Ordinary Families

This was one of those books that it was difficult to read entirely to myself. There were passages so delightful that I wanted to read them out loud. The book is full of marvelously comic set pieces. Uproarious sailing adventures along the east coast of England and encounters with eccentric neighbors alternate with beautifully lyrical descriptions of nature and reflective observations about the lives and characters of the people who surround the novel's remarkable narrator, Lalage ("Lallie") Rush. I fell completely in love with this observant, passionate, humorous young woman who wants to be honest and kind in a boisterous family and a social world that demands small daily acts of dishonesty and unkindness. Her family is loving and show more high-spirited, but Lallie realizes that, in order to live together, even good people make compromises with their true selves. Lallie, for example, hides her love of birds and bird-watching from her family because she knows they will make a joke out of it and spoil the joy it brings her. Her family isn't cruel or horrible at all, they just like to tease each other. Like all close families, they have ways of interacting with each other, and certain expectations of each other, that often prevent the more sensitive members of the family—like Lallie—from being true to themselves. The novel is about how difficult it is to know and get close to another person, and how our need for other people often makes us compromise with ourselves. It sounds like a ponderous theme, but it's handled deftly and lightly. I read the book slowly, savoring both the humor and the lyricism. I have to admit that the very end of the novel was a bit of a disappointment, but only because I had fallen so in love with Lallie that it was hard to leave her as I had to do.

Remarkably, for a novel published in 1933, Lallie talks about having her period, and the physical and emotional effects it has on her—this, perhaps, for the first time in popular English literature (E. Arnot Robertson was a bestselling novelist in the 1930s). The novel is unflinchingly honest and observant, and wonderfully funny. I would place Lallie Rush with Cassandra Mortmain (the narrator of Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle) at the top of my list of favorite young female narrators. show less

Ordinary Families is the story of an English family living in the small village of Pin Mill. Lallie is one of four children to a former adventurer, and they spend their days boating and hunting in Suffolk.

This is one of those classic coming of age stories in which one girl struggles to figure out her place in a large family, overshadowed as she is by her beautiful older sister. I liked Robertson’s descriptions of the family, especially Lallie and her father, but I also thought her descriptions of the family’s boating excursions were a bit, er, overboard at times. Robertson is good at character development and exploring the relationships between the various family members. It’s also very frank, for the 1930s, about various aspects show more of growing up. Because the plot moves along at a very slow pace, it’s very hard to follow at times. show less

A curious if flawed example of the 1930s coming-of age story. It shows some influence from the avant-garde in its preoccupation with time and memory and in its episodic, life-like story line. It is also rather more frank than other novels of its kind, particularly when dealing with family allegiances and sibling rivarly as well as the exploration of a young woman's awakening to sexuality as well as romance. The ornithological descriptions are also very fine(the sailing parts, though, are rather boring), but it is finally marred by a lack of focus and purpose which the excellent first person narration cannot pull through.