My rating: 4 of 5 stars
After being enraptured by Sherriff’s The Hopkins Manuscript, this was certainly a change of pace. If nothing else, Sherriff has shown us he can write a tight, emotional, human drama (Journey’s End), a big science fiction setpiece (Hopkins), and now this: a gentle, quotidian, nostalgic little celebration of life’s simple pleasures. Author Kazuo Ishiguro, writer I admire greatly, describes it as a “delicate” exploration of “the beautiful dignity to be found in everyday living.”
An ordinary, office-worker-class family of five in 1931 England, the Stevenses: father, mother, and their three children: young adults Dick and Mary, and rowdy ten-year-old Ernie, are preparing for their annual two-week trip to the seaside. They always go to Bognor Regis, and nowhere else. They always stay at the same boardinghouse. Even the day of packing and preparation is ritualized, scripted according to Mr. Stevens’s “Marching Orders.” And it is filled with a lovely anticipation pleasurable in itself, as exciting as Christmas Eve, where divergence from hallowed traditions would take some the of the heart out of it. There is a frisson of tension even over the change of train at Clapham Junction: will they make the change? Will they find seats together? Who might sit with them? Even though of course it all comes right.
These tiny dramas unspool throughout this gentle story. Mr. Stevens relishes his long solo walks on the downs, savors the feel of an open collar, stout walking shoes, and a companionable pipe in the local pub. The family gathers in their bathing cabin (they splurge on one with with a balcony!) to watch the sea and the people. They play games in the arcade, listen to the band. Mary has a desultory flirtation with a young man, which (of course) goes nowhere. An elegiac tone creeps in here and there: the “children” are growing up. There is a hint that this could be the last of these time-honored holidays. Ernie may build the last of the Stevens sand castles; Dick may go off with some friends next year. Mrs. Stevens notes with a pang that the boardinghouse is looking shabby; the ingratiating landlady has aged, looks ill and anxious. And Mrs. Stevens, a shy, rather simple woman (whose husband occasionally notices her dropped h’s with mild irritation) actually doesn’t even like the sea. Her favorite part of every day is her quiet hour in the evening, alone while the others are out and about, with her needlework and a glass of port (for her health), the bottle carefully measured out to last the whole fortnight. Some readers criticize Sherriff’s depiction of her as rather empty and shallow, but I wonder if that was his point: that’s the role women had, or at least that was her role in that family in that time – overlooked, unattended, unimportant to the people she devoted her life to. She’s the one, after all, who notices the strain the landlady is under as her customers are trickling away: older, alone, and struggling.
That’s pretty much it. One family, one seaside holiday, one little stream of beloved activities to be cherished, looked forward to, enjoyed, clung to and – ultimately – to be lost. It doesn’t seem like much, but beautifully observed, generously respected, it should stir some memories of beloved family traditions in many readers.
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