REREAD: Poppy
Poppy: Mrs Isla Sitwell Nelson (inscribed 1936, but the story is clearly older than that)
I try my best to avoid buying ‘double’ copies of books, but failed with this one. Despite an unusual title, I didn’t remember it at all, and although ‘Rereading February’ has long ended, even though I extended it, I decided to read this over something brand new.
It starts off with a locked-door mystery, but it is a moralising coming-of-age story. It’s slow going at first - I found that the author was extremely critical of every other character, but more tolerant of her equally flawed heroes, and seemed to expect us to be too, simply because they were a courting couple. Chris Linwood and Poppy Dean have an understanding, but one more quarrel, because she likes getting her own way, and his impetuous declaration that he was going to emigrate, gives him an apparent motive when a bag of money disappears. His great-uncle and only family can’t help but believe that Chris took it. This sparks young Chris’s ire, and he declares he can’t stay at home, breaking his great-uncle’s heart.
Poppy doesn’t believe that he has taken the money when she hears, but the message proclaiming this never reaches Chris. Indeed, a meddler gives him reason to believe that Poppy, like his great-uncle, believes him guilty and he leaves ths village where he’s spent most of his life.
Poppy becomes far more sympathetic as a series of well-meaning people make decisions that make things worse for her. Her father sends her away to her aunt, then falls into a marriage, mainly because he thinks it will free his daughter - not knowing how seriously her feelings were involved. Chris too has all kinds of troubles in London until, at the very last, a kind Samaritan whisks him away to Australia, where he always wanted to go.
A new character moves into Monks Barton, one Lady Mary, who becomes a confidante to Poppy, a mother figure that her stepmother and much criticised birth mother never were. The latter allowed Poppy to have her own way,, while fancying she was being strict.
But then the plot goes crazy, with a familiar Girls Own trope coming into play along with Victorian melodrama, and the book ends up rather differently from where I was expecting it to. I’m possibly grumpier about that, because I wasn’t invested in the characters at first, but then I certainly grew to sympathise with Poppy. The author hints that her ‘reward’ is divine providence, not authorial choice. This is piffle because I don’t in any way believe that this plot was drawn from real life, although some of the observations about village life, gossip and hypocrisies might be.
I certainly won’t be needing two copies of this!
This entry was originally posted at https://feather-ghyll.dreamwidth.org/177170.html. Please comment wherever you prefer to.
I try my best to avoid buying ‘double’ copies of books, but failed with this one. Despite an unusual title, I didn’t remember it at all, and although ‘Rereading February’ has long ended, even though I extended it, I decided to read this over something brand new.
It starts off with a locked-door mystery, but it is a moralising coming-of-age story. It’s slow going at first - I found that the author was extremely critical of every other character, but more tolerant of her equally flawed heroes, and seemed to expect us to be too, simply because they were a courting couple. Chris Linwood and Poppy Dean have an understanding, but one more quarrel, because she likes getting her own way, and his impetuous declaration that he was going to emigrate, gives him an apparent motive when a bag of money disappears. His great-uncle and only family can’t help but believe that Chris took it. This sparks young Chris’s ire, and he declares he can’t stay at home, breaking his great-uncle’s heart.
Poppy doesn’t believe that he has taken the money when she hears, but the message proclaiming this never reaches Chris. Indeed, a meddler gives him reason to believe that Poppy, like his great-uncle, believes him guilty and he leaves ths village where he’s spent most of his life.
Poppy becomes far more sympathetic as a series of well-meaning people make decisions that make things worse for her. Her father sends her away to her aunt, then falls into a marriage, mainly because he thinks it will free his daughter - not knowing how seriously her feelings were involved. Chris too has all kinds of troubles in London until, at the very last, a kind Samaritan whisks him away to Australia, where he always wanted to go.
A new character moves into Monks Barton, one Lady Mary, who becomes a confidante to Poppy, a mother figure that her stepmother and much criticised birth mother never were. The latter allowed Poppy to have her own way,, while fancying she was being strict.
But then the plot goes crazy, with a familiar Girls Own trope coming into play along with Victorian melodrama, and the book ends up rather differently from where I was expecting it to. I’m possibly grumpier about that, because I wasn’t invested in the characters at first, but then I certainly grew to sympathise with Poppy. The author hints that her ‘reward’ is divine providence, not authorial choice. This is piffle because I don’t in any way believe that this plot was drawn from real life, although some of the observations about village life, gossip and hypocrisies might be.
I certainly won’t be needing two copies of this!
This entry was originally posted at https://feather-ghyll.dreamwidth.org/177170.html. Please comment wherever you prefer to.