or unlikeable.

I do hope Rebecca (I actually knew a Rebecca VERY like this one) gets her hands on Maurice. It'll do him good.

Wondrous, witty and joyful!

This was a bit of fluff--in the best possible way. I'm at a stressful point at work and needed something fairly light (although it does have a vein of tragedy running through it). It begins when a young woman pulls the emergency brake on a train--something passenger Sylvester Wykes admits that he's always wanted to do but never had the guts. The reason Julia Piper pulled the brake? To help a sheep she had seen from her window who was stuck on its back. When they all disembark at the next station, Sylvester sees her again, mildly curious, but Maurice Benson takes a more stalkerish mode, determined to find out everything he can about her.

Wesley has created a group of intriguing characters not only in Julia, Sylvester, and Maurice, but in show more the secondary characters as well. There's Sylvester's soon-to-be ex-wife, Celia, who ran off with another man, denuding the house in the process; even things that had been handed down from his father were gone, as well as the teakettle he had just purchased to replace the one she had just taken. Rebecca, Sylvester's domineering former secretary, can't help herself from frequently popping in with attempts to take charge. It's great fun to see how the mild-mannered Sylvester gradually learns how to manage her. Much of the story centers around the shop on the corner, run by the agreeable Mr. Patel. Julia befriends his wife, despite her inability to speak English, and becomes close to the Patel's two little boys. Her mother, Clodagh, is the epitome of a horrible mother, for various reaosns preferring her son-in-law to her own daughter. And there's a dog in the mix--a lurcher eventually named Joyful.

In some ways, as one reviewer states, this is a pretty typical love story. But it's one with a little surprise around every corner. It has been a long time since I've read a Mary Wesley novel, and this one remionded me of how much I've enjoyed her others. show less

A train is abruptly halted and a woman runs out to rescue a sheep on its back. 2 men watch from the train, one bemused, one eager to find out why she did it and who she is.

The book follows the lives of these 3 individuals, their past and their present. One of the men becomes obsessed with finding out everything about the woman, and doffs an investigative hat as he finds information about her through her mother,neighbors and friends by pretending to be a friend of her ex-husband.

She tries to forget a tragedy but is not ready to forgive herself. She throws herself into her work, not realizing that she's being stalked.

The other man is learning to live on his own again while waiting for his divorce to be finalized. His ex-secretary tries show more to insinuate herself into his life with some hilarious results.

Random acts bring them together again, under different circumstances and with interesting results. Hamish Grant and Calypso from previous Wesley books make cameo appearances.

A most delightful jaunt through London and the English countryside. show less

"Angrily he thought, of course I want! I want to collar the dog and collar you."

I was enjoying the book up until the last chapters. Then I started to wonder if creepy, stalking, violent, horrible Maurice and bullying, interfering, horrible Rebecca and horrible, horrible, horrible Clodagh were drawn so very horribly to make impatient, controlling Sylvester look better. Practically a prince by comparison.

I've like Wesley's books in the past but this one, not so much.

Falling in love is, in A.N. Wilson's view, the most imaginative experience we can have.
This book lets us down because it is over-imagined; the malign characters are too much so, and the hero, Sylvester, is rendered more attractive than he is because of this. The plot is more far-fetched than is good for the story.
Nevertheless, this is a Mary Wesley novel, and it maintains her good reputation, but it is not the best of those novels of hers that I have read.

This seems to be one of Mary Wesley’s not so well known novels, and I’d forgotten I’d got it till asked to review it for the ‘Go review that book’ thread. It starts with a fairly memorable sentence ‘The sheep lay on its back in the centre of the field with its legs in the air’ and you are quickly introduced to three of the books main characters: Sylvester Wykes, Maurice Benson and Julia Piper who are all travelling on the same train heading towards Paddington. They all have their own problems and quirks, and the book develops their stories and those of mutual acquaintances. It manages, in typical Mary Wesley fashion to combine both sadness and, if not comedy, wry observances on the characters and their situations. I’d show more probably not rate it as highly as some of Wesley’s other books, but it’s still a good read. show less