Saplings

First published in 1945 and although the main characters of this novel are all children this is an adult novel rather than a children’s novel and quite different to the children’s stories by Streatfield that I’ve read (Ballet Shoes and White Boots).

The novel follows the four children of the Wiltshire family, a comfortably middle-class family, from the eve of WWII breaking out through to 1944. At first the four children (Laurel, Tony, Kim and Tuesday) are shown to be reasonably content and secure in their parents’ affections on a family holiday to the sea-side. But gradually we become aware through the conversations of the adults that change is coming; the family will be moving out of London to stay with their grandparents in show more the countryside as bombing is anticipated in London and the eldest children will be sent to boarding school as the grandparents can’t really manage all four children plus the additional evacuees they’ve been asked to take on. And as the war progresses there are further disruptions and tragedies for the children (and adults) to cope with.

Streatfeild certainly had a gift for writing from a child’s perspective and especially in describing how a child’s inner thoughts and feelings can be overlooked or misunderstood by even well-meaning and loving adults. She also had a gift for appreciating the psychological impact of the disruption and disturbance of war on otherwise comfortably off children in a way I wouldn’t have thought was so well understood at the time this novel was written. In that sense this is not a happy novel - none of the children are unaffected by what they’ve experienced - but it doesn’t end entirely without hope for them to process these experiences and recover from them. The book almost seems to be written as a plea for other grown-ups to acknowledge the psychological effects of the war on British children - yes, they won't have faced food shortages or the effects of war in the same way children in occupied Europe will have, but the effects of what they have suffered are still very real and need to be ackowledged.

Strongly recommended and definitely deserving of being republished. show less

In this sensitively written novel, Noel Streatfeild ostensibly explores the impact of World War II on an upper-middle-class London family. Really, though, it’s a consideration of the experience of four children who must cope after their beloved, steady father, Alex, is killed by a bomb during the Blitz. The Wiltshire kids are left in the care—if you can call it that—of their pretty and narcissistic mother, Lena, who turns to alcohol and attempts to fill her emotional and sexual void with an American soldier. Not surprisingly, there’s considerable fallout. Lena is oblivious of her children’s needs and struggles; she’s too preoccupied with her own. Alex’s parents and four sisters step in to fill the gaps. The latter divide show more up care for the children over their summer holidays from boarding school when Lena spirals out of control and later when she marries an unlikeable, domineering man.

A longer novel, Saplings, with its well-drawn child characters and insightful treatment of wartime upheaval and parental loss, held my interest throughout. However, the final quarter of the novel loses focus as the family breaks apart, and the book’s conclusion struck me as abrupt. Interestingly, aside from the children’s former governess, Ruth Glover, and their nanny, the men are far more sympathetically drawn and more attuned to the children’s needs than the women. Alex’s sister, Lyndsey, a novelist, is a particularly unpleasant creation. In the end, although it’s an imperfectly realized novel, it is mostly an interesting and absorbing one. show less

Siblings Laurel, Tony, Kim, and Tuesday have a comfortable upper-middle-class life with their doting father Alex and flighty mother Lena. Little do they know that war is coming, and it will shatter their family life in so many ways.

Going into this book, I knew it would be of a darker bent than Streatfeild's well-known children's books. I did have a little trouble getting into it at the beginning because the children's conversation was 100% pre-war British slang, but then I got to the meat of the story. For a while, it reminded me strongly of Elizabeth Jane Howard's Cazalet Chronicles, which I read a couple of years ago and fully enjoyed. In this book, I liked the parts about the children's lives (I could have done without Lena). show more However, I felt that the ending of the book was very abrupt, and left so many strings dangling. My digital copy of the book was illustrated with a few photographs interspersed at odd moments, and I didn't feel that they added anything to the story. show less

While the adult characters come across as a bit two-dimensional, the children are well-fleshed out. A perfect book to read after reading about Childrens Fiction in the Second World War by Owen Dudley Edwards, because this is a book that looks back at that time and tells a hard story about the effects it has on people.

The story opens with a family at the sea-side. Two boys, two girls, two parents. The mother is a little self-involved, at one stage she describes herself as more a wife than a mother. The war has just started and the parents have decided to let their paternal grandparents take them to the countryside. As the story unfolds the children are effected by the war and, later when their father dies, how more upheaval changes their show more lives. Their mother learns the least, through an affair and remarriage, but the children's lives are never the same.

I found it touching and quite true to life, these saplings are bent and twisted by things they have no control over, things that they really would prefer to be able to do something about. Without the war their lives would have been much different. In fact the blithe observation by Mrs Oliver that "Our kids 'aven't suffered 'o-ever else 'as." shows the blindness of many people to how much things can effect children.

The story deals with depression, attempted suicide, extra-marital affairs, gossip, trying to fit in and many other themes, probably more a young adult book in this day but still an interesting read. It's not a book to just hand a child who enjoyed Ballet Shoes, this is a more adult story than that. show less

This novel tells the story of the Wiltshires, a typical middle-class English family at the dawn of World War II. Most of the book deals with the concerns of the four children, Laurel, Tony, Kim, and Tuesday. In the beginning, the children are enjoying a holiday with their parents, very happy in the love and stability of their family. However, shortly after this idyllic experience, the children are forced to evacuate London and live in the countryside while their parents remain in the city. As the war progresses, the Wiltshires are constantly uprooted, and then a terrible tragedy makes life even harder for them. Ultimately, this book depicts the psychologically damaging impact of war on an ordinary, loving family.

This is the first Noel show more Streatfeild book that I’ve read, and it’s a very interesting one. Apparently she is more famous for her children’s books (Ballet Shoes and the like), and it’s clear that she has a talent for getting into a child’s mindset. The characterization of the four Wiltshire children is incredibly strong – the fears they have, the things that are important to them, and their perception of adults are all very convincing. I did get a little annoyed by the style sometimes, though: there’s almost constant head-hopping between about 20 different characters. Still, I became very invested in the story and wanted to know what would happen to the Wiltshires. In the end, the story is left somewhat unresolved, and there’s no indication that everything will turn out all right for the children. I think this book is worth reading, but it’s definitely not a feel-good novel. show less

Saplings is a smoothly written, engaging book, notable for depicting the British home front during WWII from the point of view of several children, but as the book progressed, there was a grating undercurrent of judgmental moralism. Some of the children’s behavior issues also seemed very schematic. While the author captures a number of nuances in her young characters’ behavior and reactions, the adults tended to be one dimensional. A quick and involving read but there were some annoyances.

In the opening chapters, the middle-class Wiltshire family is on a seaside holiday. The author nicely captures their happy, busy family life. It becomes clear that father Alex has planned this trip as one last good time before the war starts. He show more confides in his two eldest children, caring and intelligent Laurel and Tony, but tries to shield Kim, spoiled and self-involved, and Tuesday, the baby. Alex has to stay in London for his work but is determined to send his family to safety in the country. Lena, his wife, is rather selfish and shallow, preferring her husband to her children, so she refuses to go with her children and stays with him. The move is the start of a constant shifting, as the children move from one home to another, from school to various houses, and grow up with no stable home and family. Alex is killed and Lena falls apart, barely keeping things together. The trajectory of the family is traced as they try and sometimes fail to cope.

Lena becomes the center of the children’s home life after the death of their father but she is constantly criticized by comparisons that are made between her and almost every other adult in the book. Alex is an ideal father, almost too good to be true, and Lena resents the time he spends being a father rather than her husband. The children’s governess, Ruth, thinks of Lena’s love as more one of animalistic lust than a true love. Lena compares poorly to Alex’s loving, understanding parents, the more maternal/paternal servants, the motherly nanny and the perceptive, supportive Ruth. Laurel’s schoolmistress is more of a comfort to her than her mother after Alex dies. Even Alex’s harried, meek sister Sylvia, who makes meals that are pretty much toxic, comes off as better than Lena as she is able to effectively reach out to Tony. Lena is beautiful and fashionable but selfish, emotionally shallow, needy and unstable and jumps from relationship to relationship. She’s like a caricature of a bad mother even if she isn’t all bad. She occasionally likes to play with and comfort the children, as though they were toys or pets, and the author clearly thinks that the children are better off with her than without her. I will say that part of my annoyance might come from reading this book soon after The Rising Tide by M.J. Farrell, which also featured a beautiful and vivacious woman who prefers her husband to her children, loses him in a war, then engages in self-destructive behaviors and relationships. But Farrell makes her main character appealing as well as horribly selfish.

There is one character who almost makes Lena look good – one of Alex’s sisters, Lindsey. Lindsey is a successful and intelligent author but she is also a cold, selfish bitch. It’s notable that she is the only one of Alex’s siblings who is childless and her marriage is shown to be unhappy due to her controlling, bitchy tendencies. Lindsey is terribly one-note as a character and, along with Lena, is one of the obviously bad characters. At first it seems as though the “bad” characters are not only negative stereotypes of women, as Kim is also something of a selfish narcissist. However, school soon takes up most of his competitive, needy energy and he is less annoying in the latter half of the book. He comes out the least damaged of the Wiltshire children, suggesting those more sensitive and caring are hurt the most. Without Kim causing trouble, Lena and Lindsey are the ones responsible for further destabilizing and hurting the children even if at times they don’t mean to. The rather pat association of being “motherly” with being a good person is irritating.

The POV of the children is probably the strongest part as the author shows all the little frustrations brought on by the war and how, though they are not important, they mean everything to children who have only known comfort and love. Many of the adults try to protect the children by keeping things from them but they find out and this causes even more anxiety. The appearance of psychosomatic and behavioral problems is also realistically done at first. However, later on some of the problems seem rather too neatly set up. For example, Tony suffers a traumatic experience after Alex’s death. He has a number of symptoms but then after finally breaking down, confessing and being reassured, they all go away. Tuesday also has some issues due to the constant shuffling around but then her problems are immediately cured when all the family comes home. Of course the story is about the lives of the Wiltshire family but it almost seemed like there was too much focus on them. They have many aunts, uncles and cousins but the effect of the war on other families is only mentioned and never shown. Ruth has a service job but she is only shown being worried about her former charges. The Wiltshires make friends with some working-class children who have also been evacuated. They are later killed but this plot point is only there to show how it affects the main children and also to point out how wrong their mother, who called them back to the city because she couldn’t bear to be away from them, was. It almost made it seem like the problems of the middle-class were the most important thing about the war. show less

Noel Streatfeild was one of my favourite authors as a child, so reading an adult book of hers was a real treat. To begin with I felt as if I was reading a children's book. We begin by being introduced to the English, middle-class Wiltshire family through the eyes of the four children who are having an awfully jolly time, swimming and 'prawning' on their holiday. However, there is talk of war and it soon becomes clear the idyll is not to last.

WWii breaks out and initially the children appear to be in a relatively advantaged position. Rather than being evacuated they are sent to live with their grandparents in a lovely country house. However as the book takes us through the following war years the book the situation becomes darker. Our show more sympathies remain focussed on the children who suffer increasingly from the consequences of war and from the weaknesses or lack of understanding of the adults around them.

There were flaws to the book. The adult characters were rather two dimensional and occasionally the tone felt a little judgemental. However, I found it a very moving and enjoyable read. show less