Tag Archives: Mary Wesley

#BookReview ‘Jumping the Queue’ by Mary Wesley #contemporary

1 Reply

Jumping the Queue is a must-read for fans of Mary Wesley’s writing. It is a slim volume about a deadly serious topic. Widow Matilda Poliport prepares to commit suicide. She cleans the house, organises her papers, destroys anything incriminating and gives away her pets. On the day she judges the tide to be favourable, she makes a picnic and takes a bottle of wine to the beach. She plans to wade into the sea and drown. What happens changes the course of Matilda’s death, and life. Mary Wesley This is a quirky mixture of a book with heavy topics which, as you get older, become more familiar and understandable, with dark humour and a touch of forbidden romance. There is also betrayal, all kinds of betrayal actually – between husband and wife, between parents and children, between friends. As Matilda contemplates suicide, she thinks, ‘I am the great betrayer… That is my sin. I am not a sticker. I betray from laziness, fear and lack of interest.’
The story is told from Matilda’s point of view, at times despairing, at times wickedly funny and lusty. It’s hard to believe Jumping the Queue was Mary Wesley’s first adult novel, published in 1983 when she was seventy; its topics are as pertinent today, as then.
Matilda and her husband Tom made a pact, to end it all when they were old and no longer enjoying life. But when Tom dies suddenly in Paris, Matilda is left alone in an isolated West Country house, rarely visited by her four children. The villagers pretty much leave her alone except for her neighbour Mr Jones, who carries a not-so-secret torch for Matilda. But not everything is as it seems. What was Tom really doing in Paris, why don’t the children visit, and does Mr Jones really see UFOs?
When Matilda’s plan at the beach is interrupted by a group of holidaymakers, she retreats to the town to wait. There she meets The Matricide, a man on-the-run, wanted for killing his mother and whose face is in all the newspapers. Matilda is anything but conventional and she doesn’t fear for her safety. The Matricide, whose name is Hugh Warner, checks she understands who he is and that he killed his mother. ‘Of course’, says Matilda. ‘Lots of people long to. You just did it.’
At first glance, this could be a depressing novel about getting older and longing to be out of it. But in fact it is a tale of loyalty, love and trust; just in unexpected places. Thought provoking, sad and uplifting, all at the same

Here’s my review of THE CAMOMILE LAWN, also by Wesley, or read its #FirstPara.

If you like this, try:-
‘Whistle in the Dark’ by Emma Healey
‘The Hoarder’ by Jess Kidd
‘The Carer’ by Deborah Moggach

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview JUMPING THE QUEUE by Mary Wesley https://wp.me/p5gEM4-4jF via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Camomile Lawn’ by Mary Wesley #WW2

4 Replies

It’s many years since I first read The Camomile Lawn by  Mary Wesley. I remember liking it, and that one of the characters is called Calypso, but nothing else. So it was with delight that I read the wartime story of Calypso and her four cousins – Oliver, Polly, Walter and Sophy. It renewed my intention to re-read all Wesley’s novels. Mary WesleyThe story is enrichened by the mode of telling. It starts in Cornwall in the summer of 1939 as the cousins of assorted ages gather for what will be the last time. There is a poignancy hanging in the air as the run their ritual race, The Terror Run, along the clifftop path, joined by their neighbours, the Floyer twins.
The cousins are the children of the three Cuthbertson siblings – we see the parents only fleetingly, if not at all – but they are gathered at their Uncle Richard’s house and picnic on the camomile lawn. What follows are the piecemeal stories of individuals and how they overlap with each other as the war progresses. Overlaid, are short passages from the Eighties as they travel independently to Cornwall for a funeral. Drawn into the cousins’ stories are their neighbours, in Cornwall and London, wartime acquaintances, lovers, and refugees Max and Monika. Amidst the bombings, the rationing and the worries about loved ones fighting, Wesley tells a story of a family both united and separated, as individuals strike out on their own, liberated by wartime urgencies. There are affairs, unexpected babies, hints of underage sex, all without accusations of blame or betrayal. Each makes assumptions about the others, assumptions the reader may know are misplaced given we are privileged to see into the minds of each cousin, and sometimes assumptions which are proven right or wrong only at the very end of the novel.
Paths cross, diverge and cross again. Not everyone is nice, not everyone is honest. They are people getting through the war, trying to keep things together; some turn to drink and partying, one keeps guinea pigs, most feel emboldened by the openings presented to them by war. And all the time, fear lurks in the pit of their stomachs. And through it all, the house in Cornwall and memories of that last party on the camomile lawn, remind us of pre-war normality. At a time when ‘normal’ ceases to exist.
Very different from other wartime novels. Now a classic.

Read the first paragraph of THE CAMOMILE LAWN.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society’ by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows
‘Half of the Human Race’ by Antony Quinn
‘My Dear, I Wanted to Tell You’ by Louisa Young 

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE CAMOMILE LAWN by Mary Wesley https://wp.me/p5gEM4-48g via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 124… ‘The Camomile Lawn’ #amreading #FirstPara

2 Replies

“Helena Cuthbertson picked up the crumpled Times by her sleeping husband and went to the flower room to iron it.”
Mary WesleyFrom ‘The Camomile Lawn’ by Mary Wesley

Read my reviews of these novels by Mary Wesley:-
JUMPING THE QUEUE
THE CAMOMILE LAWN

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ by Ernest Hemingway 
‘A Month in the Country’ by JL Carr
‘Back When We Were Grown-Ups’ by Anne Tyler 

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara THE CAMOMILE LAWN by Mary Wesley https://wp.me/p5gEM4-48b via @SandraDanby