Tag Archives: Cazalet Chronicles

#BookReview ‘All Change’ by Elizabeth Jane Howard #historical #WW2

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All Change is a leap forward in time; the fourth book in ‘The Cazalet Chronicles’ by Elizabeth Jane Howard left us in 1947 but this, the last in the series, runs from June 1956 to December 1958. Much has changed in the 11 years after VE Day: Queen Elizabeth succeeds to the throne after the death of her father King George VI, there are eight million refugees within Germany’s borders, President Eisenhower is elected. And in the world of the Cazalets, there is death too. Elizabeth Jane HowardThis final book is an examination of the nature of love that persists despite pain and trouble. The cousins experience difficulties in love – affairs, divorce, misguided attachments and betrayal – while their parents are fractured by the failure of the family timber business. Suddenly there is no money: houses must be sold, servants let go after years of service, meals cooked and houses cleaned without help. Family love persists through this dark time and, as throughout the war, the Cazalet family emerges out the other side, shaped differently for the next decade.
Reading the last book in a well-loved series is always a mixed feeling: delight and loss. So it is with wonder that I consider how Elizabeth Jane Howard wrote this final book of the series when she was 90, completing it before she died in January 2014.

Read my reviews of the other books in ‘The Cazalet Chronicles’:-
THE LIGHT YEARS #1CAZALET
MARKING TIME #2CAZALET
CONFUSION  #3CAZALET
CASTING OFF #4CAZALET 

If you like this, try:-
‘The Garden of Angels’ by David Hewson
‘One Moonlit Night’ by Rachel Hore
‘Dear Mrs Bird’ by AJ Pearce

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview ALL CHANGE by Elizabeth Jane Howard via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1CK

#BookReview ‘Casting Off’ by Elizabeth Jane Howard #historical #WW2

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Casting Off by Elizabeth Jane Howard starts in July 1945 as Hugh Cazalet must decide what to do as Miss Pearson, his secretary for 23 years, resigns. But the end of the European war is in sight. When this book ends, war is over and there are more engagements, marriages and divorces, births and deaths in the Cazalet family. This is the fourth book in a five-book series. Elizabeth Jane HowardThe title refers not just to ending relationships, but to letting go of war-time life. This is more complicated than anticipated. Longing for something for so long, does not make it easy to live through when it happens. Change is challenging. Post-war life is not all it is expected to be, in some ways it is harder.  Though the privations of rationing continue, often harsher than during the war itself, possibilities for new life unfold like a flower in bloom. But there are no easy answers.
The three cousins are grown-up. Polly, Louise and Clary now face life as young adults, their idealism tainted by the sadness and disappointments of war. But there are surprises in store for Clary, while the Cazalet brothers must make a business decision which affects the financial future of the whole family. Can they still afford the Sussex home, the anchor for the family throughout the war, and home to The Duchy and The Brig? And where will this extended war-time family now live, separated from one another?
Expecting happiness after the end of the war, ordinary life disappoints as the trials and disappointments continue. Louise’s friend Stella explains: “… when anyone becomes more than a certain amount unhappy they get cut off. They don’t feel any comfort or concern or affection that comes from other people – all of that simply disappears inside some bottomless pit and when people realize that, they stop trying to be affectionate or comforting. Would you like some grey coffee, or some pink-brown tea?”
Howard’s characters are so clearly drawn that they became real people for me, while I read these books. They feel like real friends. That is a huge achievement for any novelist.

Read my reviews of the other books in ‘The Cazalet Chronicles’:-
THE LIGHT YEARS #1CAZALET
MARKING TIME #CAZALET
CONFUSION  #3CAZALET
ALL CHANGE #5CAZALET 

If you like this, try:-
‘Life After Life’ by Kate Atkinson
‘The Heat of the Day’ by Elizabeth Bowen
‘While Paris Slept’ by Ruth Druart

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview CASTING OFF by Elizabeth Jane Howard http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1CH via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Confusion’ by Elizabeth Jane Howard #historical #WW2

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Confusion, the third in the five-book series by Elizabeth Jane Howard which is ‘The Cazalet Chronicles,’ covers March 1942 to July 1945, again we see the family’s experiences through the teenage eyes of Polly, Louise and Clary. Much has changed now as the war progresses, particularly affecting the role of women, the breakdown of class barriers, the empowerment of working women and educated poor. Elizabeth Jane HowardThese books are quite a social history of a period which more often is the reserve of thrillers and spy novels. Elizabeth Jane Howard has a subtle hand when it comes to observing relationship, such as Polly’s observation after her mother’s death: “It was possible to believe that she was gone; it was their not ever coming back that was so difficult.” Confusion is in part a study of the grief of Polly and her father Hugh; and that of Clary and Neville, whose father Rupert has disappeared in action in France. Clary continues to believe her father is still alive, though the rest of the family quietly accepts his death. Then word from France brings a sliver of hope. Clary grieves for the father she remembers as a child, writing a daily diary for him, and not as the soldier he died as.
The other theme in Confusion is love, or the lack of it. Louise’s story is not about death but about young love, expectations and marriage and the realization that her husband Michael is more strongly wedded to his mother Zee than to her. There are war-time affairs, some lust, some love, and with all of them comes the confusion of uncertain times, stress and the pressure of living life ‘now’.
War seems ordinary in the everyday sense, but the Cazalets are living through extra-ordinary times. The familiar characters continue from the first two books, their story arcs going through radical change now as the war progresses and everyone’s life is changed forever.

Read my reviews of the other books in ‘The Cazalet Chronicles’:-
THE LIGHT YEARS #1CAZALET
MARKING TIME #2CAZALET
CASTING OFF  #4CAZALET
ALL CHANGE #5CAZALET

If you like this, try:-
‘At Mrs Lippincote’s’ by Elizabeth Taylor
‘Freya’ by Anthony Quinn
‘The Aftermath’ by Rhidian Brook

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview CONFUSION by Elizabeth Jane Howard http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1CD via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Marking Time’ by Elizabeth Jane Howard #historical #WW2

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September 2, 1939: Germany has invaded Poland and, for the Cazalet family in London and Sussex, war seems imminent. The story is told from 1939 to 1941 from the viewpoints of three Cazalet cousins, teenagers Polly, Louise and Clary. Marking Time is second in the five-book series ‘The Cazalet Chronicles’ by Elizabeth Jane Howard. Elizabeth Jane Howard We see them growing up quickly, forced to face war and death before their time, watch their parents struggle with ordinary life and relationships and health crises which continue despite the fighting. One day a German bomber crashes into a nearby field and Christopher, a pacifist, runs out to prevent the local men from shooting the injured Germans. Afterwards, Polly and Christopher go for a walk. Polly thinks “how odd it was that when one wanted everything to be good with somebody, one started not telling them everything.” They come to understand that their parents are not just parents, but people too with their own feelings and worries. Polly wonders if “concealment and deceit were a necessary part of human relationships. Because if they were, she was going to be pretty bad at them.”
Louise is at acting school but struggles to play a character ‘in lust’ as she’s a virgin and unsure of the finer details. Then she meets a painter. Clary continues in Sussex, having lessons with Polly and growing to like and respect their tutor Miss Milliment, but she worries about her younger brother Neville who runs away from prep school. And all the time, the adults keep secrets.

Read my reviews of the other books in ‘The Cazalet Chronicles’:-
THE LIGHT YEARS #1CAZALET
CONFUSION #3CAZALET
CASTING OFF  #4CAZALET
ALL CHANGE #5CAZALET

And another book by the same author, THE LONG VIEW.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Translation of Love’ by Lynne Kutsukake
‘The Rescue Man’ by Anthony Quinn
‘The Camomile Lawn’ by Mary Wesley

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview MARKING TIME by Elizabeth Jane Howard http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Cy via @SandraDanby 

#BookReview ‘The Light Years’ by Elizabeth Jane Howard #historical #WW2

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If you haven’t read The Light Years [it is the first in a series of five], you are in for a treat. Elizabeth Jane Howard died in 2014 at the age of 90 and this prompted me to buy her series ‘The Cazalet Chronicles’. I read them on holiday, back-to-back and know I will re-read them many more times. Elizabeth Jane HowardThis is a great family saga, a glimpse of upstairs and downstairs as World War Two threatens the Cazalet family. Over the course of these five books we see the changing social geography of England through the prism of this family, the changing lives of the women and servants, wartime privations, the threat to the family timber business as they face up to the reality of fear.
Oh how I gobbled up these novels. This, the first, introduces us to the family: the patriarch William and his wife The Duchy, their three sons – Hugh, Edward and Rupert, and their wives – and daughter Rachel. As a new war threatens, the hidden wounds of the Great War have not healed and there is no appetite for another. The family gathers at the Sussex house, Home Place, which is the hub of the action. It is the summer of 1937: Hitler has annexed Austria and has his eye of Czechoslovakia.
In these tense summer days at Home Place, we meet the family via the children. Louise, daughter of Edward, the second Cazalet son, is thirteen years old and wants to play the best Shakespearean roles, she starts with Hamlet. Her mother Viola, known as Villy, leads the life expected of her, as wife and mother. “She was not unhappy – it was just that she could have been much more.” One by one we are drawn into the lives of the children, their parents, of Duchy and the Brig, all the time knowing what they don’t: that in less than two years, the ‘peace with honour’ declared by Prime Minister Chamberlain is valueless.

Read my reviews of the other books in ‘The Cazalet Chronicles’:-
MARKING TIME #2CAZALET
CONFUSION #3CAZALET
CASTING OFF  #4CAZALET
ALL CHANGE #5CAZALET

And another novel by Howard, THE LONG VIEW.

If you like this, try:-
‘Freya’ by Anthony Quinn
‘At Mrs Lippincote’s’ by Elizabeth Taylor
‘After the Bombing’ by Clare Morrall

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE LIGHT YEARS by Elizabeth Jane Howard http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Bo via @SandraDanby