The Enchanted April

I can see why this book sent many in 1922 rushing to vacation on the Italian coast. If I were a) richer, b) more inclined to travel, and c) not living in very uncertain travel times, I would be booking a trip myself. I am one of not many people who love winter as much as summer, and today have enjoyed looking out the windows at my snow-covered yard and neighborhood. But every night since starting this book I have gone to sleep dreaming of sunshine and sea air and an overabundance of flowers.

The four women who take this trip together - all initially unknown to one another - could really not be more different. As a person who would never vacation with strangers on purpose, I could not begin to imagine how this April would become the least show more bit enchanted. And yet it did, in very sweet ways though with plenty of bitterness to keep one's teeth from aching from the sugar. Oh, and humor, the kind of humor that is actually funny. Another author I have been shielded from all my life by all the pseudo-thrillers and cartoon-cover romances that fill up the bestseller lists in 2022. Loved it. show less

Well, it's official. I have found my least favorite read of 2024.

This started out promisingly. It seemed to be shaping up to be a story about four women, from very different classes and backgrounds, who rent a villa in Italy together in order to have an actual honest to goodness vacation for once in their miserable lives.

I was delighted by this premise. I was delighted at the decent Goodreads ratings and all of the glowing reviews. I was delighted at the thought of the fulfillment and joy I would feel while witnessing these women, who otherwise wouldn't cross paths because of their class differences, become friends. And I was really looking forward to seeing what would happen when two of the women get to have a nice, temporary break show more from their odious husbands, and breathe the sweet, fresh air of freedom for a month in the villa. Everything about the beginning of the book was leading me to believe that this would be my reading experience.

That is NOT what happened.

Spoilers ahead: For starters, for nearly half of the book, Lady Caroline and Mrs. Fisher are awful to the other women. Truly insufferable. Which I would have been fine with, given the thought of them bonding by the end of the book. But what ultimately brings this group of ladies together isn't their relationships with one another as they bond gradually over time. No, what REALLY brings them together is THE MEN in their lives! Two of the women's husbands show up, both invited to Italy by their wives. And the one wife cannot even wait a whole DAY without needing to write to her husband to invite him to come to the villa post haste. Girl, you just escaped for some R&R with these women! Enjoy your freedom from your misery before you have to go back to England and continue to be married to him.

And don't get me wrong, I DID assume that everyone would still be married by the end of the book. After all, this was written in 1922. I just thought they would gain some independence and a stronger sense of identity. Then they might derive strength and support from their friendships with the other women, before returning to their husbands, better equipped to face the misery of their marital woes. I didn't think the husbands would be literally interrupting their girl time, though!

Now, you may be thinking, oh man, this book about four women's unlikely relationships got hijacked by the men in their lives? That's kind of a bummer. But it's not THAT bad.

Well, let me tell you, it gets worse.....

Because we find out that one of the husbands has been attempting to have an affair with Lady Caroline, not realizing that she is staying at the villa with his wife! So he goes to the villa to find Caroline and pursue her. NOT TO SEE HIS ACTUAL WIFE WHO INVITED HIM, JUST TO VISIT CAROLINE and convince her to carry on an affair with him, because she's super hot and he just can't help himself. When he realizes that his wife is there, their marriage problems magically disappear and he decides he wants to be married to his wife after all, or whatever, I guess. He is super nervous that Caroline will out him for his horrendous unfaithful behavior. Not because he’s feeling guilty for his behavior, noooo. Just worried that CAROLINE might decide to open her mouth and screw this new marital bliss up for him. When Caroline realizes what's going on, she decides to pretend that everything is fine and NOT tell his wife! He is so grateful to Caroline for being soooooo cool about things, and at one point he says something along the lines of her having "the loyalty of a man," like that's some sort of compliment. Just congratulating her on how cool she was being about this whole thing, while he DECEIVED HIS WIFE ABOUT WHY HE WAS EVEN AT THE VILLA IN THE FIRST PLACE.

This final event locked my hatred firmly in place, and solidified the 1 star rating, as well as the honor of worst read of 2024. The year isn’t even over yet, but this book is so awful that I am 100 percent certain that there isn’t a book that could possibly best its ability to be the worst. show less

A Case of Stendhal’s Syndrome?

Set in the 1920s , The Enchanted April is a story of four English women’s vacation in a castle on the Italian Riviera and the effect the beauty of the castle, the vistas, and more especially its gardens have on them.

One of the women, a Mrs Wilkins is clearly overwhelmed by the beauty of the place and has a spiritual transformation, similar to that of George Harrison when he “found himself” in India in the mid sixties.

So sure is Ms Wilkins that all you need is love, that she telegrams her husband who she previously feared and felt was cold, asking him to join her. Surely he too would feel the love. Mrs Wilkins’ bliss is contagious, so much so that she persuades her friend Mrs Arbuthnot to do the show more same.

The other members of the group, Lady Caroline Dester and Mrs Fisher who are both “spinsters”, appear less affected, though Lady Caroline becomes more self-aware. She is more able to come to terms with her own beauty, which has so far been a hindrance in her young life. Mrs Fisher, who is considered ancient at 65 and who is still stuck in the Victorian era remains somewhat immune, though she occasionally has feelings she can’t quite work out.

As for the two husbands, von Arnim has little time for the men. Mr Wilkins becomes warmer toward his wife as his feelings for the female sex are rekindled by the beauty of Lady Caroline if not the garden. And Mr Arbuthnott sees that Mrs Arbuthnott has a sex appeal that he has been unaware of for many a year.

Which leave the main character in the book, the garden. As an avid gardner myself, I delighted in the long paragraphs describing in exquisite detail, the different flowers and shrubs, and their placement around the castle, and in some cases around the individual women when they act as shields allowing the individual women to revel in their solitudes.

The writing is crisp and humorous. The class distinctions separate Mrs Fisher and Lady Caroline Dester from the Mrs Wilkins and Mrs Arbuthnot, the former clearly seeing the other women as “below them”. But what the women have in common is that they are not men.

The men in the novel appear as necessary appendages. Accessories. Accessories that are generally found wanting.

I came saw from the book intrigued by the author. I wanted to find out more, and did.

I’m glad that I discovered von Arnim. I thoroughly enjoyed The Enchanted April and rated it a deserving 4. show less

This novel, first published in 1922, is not one of the usual classics people laud as a must-read, but I found myself appreciating it from the first chapter. The writing is high quality, with many lovely passages. The characters have depth to them, and their interior lives are explored at length through the use of the omniscient point of view. And the plots itself allows for so much reflection on the reader's part.

As a modern woman, I felt the characters' plights more acutely, I think, than many readers of the time would have. Imagine, as a grown woman, being given only a one-hundred-pound annual allowance for everything you might want to buy yourself. Imagine being trapped in a marriage where you've grown apart from your husband to such show more an extent that he doesn't care about you disappearing for an entire month with only a note explaining that you've gone off to an unspecified location, but you can't even imagine getting a divorce. Imagine being a beautiful young member of the aristocracy who's constantly treated as nothing but a prize to be sought and discouraged from ever thinking. I would certainly want a vacation from the men in my life. I would want to get away from them and flex my independence for as long as possible!

I loved seeing four women band together in spite of every force that would rather have prevented it. I found myself eagerly reading as I hoped for each one to find personal growth and deepening friendships. I could have read an entire novel of four women starting as strangers and becoming friends through a series of events that bring them closer together and farther apart in a way that mimics the highs and lows of a traditional romance plotline.

Unfortunately for me, and I hope this doesn't count as a spoiler because of, you know, the genre, this book does eventually take a turn into actual traditional romance plotlines. I didn't mind it as much as I normally might have, given the aforementioned circumstances of divorces in the 1920's probably not providing the happiest of endings (if it was even possible for these characters given the laws in England at that time?). Still, if you, like me, would have preferred the women to find independence (or at least remain unmarried if they currently are), you'll probably find some degree of disappointment. If anything, I think this may be the biggest factor holding the book back from becoming that well-celebrated classic because the people who determine these things seem to me like they'd prefer a tragic ending with a deeply feminist message.

But the book certainly is feminist for its time, and, in my opinion, there's something to be said for daring to allow its female characters to be the engineers of their own happiness. And those who do like romance may find it entirely charming. All in all, I think this is an underrated classic, and I would recommend it to anyone looking for one with excellent female characters. The few that are around deserve to be celebrated. show less

** spoiler alert ** It started out so well. And ended with my throwing the book across the bed, telling the cats and the dog: “I have had enough, I’m done here.” Four unacquainted women: three young, one older; two married (and not happy), one single and sick of the whole pairing-up game, and one widow. They are sharing a splendiferous Italian castle clotted with flowers at an impossibly gorgeous and gentle seaside, in order to escape, ponder, relax, wander, and maybe just have four weeks of happiness on holiday. They don’t particularly get along or understand one another; there are irritations and resentments. As the days unroll, we are privy to their contemplations, sadness, wonderings, memories, and thoughts of what they show more should or might do next. So far, so good - sometimes lovely, touching, sympathetic. They begin to unbend to each other a little, a friendship and even affection begins to blossom. And then one of them invites her husband to join them.

Uh-oh. And then the other married one does the same. It all turns silly and coy and gooey and all the subtlety and emotional insight goes out the window. One of the husbands is actively pursuing the impossibly lovely single woman (and she really is annoying and not credible), and she smoothly covers up for him. He remains infatuated, begging to kiss her shoes. And then he gushes that he can only love her more because she has “the loyalty of a man.” At which point I was finito.

After 60 pages, I was ready to look up other novels by von Arnim. Another 60 pages, and I scratched that idea. Her philosophy clearly is that a woman can only reach her fullest self through her relationship with a man, even when he is a skeevy, sneaky, conniving skunk. Even the cranky elder widow breaks out into kindness, tolerance, and a certain maternal charm when visited by the handsome, wealthy, boyish owner of the castle…who has, by the way, instantly jettisoned his appreciation for the gentle, retiring, unhappily-married woman the moment he lays eyes on the pretty one.

Just no. Ick. show less

Someone keep me off the internet or I'll be booking tickets to Italy to find San Salvatore before the evening's out...

What a funny, clever observation of life this little classic is. Published in 1922, this novel could as easily have been written yesterday. Social graces may change over the years, but the intricacies of human interaction stay the same.

Lotty Wilkins finds herself reading an ad for a castle to rent in Italy one day at her London lunch club, and not having done anything spur of the moment or exciting for years decides on a whim to invite a relative stranger sitting nearby - who she's only seen before at church - to join her in renting the castle for the month of April. Somehow she manages to persuade the quiet, good show more living Rose Arbuthnot to join her on her mad adventure, and to lessen the damage to her rainy day nest egg they place an ad for two other women to join them to share the rent.

Thus begins the madcap tale of their month in an Italian castle with a wealthy, churlish widow and a beautiful young socialite who is tired of the world falling at her feet.

Funny yet tender, von Arnim so accurately depicts how differently people can feel on the inside to how they appear on the outside, how we can fear those who threaten our own perceptions of ourselves, and how different people can bring out totally polar sides of our characters, making us bloom or cutting the wind out of our sails.

The depictions of the two marriages in the story were particularly cleverly observed - for different reasons, both parties in the two marriages were feeling cut off and unloved, yet it only took for one person in the marriage to reach their hand across the chasm and the other happily reached out to grab hold. I thought that was so smartly executed - actions that come so naturally in the good times can seem such big steps to take when the going gets tough, and yet sometimes it only takes a little change to make everything fall into place again.

4 stars - a smart and humorous classic that's still very relevant today. show less

Enchanting Transformation

The enchantment of the title is apt, as there is an almost magical feel about the power of a beautiful landscape.

This is a carefully observed story of characters and transformation – including, perhaps, the reader. It constantly juxtaposes light with underlying sadness and hope. It’s about finding the courage to shake off undeserved guilt, rattle convention, and be true to yourself – and thus to others in your life. “Now she had taken off all her goodness and left it behind her like a heap in rain-sodden clothes, and she only felt joy. She was naked of goodness, and was rejoicing in being naked.”

Everyone has some unspoken gap or sadness in their lives, despite outward ordinariness or even success. But show more inertia, fear, societal pressure keep them in their place. This is the story of what happens when each character takes a small, uncharacteristic step away from the quotidian, leading to more significant steps. Everyone is changed, some more quickly and dramatically than others.

It sounds sentimental, and at times feels a little so (especially near the end), and yet it is delightful and waspishly Wildean. It's also a little unbelievable - but if the enchantment works for you, you'll forgive that.

Plot

This section is not a spoiler, and says little more than the blurb on the book itself. The real plot is the character development.

Mrs Wilkins is “running her listless eye down the Agony Column” when she spots an advert to rent an Italian castle for a month. It’s way beyond her means, but the mention of its wisteria is a draw, especially when she “stared out at the dripping street”. Wisteria has many mentions in the book, along with other flowers, but really, it’s the people who are flowering: in a new environment, they are liberated in ways that did not seem possible back in England in 1922.

Mrs Wilkins asks Mrs Arbuthnot, who she knows by sight from church, to come with her. They then advertise for two other women to join them and share the cost.

As soon as they arrive in Italy, despite a bad journey, “the whole inflamed sore dreariness, had faded to the dimness of a dream”. The weather was not initially welcoming, “But it was Italy. Nothing it did could be bad. The very rain was different— straight rain, falling properly on to one's umbrella; not that violently blowing English stuff that got in everywhere”.

The four women differ in age, outlook, social position, relationship status and more. Inevitably, men are added to the picture.

Humour comes from attempts to nab the best room, the etiquette of who is hostess (the one who initiated it, the most senior by age or rank; it certainly confuses the Italian staff), a dodgy boiler, and later, somewhat farcical aspects of mistaken assumptions and who is partnered with who.

It was only when I was half way through, I realised how apposite the timing was. It’s about four strangers who rent an Italian castle in April. I read it in August, finishing the day before I headed to France and Italy, for a trip that included staying in a villa with a group that included friends and strangers. I wasn’t as transformed as the characters here, but I think I unfurled a little.

Cast

This is the heart of the book.

Lotty Wilkins

She is a quiet, introverted woman in her mid 30s who seems older and more humble than she is. She thinks of herself as poor and still has a clothing allowance from her father – yet she’s married to a solicitor, lives in Hampstead and has a club.

“She was the kind of person who is not noticed at parties. Her clothes, infested by thrift, made her practically invisible.”

But she is also impulsive: she takes the initiative with the castle and she has a tendency to say what she thinks – not in a rude way, but it can seem a little improper or presumptive to others, particularly when saying what and why she thinks they are feeling.

She justifies the extravagance of the holiday in the expectation that she will return a nicer person. Her first night alone in five years feels strange, but there is joy and power in “her room bought with her own savings, the fruit of her careful denials, whose door she could bolt if she wanted to, and nobody had the right to come in”.

She is almost instantly transformed by the heavenly setting, relaxing and gaining confidence. In Rose’s eyes, Lotty was “impetuously becoming a saint. Could one really attain goodness so violently?” In the spirit of bliss, she invites her husband to join her – without consulting the others. He notices there is “not a shred of fear of him left in her” and there is a virtuous circle of her happiness and his warm response.

Mellersh Wilkins

Lotty’s husband is thrifty with everything, except for food – even words, thus “producing the impression of keeping copies of everything he said”. He’s an ambitious networker, and unlike his wife, he “gave a party, merely by coming to it, a great air.”

At home, he’s colder. Wanting to escape “the persistent vileness of the weather”, he proposes a holiday, and “as it would cause comment if he did not take his wife, take her he must—besides, she would be useful… for holding things, for waiting with the luggage”! (That holiday didn’t happen.)

At the castle, as more people arrive and there are shades of bedroom farce, he relishes – and cultivates - the possibility of legal advice arising from the apparently complex web of relationships. He is grudgingly grateful to Lotty for this opportunity - not that he says so to her. Lady Caroline warms to him, because he’s not predatory like other men; in fact he’s just as predatory, but not in a sexual sense.

Rose Arbuthnot

Her life is governed by “God, Husband, Home, Duty”. “The very way Mrs Arbuthnot parted her hair suggested a great calm that could only proceed from wisdom.” She’s a pillar of the church, leading good works and giving to the poor, in part to appease her guilt at her husband’s new – and profitable – career of writing salacious fictitious memoirs of kings’ mistresses and their ilk: “Her very nest egg was the fruit, posthumously ripened, of ancient sin”. She feels guilty about the extravagance of her holiday, despite her husband’s generosity.

She’s 33 and has been married for 13 years, and mourns “This separate life, this freezing loneliness”. Their only baby died. When she goes to Italy, she doesn’t tell her husband beforehand, but merely leaves him a note that doesn’t even say where she’s gone. She avoids talking about him and is happy for Mrs Fisher to assume her a widow.

Rose’s transformation is slower and more painful than Lotty’s. Previously, “Her scheduled life in the parish had prevented memories and desires from intruding on her.” She now has time to think, but finds it hard to pray. “San Salvatore had taken her carefully built-up semblance of happiness away from her, and given her nothing in exchange.” She’s more aware of her love for her husband and the loss of their baby. “How passionately she longed to be important to somebody again… privately important, just to one other person.”

Nevertheless, seeing Lotty’s happiness, she eventually invites Frederick, despite her perpetual fear she’ll bore him. He arrives oddly quickly.

Frederick Arbuthnot

Rose’s writer husband is rarely at home, but “he never went out of the house without her blessing going with him too, hovering, like a little echo of finished love.” He’s hurt by her disapproval of his writing, her reluctance to spend his money, and the way she has drifted away from him. He’s 40 and moves in social circles as the author of titillating potboilers. His life bristles with complications, but he’s quick-witted and laid back.

Lady Caroline Dester, aka Scrap

She’s a beautiful, rich, “extravagantly slender”, young flapper, tired of the social whirl. She sees herself as “a spoilt, a sour, a suspicious, and a selfish spinster”, though no one else does.

She is “wholly taken up by one great longing, a longing to get away from everybody she had ever known”, including those she’s sharing the castle with. Her success is limited in part by an odd inability to seem nasty or cross. For example, “what felt to her an indignant stare appeared to Mrs. Fisher as really charming docility”.

She has “the deep and melancholy fatigue, of the too much” which turns out to mean being constantly “grabbed” by men, “it was just as if she didn't belong to herself, wasn't her own at all, but was regarded as a universal thing, a sort of beauty-of-all-work”. The only man she loved and would have married had died in the war. “She was afraid of nothing in life except love” and “Nothing bored her so much as people who insisted on being original”.

Mrs Fisher

A rather stuffy, proper widow of 65. Some of her lines are reminiscent of Lady Bracknell. She’s living on memories not of her husband, but the great literary figures she knew as a child, always name-dropping, even in her own thoughts: Ruskin, Tennyson, Browning, Carlyle, Matthew Arnold, as well as the President of the Royal Academy, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Governor of the Bank of England. She’s well off, but rather parsimonious. Her house was inherited and “Death had furnished it for her”. Her husband had “behaved very much like maccaroni. He had slipped, he had wriggled, he had made her feel undignified”, though we’re spared details.

Eventually, inevitably, Mrs Fisher has “a ridiculous feeling as if she were presently going to burgeon. Sternly she tried to frown the unseemly sensation down. Burgeon, indeed. She had heard of dried staffs, pieces of mere dead wood, suddenly putting forth fresh leaves, but only in legend. She was not in legend… Dignity demanded that she should have nothing to do with fresh leaves at her age; and yet there it was—the feeling that presently, that at any moment now, she might crop out all green.”

Thomas Briggs

He’s the owner, in his early 30s. He’s keen to settle down and have a family. He’s the human manifestation of the transformative power of the castle itself.

Lotty and Rose met him in London prior to renting the house. He assumed them to be widows and took a fancy to Rose, so he decides to visit. “The more Mr Briggs thought Rose charming the more charming she became.” He, an orphan, affects childless Mrs Fisher, too, “blossoming out into real amiability the moment some one came along who was charming to her”. Then he sees Lady Caroline… And of course she assumes he’s just another grabber.

Ferdinand Arundel

A writer who fancies Lady Caroline, and tracks her down in the castle, via her mother.

He’s actually Frederick Arbuthnot in Hampstead and Ferdinand Arundel in town, rather like Jack/Earnest in The Importance of Being Earnest (see my review HERE).

Quotes

• A “prolonged quarrel… conducted with dignified silence on one side and earnest apology on the other.”

• “To be missed, to be needed… was… better than the complete loneliness of not being missed or needed at all.”

• “Incredible as it may seem, seeing how they get into everything, Mrs. Wilkins had never come across any members of the aristocracy.”

• “All the radiance of April in Italy lay gathered together at her feet. The sun poured in on her. The sea lay asleep in it, hardly stirring. Across the bay the lovely mountains, exquisitely different in colour, were asleep too in the light; and underneath her window, at the bottom of the flower-starred grass slope from which the wall of the castle rose up, was a great cypress, cutting through the delicate blues and violets and rose-colours of the mountains and the sea like a great black sword.”

• “Up to now she had had to take what beauty she could as she went along, snatching at little bits of it when she came across it… She had never been in definitely, completely beautiful places.”

• “This was the simple happiness of complete harmony with her surroundings, the happiness that asks for nothing, that just accepts, just breathes, just is.”

• “She was having a violent reaction against beautiful clothes and the slavery they impose on one… gave one no peace till they had been everywhere and been seen by everybody. You didn't take your clothes to parties; they took you.”

• “Colour seemed flung down anyhow, anywhere; every sort of colour, piled up in heaps, pouring along in rivers… They stood looking at this crowd of loveliness, this happy jumble, in silence.”

• “How and where husbands slept should be known only to their wives. Sometimes it was not known to them, and then the marriage had less happy moments; but these moments were not talked about either.” Shades of Lady Bracknell.

• Her face “became elaborately uninterested”.

• “There were many things she disliked more than anything else.”

• “It is true she liked him most when he wasn't there, but then she usually liked everybody most when they weren't there.”

• “Inheritance was more respectable than acquisition. It did indicate fathers; and in an age where most people appeared neither to have them nor to want them she liked this too.”

• “He certainly looked exactly like a husband, not at all like one of those people who go about abroad pretending they are husbands.”

• “The marvelous night stole in through all one's chinks, and brought in with it… enormous feelings—feelings one couldn't manage.”

More Adult Story

For a sexed up version of something slightly similar, see DH Lawrence's short story, Sun, which I reviewed HERE.

The Film

The 1991 film is very good, really capturing the atmosphere of the book, though I'm glad I read the book first: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101811/?ref_=fn_al_tt_5

The excellent cast includes Miranda Richardson (Rose), Josie Lawrence (Lotty), Joan Plowright (Mrs Fisher), Jim Broadbent (Frederick Arbuthnot), Alfred Molina (Mellersh Wilkins), and Michael Kitchen (Mr Briggs).

WARNING ABOUT THIS EDITION OF THE BOOK (Watchmaker Publishing)

I don’t know if this was transcribed from audio, or badly scanned, or even if it’s been this way for nearly a century, but my copy has a lot of odd typos. (American spelling was also a surprise.)

• “I wonder got which is best."

• “they each hand over a reasonable sun every week”

• “When Lady Caroline wants is one dose”

• “a hurried scribble, showing how much bored he was at doing it”

• “"You se," Mrs. Wilkins said”

• “they each out to have somebody happy inside them”

• “if any one was shaken of it was she herself”

• “He had not hear her.”

There are also some unpaired quotation marks, some serif and some not.

Image source: http://been-seen.com/archive/2032.jpg show less