The Light Years

I'm a sucker for novels set in and around the War years (Brideshead Revisited, some of Anthony Powell's A Dance To The Music of Time etc) and I'd heard good things about The Cazalet Chronicles so I thought I'd give The Light Years a go. It's an astonishingly good book. At first it seems very “frightfully, frightfully” with the focus being on an upper middle class family as they spend the summers of 1937 and 1938 in the countryside under the looming shadow of war. But Howard's skill as a writer gives each of this huge cast of characters (from the main family themselves, their children down to servants and tutors) a unique voice of their own. You come to see them as living, breathing people not just words on a page. It's a magnificent achievement.

The Cazalets consist of three brothers (Hugh, the damaged World War 1 veteran; Edward, the ladies man; and Rupert, the failed artist making a living as a teacher), their wives and children and the grandparents - The Brig and the Duchy, and an extended family of blood relations and servants. The family business is in wood - hardwoods, veneers - and they spend the summers at Home Place in the Sussex countryside. This could easily have become a cliché-ridden “upstairs downstairs” tale (yes, Downton Abbey, I'm looking at you), but instead we get a nuanced, emotional, deeply engrossing story of a family at the tale end of the 30s, where Hitler looms large and thought of another war haunt even the children.

Their interactions, worries and troubles are superbly and subtly written, with each character a fully rounded person. What's even more impressive is how they change across the 500 pages of this novel (which, for a big book, never felt like a slog to read). Actions have consequences. People cope with the possibilities of unwanted pregnancy; public school bullying; the after effects of war; the pressures of business; affairs and the gulf between those who are “comfortably off” and those who struggle to make ends meet. Class is ever present, but it's not the focus. It is merely presented as “the way things are”. It sets the stage for a world about to be swept away by war.

Now I can see what all the fuss was about and I'll be reading the rest of the Cazalet Chronicles as soon as I can. Very highly recommended.