The Victory Garden, by Rhys Bowen
Mar. 16th, 2019 07:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chocolatepotI forced myself to finish reading this book, because I wanted to really lambaste it here and would feel bad if it had some major twists near the end that gave it surprising complexity. It did not, btw.
Where to begin. Well, a summary: Emily Bryce, the daughter of a well-off judge, wants to do something to help with the war effort in 1918. Her parents oppose her becoming a VAD nurse like her friend, but when she turns 21 she goes to the nearest town and signs up for the Women's Land Army. She's also carrying on a romance with a wealthy Australian pilot who's convalescing in the local estate-turned-hospital, which her mother especially doesn't like. They spend one night together because of Circumstances. Near the end of her posting, she and two other Land Girls are sent to a slightly decrepit estate, where they help start to get the gardens in shape for old Lady Charlton. The pilot dies, Emily realizes she's pregnant, and when she goes home on a brief visit her parents shit-talk some local girl who's having a baby out of wedlock, so she decides she can't tell them about her problem. Emily goes back to Lady Charlton and offers to keep working in exchange for allowing her the use of the small cottage she'd been staying in before. While there, she reads a diary written by a schoolteacher in 1858 which parallels her own life story, and herbal recipes written by a woman in the 17th century who I think was hanged as a witch, and she becomes the village herb-woman. Lady Charlton's grandson comes back after the Armistice, and it turns out that he wanted to be a conscientious objector but his father did something so he couldn't register, and he got captured by Germans at the front and put in a POW camp for years while everyone thought he was dead. He and his grandmother do not quite reconcile and he goes away again. Life goes on, the Spanish flu comes, Emily's baby comes. Lady Charlton nearly dies of a heart attack(?), and her spiteful housekeeper points Emily out to the police as a poisoner; they come in and sneer unpleasantly, but then Judge Bryce shows up and saves the day, telling Emily that he and her mother are hypocrites who would have taken care of her baby. (Sure.) The grandson comes back and he and Emily start to fall in love. Lady Charlton reveals that she is the schoolteacher from the diary.
What annoyed me:
- Ya basic. It's like Bowen knows the general stereotypes of WWI and decided that was enough research. Almost every man of fighting age is killed in action, we see literally two soldiers come home, and the female characters are constantly talking about how everything will change after the war because women will be needed to fill jobs (IRL, 11.5% of British combatants died, and when the rest came back they protested their unemployment and complained about women taking their jobs). When Emily's group of Land Girls gets to their posting and change into their uniforms, they take off their corsets and there's a big scene of *________* oh my gosh it feels so amazing and we'll never wear anything like this again because now we're free! The grandson was anti-war and goes on to become one of the war poets (who in the book have a kind of official organization?). I think I've just consumed too much WWI media that treads on the same paths. The men who go off to war always either die or come back incredibly psychologically scarred, people talk about how the world will never be the same, etc. etc. I just want to read or watch something that doesn't assume Vera Brittain's experience was every woman's experience. Which ties in with my next point ...
- Classism. I should have expected this because of the "Royal Spyness" books, but I always kind of thought it was tongue-in-cheek there as they're written in first-person and have an overall light tone. Suppose not. All of the characters are pretty flat, but the working-class characters are flatter. They're cheery Cockneys and parlormaids, happy to help out Emily for no reward. When Emily starts getting special treatment from Lady Charlton (asked in for sherry after dinner regularly), her companions tell her it's right, and doesn't she want to be with her own kind? Oof. There's a way to show period-accurate classism without just taking it on board. The policemen definitely have a reverse snobbery we're meant to be disgusted by, which is just as bad in its own way as the happy class divide.
- No real conflict, no real complexity! I think I mentioned earlier that the "Royal Spyness" books have a tendency to not really have rising action - the heroine walks around noticing things, and then at the end the criminals reveal themselves and she has to hang on until the police come or her fiancé rescues her. Similarly, this book feels like stuff just happens, and then there's a climax, and similarly, Emily's worried about her future when the police come knocking, but they don't actually take her to prison and she doesn't even have to reach out to her father, he just hears about it and comes running. She does have to deal with and adapt to hard circumstances, but they don't appreciably change her. She starts out wanting to see more of the world and help people, and then she does it. Nearly every character thinks she's a darling, too, except for the policemen and Lady Charlton's housekeeper, and they're just mean for no reason.
- How do I even title this? When the Spanish flu comes, Emily mixes up something to help, and as a result nobody in the village dies. She's a freaking twentieth-century Ayla!
So, uh, wouldn't recommend.
Where to begin. Well, a summary: Emily Bryce, the daughter of a well-off judge, wants to do something to help with the war effort in 1918. Her parents oppose her becoming a VAD nurse like her friend, but when she turns 21 she goes to the nearest town and signs up for the Women's Land Army. She's also carrying on a romance with a wealthy Australian pilot who's convalescing in the local estate-turned-hospital, which her mother especially doesn't like. They spend one night together because of Circumstances. Near the end of her posting, she and two other Land Girls are sent to a slightly decrepit estate, where they help start to get the gardens in shape for old Lady Charlton. The pilot dies, Emily realizes she's pregnant, and when she goes home on a brief visit her parents shit-talk some local girl who's having a baby out of wedlock, so she decides she can't tell them about her problem. Emily goes back to Lady Charlton and offers to keep working in exchange for allowing her the use of the small cottage she'd been staying in before. While there, she reads a diary written by a schoolteacher in 1858 which parallels her own life story, and herbal recipes written by a woman in the 17th century who I think was hanged as a witch, and she becomes the village herb-woman. Lady Charlton's grandson comes back after the Armistice, and it turns out that he wanted to be a conscientious objector but his father did something so he couldn't register, and he got captured by Germans at the front and put in a POW camp for years while everyone thought he was dead. He and his grandmother do not quite reconcile and he goes away again. Life goes on, the Spanish flu comes, Emily's baby comes. Lady Charlton nearly dies of a heart attack(?), and her spiteful housekeeper points Emily out to the police as a poisoner; they come in and sneer unpleasantly, but then Judge Bryce shows up and saves the day, telling Emily that he and her mother are hypocrites who would have taken care of her baby. (Sure.) The grandson comes back and he and Emily start to fall in love. Lady Charlton reveals that she is the schoolteacher from the diary.
What annoyed me:
- Ya basic. It's like Bowen knows the general stereotypes of WWI and decided that was enough research. Almost every man of fighting age is killed in action, we see literally two soldiers come home, and the female characters are constantly talking about how everything will change after the war because women will be needed to fill jobs (IRL, 11.5% of British combatants died, and when the rest came back they protested their unemployment and complained about women taking their jobs). When Emily's group of Land Girls gets to their posting and change into their uniforms, they take off their corsets and there's a big scene of *________* oh my gosh it feels so amazing and we'll never wear anything like this again because now we're free! The grandson was anti-war and goes on to become one of the war poets (who in the book have a kind of official organization?). I think I've just consumed too much WWI media that treads on the same paths. The men who go off to war always either die or come back incredibly psychologically scarred, people talk about how the world will never be the same, etc. etc. I just want to read or watch something that doesn't assume Vera Brittain's experience was every woman's experience. Which ties in with my next point ...
- Classism. I should have expected this because of the "Royal Spyness" books, but I always kind of thought it was tongue-in-cheek there as they're written in first-person and have an overall light tone. Suppose not. All of the characters are pretty flat, but the working-class characters are flatter. They're cheery Cockneys and parlormaids, happy to help out Emily for no reward. When Emily starts getting special treatment from Lady Charlton (asked in for sherry after dinner regularly), her companions tell her it's right, and doesn't she want to be with her own kind? Oof. There's a way to show period-accurate classism without just taking it on board. The policemen definitely have a reverse snobbery we're meant to be disgusted by, which is just as bad in its own way as the happy class divide.
- No real conflict, no real complexity! I think I mentioned earlier that the "Royal Spyness" books have a tendency to not really have rising action - the heroine walks around noticing things, and then at the end the criminals reveal themselves and she has to hang on until the police come or her fiancé rescues her. Similarly, this book feels like stuff just happens, and then there's a climax, and similarly, Emily's worried about her future when the police come knocking, but they don't actually take her to prison and she doesn't even have to reach out to her father, he just hears about it and comes running. She does have to deal with and adapt to hard circumstances, but they don't appreciably change her. She starts out wanting to see more of the world and help people, and then she does it. Nearly every character thinks she's a darling, too, except for the policemen and Lady Charlton's housekeeper, and they're just mean for no reason.
- How do I even title this? When the Spanish flu comes, Emily mixes up something to help, and as a result nobody in the village dies. She's a freaking twentieth-century Ayla!
So, uh, wouldn't recommend.
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Date: 2019-03-17 02:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-18 01:40 am (UTC)