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Meet the Stevens family, as they prepare to embark on their yearly holiday to the coast of England. Mr. and Mrs. Stevens first made the trip to Bognor Regis on their honeymoon, and the tradition has continued ever since. They stay in the same guest house and follow the same carefully honed schedule--now accompanied by their three children, twenty-year-old Mary, seventeen-year-old Dick, and little brother Ernie. Arriving in Bognor they head to Seaview, the guesthouse where they stay every year. It's a bit shabbier than it once was--the landlord has died and his wife is struggling as the number of guests dwindles every year. But the family finds bliss in booking a slightly bigger cabana, with a balcony, and in their rediscovery of the familiar places they visit every year. Mr. Stevens goes on his annual walk across the downs, reflecting on his life, his worries and disappointments, and returns refreshed. Mrs. Stevens treasures an hour spent sitting alone with her medicinal glass of port. Mary has her first small taste of romance. And Dick pulls himself out of the malaise he's sunk into since graduation, resolving to work towards a new career. The Stevenses savor every moment of their holiday, aware that things may not be the same next year.… (more)
nessreader: Usually i don't cross-recommend same-author books but rc sherriff does so many genres that i make an exception. These 2 share a warmth and compassion for unglamorous decent people living everyday lives.
nessreader: Both are about heroic families on the border of poverty just after the 2nd world war. Both families are mutually supportive, making the best of what they have and hopeful of the future. I'm not sure that the writers are not condescending and writing-down-to their characters -that may be my cynicism - but was interested that both books give multiple povs within the group so that shades of different agendas emerge.… (more)
wandering_star: Like The Fortnight In September, London Belongs To Me looks closely and sympathetically at what may seem, from the outside, to be ordinary mundane lives. In my opinion, London Belongs To Me does it better...
This is a lovely, quiet book about a lower middle class English family in the early '30s, taking their annual two weeks holiday by the sea. R.C. Sherriff does a great job at conveying both the kinds of little things that people get anxious about—how to pack; how to ensure the optimal seat on the train; which spot on the beach to select and is it worth hiring out a particular bathing hut or not—and the kinds of pleasures that come with the change of routine and place, however mundane. The Fortnight in September isn't a book in which much happens—it's a slice-of-life story with no grand life lessons to it. But throughout you have a muted sense of nostalgia, the faint sense that since the Stevens children are getting older this may be the last time the family makes this journey all together. A pleasurable read. ( )
Beautiful, quiet little story of a family's two week vacation on the seaside. They go to the beach and do very normal things. Each family member has their point of view shown. ( )
After being enraptured by Sherriff's The Hopkins Manuscript, this was certainly a change of pace. If nothing else, Sherriff has shown us he can write a tight, emotional, human drama (Journey's End), a big science fiction setpiece (Hopkins), and now this: a gentle, quotidian, nostalgic little celebration of life's simple pleasures. Author Kazuo Ishiguro, writer I admire greatly, describes it as a "delicate" exploration of "the beautiful dignity to be found in everyday living."
An ordinary, middle-class family of five in 1931 England: the Stevenses: father, mother, and their three children: young adults Dick and Mary, and rowdy ten-year-old Ernie, are preparing for their annual two-week trip to the seaside. They always go there and nowhere else. They always stay at the same boardinghouse. Even the day of packing and preparation is ritualized, scripted according to Mr. Stevens's "Marching Orders." And it is filled with a lovely anticipation pleasurable in itself, as exciting as Christmas Eve, where divergence from hallowed traditions would take some the of the heart out of it. There is a frisson of tension even over the change of train at Clapham Junction: will they make the change? Will they find seats together? Who might sit with them? Even though of course it all comes right.
These tiny dramas unspool throughout this gentle story. Mr Stevens relishes his long solo walks on the downs, savors the feel of an open collar, stout walking shoes, and a companionable pipe in the local pub. The family gathers in their bathing cabin (they splurge on one with with a balcony!) to watch the sea and the people. They play games in the arcade, listen to the band. Mary has a desultory flirtation with a young man, which (of course) goes nowhere. An elegiac tone creeps in here and there: the children are growing up. There is a hint that this could be the last of these time-honored holidays. Ernie may build the last of the Stevens sand castles; Dick may go off with some friends next year. Mrs Stevens notes with a pang that the boardinghouse is looking shabby; the ingratiating landlady has aged, looks ill and anxious. And Mrs Stevens, a shy, rather simple woman (whose husband occasionally notices her dropped h's with mild irritation) actually doesn't even like the sea. Her favorite part of every day is her quiet hour in the evening, alone while the others are out and about, with her needlework and a glass of port (for her health), the bottle carefully measured out to last the whole fortnight. Some readers criticize Sherriff's depiction of her as rather empty and inattentive, but I wonder if that was his point: that's the role women had, or at least that was her role in that family in that time - overlooked, unattended, unimportant to the people she devoted her life to. She's the one, after all, who notices the strain the landlady is under as her customers are trickling away: older, alone, and struggling.
That's pretty much it. One family, one seaside holiday, one little stream of beloved activities to be cherished, looked forward to, enjoyed, clung to and - ultimately - to be lost. It doesn't seem like much, but beautifully observed, generously respected, it should stir some memories of beloved family traditions in many readers. ( )
A wonderful sweet tale of a simpler time. Some of Mr Sherriff's descriptions of feelings about a holiday were so right on I was whisked back in time to my childhood. Though even as an adult the anticipation and the relief after making a connection are just as he sets out. It really brought to life a wonderful fortnight at the seaside. I basked in it. I'm now on a quest to find his other books. I'm very curious after reading the afterward to this volume. This audiobook was read by a woman (including the author's note at the end), so I was quite surprised to find R.C. Sherriff was a man. ( )
Set in the 1930s, this simple story of the seaside holiday of a suburban English family captures a lost time so vividly, while still seeming to tell us some much that is true about human nature then, now, and always. ( )
On rainy days, when the clouds drove across on a westerly wind, the signs of fine weather came from over the Railway Embankment at the bottom of the garden.
Quotations
Mr Stevens and his children loved the sea in all its moods: they loved it when it lay quietly at its ebb, murmuring in its sleep -- and when it awoke, and came rippling over the sands: at its full on a peaceful evening, lazily slapping at the shingle. But best of all they loved it as it was today -- roaring wildly round the groins, booming and sighing in the cavernous places beneath the pier, crashing against the sea wall and showering them with spray. Every one of its thousand calls had a different note -- every sound was wild with freedom. Wave after wave lashed the concrete wall, to sink back with a moan of pain as though clutched and drawn down by a great sea monster. The countless little pebbles lay motionless, petrified as each wave came crashing on them -- then they would leap to life and go madly chasing it with a sound like the far distant cheering of a mighty crowd.
The man on his holidays becomes the man he might have been, the man he could have been, had things worked out a little differently. All men are equal on their holidays: all are free to dream their castles without thought of expense, or skill of architect. Dreams based upon such delicate fabric must be nursed with reverence and held away from the crude light of tomorrow week.
But they saw in front of them a woman neither fat nor thin: a faded woman with yellow hair, bright red lips and rosy cheek bones. She looked as if she had been boiled in too much water, then artificially flavoured.
His account books and ink-wells lay behind him - he had done up his pens in an elastic band and slammed them into his desk.
Mr Stevens relaxed every muscle, and was scarcely conscious of his body beyond the healthy ache of his legs. Almost always, at home, there was some trivial pain, in the forehead or eyes - a sore tendon in the throat - a touch of tightness across the chest or a twinge of rheumatism somewhere: nothing, of course, to worry about, but just enough to remind him that he possessed a body which demanded a little thought and care.
The garden was at its best in the twilight. The harsh outlines of surrounding things were softened and more subdued. In this light the Railway Embankment beyond the lower fence might almost be the green border of a canal and the telegraph poles the slim poplars that would line its grassy towing-path.
The man on his holidays becomes the man he might have been, the man he could have been, had things worked out a little differently.
But soon the open country began to surge in more strongly—and once, for a little while, Dick could see as far as the horizon in unbroken waves of grass. He sat with his chin in his hand, never moving his eyes to take in details. He liked the flowing country to form the background of his thoughts.
As Dick ate his sandwich he thought how strange it was that no one, in all the life of the world, would ever know the feeling of an empty, curtained house, for the very entry of a human foot dispersed it.
Bognor lay slumbering from its long, hectic day in Saturday's sun: not a window on the whole front so much as blinked a curtained eye as the fishermen passed with the soft clump of their gum boots. The pier stood black and gaunt behind them, like the skeleton of a gigantic monster with its front legs planted in the sea. The stars were fading, and far away down the coast—half from the sea and half from the sloping arm of the downs, came a very delicate amber glow, smudged with tiny streaks of cloud.
Supposed site of Roman camp, read Mr. Steven's map, and he could place the spot exactly by the crossing of two paths. He could follow the faint ridge of it in the grass, and he thought of the same soft outlines that remained of Ernie's sandcastles, after the sea had covered them and gone. Just a difference between moments and years.
He passed a weather-beaten little tree—bent into the shape of a man blown along with his umbrella in front of him, inside out
"So hot," she murmured with a heavy sigh—"the sun seems to get everywhere, doesn't it?" "It does," agreed Mr. Stevens, his eyes wandering out to the shadeless garden. He could see some small, scraggy trees, with labels round their thin, parched necks. They looked as if they had been set five minutes ago, and were crying down the road in panic to the man who put them in—begging him to return and take them away with him.
She had thought of life as something that just began, before you knew, and went quietly on, until you died: she had never known that it could end—and begin again so wonderfully.
Last words
From the distance Mrs. Huggett's white lace cuff looked like a handkerchief being waved. They could not see her bad eye any longer, and she looked quite tall and dignified standing there by the gate in her black silk dress.
Meet the Stevens family, as they prepare to embark on their yearly holiday to the coast of England. Mr. and Mrs. Stevens first made the trip to Bognor Regis on their honeymoon, and the tradition has continued ever since. They stay in the same guest house and follow the same carefully honed schedule--now accompanied by their three children, twenty-year-old Mary, seventeen-year-old Dick, and little brother Ernie. Arriving in Bognor they head to Seaview, the guesthouse where they stay every year. It's a bit shabbier than it once was--the landlord has died and his wife is struggling as the number of guests dwindles every year. But the family finds bliss in booking a slightly bigger cabana, with a balcony, and in their rediscovery of the familiar places they visit every year. Mr. Stevens goes on his annual walk across the downs, reflecting on his life, his worries and disappointments, and returns refreshed. Mrs. Stevens treasures an hour spent sitting alone with her medicinal glass of port. Mary has her first small taste of romance. And Dick pulls himself out of the malaise he's sunk into since graduation, resolving to work towards a new career. The Stevenses savor every moment of their holiday, aware that things may not be the same next year.
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"Mr Stevens was a clerk. He lived in Dulwich, in a house with a garden cut short by the railway line. With him lived his wife, his grown-up daughter Mary, his nearly grown-up son Dick, and his schoolboy son Ernie. They kept a cat and a canary. Every September the family went for a fortnight's holiday to Bognor. They stayed always in the same lodgings. Mr Sherriff takes us there with them, lets us stay the fortnight, and see them off at the end of it. Here is a subject which could have been treated satirically, cleverly, patronisingly, sentimentally. But Mr Sherriff comes to it fresh, and makes it universal. There is more simple human goodness and understanding in this book than in anything I have read for years: it is so beautiful, and the sympathy with which each character is seen is so perfect, that even its pettiest details bring a lump into one's throat. Many will welcome this book, which expresses the genius of a people". - The Spectator 1931
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