Pages:
448
Original
date of publication: 1946
My
edition: 2011 (Vintage)
Why
I decided to read: though it would be a good vacation/plane read
How
I acquired my copy: Waterstone’s, Piccadilly, September 2011
I’m
usually hit or miss with Stella Gibbons’s novels. I was on the fence about her
most famous novel, Cold Comfort Farm; but I loved Nightingale Wood. Westwood
falls into the Nightingale Wood category, happily.
Set
in London in the midst of WWII, Westwood is the story of Margaret Steggles, a
romantically-minded young woman who, after finding a ration book belonging to
one Hebe Niland, becomes entangled with the family who live at Westwood,
primarily among them Gerard Challis, a middle-aged playwright at work on what
he believes is his masterpiece. Then there’s his daughter, Hebe; her husband,
Alex; and their three children. A variety of other characters round out the
cast, including Margaret’s cheerful old school friend Hilda, who never takes
anything seriously; and Dick, a friend of Margaret’s father.
Stella
Gibbons is incredibly adept at describing her characters without explicitly
saying so. For example, we know that Gerard Challis is an incredibly
hypocritical man because he describes his wife as dated; yet he assumes that
Hilda is a reader of the novels of Ethel M. Dell, a writer popular 15-20 years
prior to the setting of the novel. He’s literally the kind of man who doesn’t
like children or puppies; so you can see why he’s such an unlikeable character.
He also doesn’t have much of a sense of humor; Hilda’s sarcasm goes completely
over his head. I even think that Margaret takes herself and her ideals too
seriously; and we’re never sure if she’s really in love with Gerard Challis, or
if she’s just in love with the ideal he represents (and in the end, I got the
feeling that the Niland/Challis family just used her as a glorified babysitter).
As a result, the characters that take themselves the most seriously are the
ones that Stella Gibbons subtly pokes fun at; and therein lies the comedy of
this novel.
The
world these characters live in is very insulated too; but I think that Stella
Gibbons did that intentionally. For example, there’s no mention of what was
going on in the outside world at the time. But maybe Gibbons did that in order
to preserve the comedy of the novel (exclusion of the outside world was a
common theme in WWII literature, mostly because people wanted to forget about
reality when they read a novel such as this one). In all, Westwood is one of
the better books I’ve read this year.
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