The Summer Before the War
A Novel
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4.1 • 30 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
“Simonson is like a Jane Austen for our day and age—she is that good.” —Paula McLain, New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Wife
Internationally bestselling author Helen Simonson returns with a splendid historical novel full of the same wit, romance and insight into the manners and morals of small-town British life as her beloved Major Pettigrew's Last Stand.
East Sussex, 1914. It is the end of England’s brief Edwardian summer, and in the idyllic coastal town of Rye, Agatha Kent has just risked her carefully built reputation by pushing for the appointment of a woman to replace the Latin master. When Beatrice Nash arrives with one trunk and several large crates of books, it is clear she is significantly more freethinking—and attractive—than anyone believes a Latin teacher should be. Mourning the death of her beloved father, Beatrice simply wants to be left alone—much to the dismay of Agatha’s nephew, Hugh Grange, a medical student on leave. But just as Beatrice comes alive to the beauty of the Sussex landscape and the colourful characters who populate Rye, the perfect summer is about to end. For the unimaginable is coming. Soon the limits of progress, and the old ways, will be tested as this small town and its inhabitants go to war.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Helen Simonson's vivid writing transports us to the idyllic English coastal town of Rye in the summer of 1914. At elegant garden parties, ladies in silks and rakish young men recently returned from travels on the Continent sip champagne and exchange gossip, while meddling matrons subtly wield power over tea. We were pulled in by Simonson’s genuinely funny and likable characters, whose realness made us feel the human cost of war that much more deeply. The Summer Before the War starts out as a sparkling period drama, but it left us thinking about duty, friendship, and the fragility of everyday life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Simonson's dense follow-up to the bestselling Major Pettigrew's Last Stand focuses on gender, class, and social mores in the town of Rye in Sussex, England, at the dawn of World War I. Following the death of her father, who raised her to be intelligent and worldly, writer Beatrice Nash looks forward to tutoring three boys in Latin before she begins her position at school in the fall. Her advocate is the shrewd Agatha Kent, a discreet progressive who's married to John, a senior official in the military. The childless couple love their grown nephews, Hugh Grange, who is destined to be a doctor, and Daniel Bookham, a handsome poet who hopes to move to Paris and start his own journal with a friend. As a woman, Beatrice doesn't have much clout, nearly losing her job to nepotism and being dismissed by her favorite author, her relatives, and her dad's publishing house. Simonson does a great job crafting the novel's world. It's a large book, and the plot takes its time to get going, but the story becomes engaging after Germany invades Belgium and Rye takes in refugees. Simonson's writing is restrained but effective, especially when making quiet revelations. A heartbreaking but satisfying ending seems fitting for a story about the social constructs that unfairly limit people and their potential.
