Loving

I had a hard time settling into this novel about the lives of the English servants at an Irish estate during World War II.

The story takes place in a threatening atmosphere: the servants are English, worried about the safety of their families being bombed in the Blitz, about whether they'd be drafted if they tried to go back home, and also about the possibility of Ireland being invaded by the Germans. Closer to home, they worry about the hidden threat of the IRA, rumored to be as close as the local deliverymen, the insurance agent who comes to investigate a claim, and even one of the property caretakers who speaks with an Irish accent so thick (or is he speaking Irish?) that only one of the English girls can understand him. They are inconvenienced and appalled by the actions of their employers, but their own behavior is pretty capricious– mischievous, playful, wilfully deceptive, selfish. There's a lot of comedy in this book. A Midsummer Night's Dream came to my mind–there's no actual enchantment, but the players are wandering around an old, empty estate that has an air of suspended animation about it.

At first I struggled to keep track of who was who, because a couple of the servants were called by the names of their predecessors, presumably because it was too hard for the employing family to remember new names. One of these servants was about to become the new butler, where he would be called by his real name, provoking discussion among the other servants and confusing me as to why Charley was being called Arthur but would henceforth be called Mr. Raunce. Also, there are two Mrs. Tennants in the employing family, the matriarch and her daughter in law. There is action in fits and starts, but it is represented more by dialogue than by description.

Once I settled in, I enjoyed reading this, but the ending came as a shock and caused me to question whether I had really understood what I was reading. I'm still wondering about that. A challenging read.