South Riding
Ratings1
Average rating5
15
Ratings1
Average rating5
Written as she lay dying, South Riding was Holtby's masterpiece. Edited by her close friend, Vera Brittain and published posthumously in 1936. The book was an instant success. It is a melodrama set in Yorkshire and features a small area dealing with the manifold challenges of the interwar period. At the centre of the story is an unlikely romance that develops between Robert Carn and Sarah Burton. His traditional ways and her bright, progressive ideas seem an odd match but the two soon grow close. But tragedy intervenes, he is not free to love and she, for all her education, doesn't understand the ways of South Riding.
Reviews with the most likes.
This was really good. It's more a book about a place than any specific characters, but we do see characters grow and change. Some people have happy endings, others don't.
In a lot of ways this is really bleak. There's poverty or near-poverty, sickness, potential scandals... There's a lot going on, but Holtby's writing is really beautiful and still hopeful. It's a long book, and I did struggle with the length at points, but I really enjoyed it all in the end. I'll have to read more by Holtby in the future.
I wanted to finish this by months end and I did! Thank you to the group, Reading the Twentieth Century, to get me to finally give this another shot. (My previous attempt began in June 2012 and was cut off when we moved and I just didn't have it in me to continue at that point.)
