RC SHERRIFF
R.C. Sheriffs 1930s novel is tightly focused on the daily lives of an ordinary, English family, the Stevens, as they embark on their annual holiday to Bognor Regis, the highlight of their year. The character-driven narrative follows them from their surprisingly fraught preparations, leaving instructions for new neighbours to feed bloaters to their cat the old ones kept the fish for themselves to sorting out their luggage to the events of the holiday. Its a format that could easily have been incredibly dull but somehow Sheriff transforms this into an engrossing, often moving story, in a style that falls somewhere between Woolf and H.G. Wells: he explores the interior worlds of his characters as well as the social group that hes representing through the father and oldest son who work in clerical jobs in the city, and the oldest daughter a shopworker. The minutiae of life for this Dulwich family constructs a fascinating portrait of everyday existence in the 1930s for the kind of people who often fade into the background in a number of other works from this time; or who, like Leonard Bast in Howards End more often serve as a foil for more wealthy protagonists. Sheriff also emphasizes the anxieties and the complicated social negotiations that this type of family faced: deciding how to spend their limited funds, maintaining loyalty to a seaside landlady whos clearly fallen on hard times, worrying about returning to work, desperately trying to stave off unsettling changes in the world around them. All of which makes this sound like a downbeat novel but somehow the depiction of the small joys that the family carve out for themselves, getting a train carriage to themselves, flying a kite, ginger beer treats, as well as the deep bonds between them combine to make this a tender, subtle and endearing read. Its oddly contemporary too, so many of the issues that face Sheriffs characters from dealing with office politics, fretting about paying off the mortgage to the heady sense of liberation from reality that holidays can create, will be easy to identify with for many readers. I liked this book immensely, far more than I anticipated from the plot description, and Im eager to read more by this author.
