An absolutely lovely read- in which very little happens. Following a young couple from the start of their marriage (Catherine giving birth while doctor husband William is away in First World War)... through to the early 30s. Perpetually struggling to keep a respectable lifestyle going....Catherine has to abandon her writing...William is busy growing veg when not out on his rounds....and the children grow up, moving, imperceptibly from being under their parents' influence to breaking away and leaving them behind...
Just lovely; a snapshot both of a vanished era, and a consideration of family life which remains entirely relevant. ( )

There are many different kinds of novel out there in the world, and of course that it how it should be; because people read for different reasons, because we all live different lives and so well all look for different things when we read.

That means that it is very easy for quiet books to get lost in the crowd, and it means that it is a great joy to those of us who love such books when somebody – be it a big publisher, a small press, or an individual whose voice is heard – draws attention to a quiet book worthy of being raised above that crowd.

‘Hostages to Fortune’ is one of those books, wisely rescued by the lovely Persephone Books, and it does some of the things I love most in a quiet book.

It speaks to my sense of wonder that there are so many people in the world and that each and every one of them has a story of their own that might be told.

It illuminates lives lived at a particular time, at a particular point in history so very well that I really do feel that these fictional characters lived and breathed, and that I have come understand how their lives were for them without ever intruding at all.

And it does all of this, and more, quite beautifully.

If it was a painting, I would say that it was a picture that at first seemed unremarkable, and yet it drew you right in, and you found something new to appreciate every time you looked at it.

The story begins in 1915, with a young woman named Catherine, who is fairly newly married and whose husband William is away at the war. She is expecting a child, she gives birth to a girl, and she names her Audrey.

“She opened her eyes. Nurse was standing over her, the baby held upright against her shoulder, like the bambino on a Della Robbia Plaque.

Catherine stared. So that was her baby. Baby? Babies were sleepy amorphous, unconvincing and ugly. This creature was not amorphous, it was not even ugly. It stared at life with bright unwinking eyes. Its underlip was thrust out tremulous indignant.

‘My word’ Catherine thought ‘that’s not a baby. It’s a person.’ "

William came home two years later, invalided out of the army, and Catherine quickly realised that the war had changed him irrevocably. He decided to buy a medical practice in an Oxfordshire village, and to move his family from their cottage in Cornwall to the house that came with that practice. Catherine was daunted by the size of the house, and the role that she was called on to play, but she was quickly caught up in her new life.

There is no plot as such, but the book follows the lives of Catherine and her family until the early 1930s, in it is utterly absorbing. There was so much that said to me that I was reading about real lives that had been lived, and although I was reading about lives lived a very long time ago there was so much about the feeling and concerns of the people I was reading about that was both timeless and universal.

When the story begins her husband and her hopes of being a writer dominate Catherine’s life, but when she becomes a mother – of three children, as Audrey is followed first by Adam and then by Bill – they take up all of her time and thoughts. She finds that they bring her happiness, puzzlement and worry, and I understood it all wonderfully well. Each child was beautifully and distinctively drawn, and I think that this might be the finest account of children and their family life that I have ever read.

I appreciated the way that the lives of Catherine’s family were contrasted with the very different lives of her elder sister Violet’s family, casting a different light upon the characters and their age; and I loved the way that the story subtly shifted to show the different natures and concerns of all of those children.

I was equally impressed – maybe even more impressed – by the portrayal of Catherine and William’s marriage.

His role as the local doctor could be difficult and demanding, as was her role, running the family home and caring for three young children. Their relationship was often strained, and there were times when they didn’t particularly like one another, and when they questioned to themselves why ever they had chosen to marry, but they never quite lost the sense that they were partners, and they shared the same loves and the same values. In time they each came to appreciate what the other had done for them, for their children, and for their future, and that strengthened their marriage.

“They had come to admire each other. They had both hated their jobs, but they had stuck to them until miraculously, they had come not only to like them, but to be unable to do without them. By the same process they had come to really need and like each other; somehow a real friendship a real need for each other had grown up behind their differences and disappointments.”

There are many details of relationships of characters and of moments in lives lived in this book. They have blurred a little, I know that they will come back to me when I pick the book up again, but now I am happy considering the impression that they have left behind them.

A picture of a family that is finely drawn and utterly real. ( )

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief
~ Francis Bacon

This portrait of English life during and after World War I centers on Catherine and William, a couple whose first child is born in the opening pages. Catherine is on her own with a nurse; William is away, serving in a military hospital. Each section of the book -- a prelude and five parts -- is set in a specific time period, and several years pass between sections. This gives the reader a snapshot of the family at points in time. After the war, William establishes a practice in Oxfordshire. They have more house than they can afford to decorate, but that situation improves over time. The couple married quickly when William received his military orders, and their relationship is tenuous and uncertain at first, but their bonds strengthen over time. Their three children mature, each in their own way, and provide both pleasure and pain to their parents. The parents learn to work as partners in raising their children.

As the Francis Bacon quote implies, there are no "great enterprises" in this novel: no drama, no tragedy, no action sequences. It is simply a story of the daily lives of one family, representative of the period. Elizabeth Cambridge gets inside the minds of her characters -- adults and children alike -- so that despite the fact that very little actually "happens," the story is enormously satisfying, and best enjoyed in an armchair with a cup of tea. ( )

Hostages to Fortune; first published in 1933 is a quiet novel about a family in the years between 1915 and 1933. The novel is very autobiographical, the author, like her central character Catherine, was the wife of an Oxfordshire doctor. Catherine (unlike Elizabeth Cambridge) finds she must give up her ambitions to be a writer, in the daily struggle to manage her home and three children. However the domestic struggles we see Catherine endure, her doubts and parental insecurities –must have Cambridge’s own.
‘Hostages to Fortune’ opens as Catherine has just given birth to her first child Audrey. She is still fairly newly married and her husband William is away at the war.
“She opened her eyes. Nurse was standing over her, the baby held upright against her shoulder, like the bambino on a Della Robbia Plaque.
Catherine stared. So that was her baby. Baby? Babies were sleepy amorphous, unconvincing and ugly. This creature was not amorphous, it was not even ugly. It stared at life with bright unwinking eyes. Its underlip was thrust out tremulous indignant.
‘My word’ Catherine thought ‘that’s not a baby. It’s a person.’
When William returns to Catherine and Audrey in their small cottage in Cornwall he is a changed man. William buys a doctor’s practice in Oxfordshire which comes with a large house, a house that proves difficult to run when they can’t afford much help.
There is not much plot as such in this novel, but there is much to commend it. Beautifully written it lifts the lid on a real family, because Catherine, William, Audrey, Adam and Bill feel very much like people who have stepped fully formed from these pages. They are people who must surely have lived. Contrasted somewhat with the lives of Catherine and William are the lives of Violet and Edward, Catherine’s much older sister and her husband. When Catherine gives birth to Audrey in 1915 – Violet is already an experienced parent – her children some years older than Catherine’s. As the years pass – Violet has occasion to wonder at Catherine’s philosophy of parenting – although as her own children grow toward adulthood Violet has her own concerns.
There are many wonderfully memorable scenes in this novel; William bringing an old woman hurt in a motor accident home with him, a children’s party, Christmas shopping for toys and a holiday by the sea – all scenes from an ordinary life, made less ordinary by Cambridge’s writing.
“Audrey and Adam had bought two pink sugar mice with white worsted tails for Christmas presents and a sugar cage with a cardboard bird in it. Neither Catherine nor William had seen anything of the sort since they were children spending hand-warmed pennies at little sweet-stuff shops on a Saturday morning. They looked at each other and laughed.
“Hold yours up by its tail and see if its eyes drop out!”
“It’s not a guinea pig, it’s a mouse!’
Audrey stared at them. It had cost her agonies of self-control not to eat even a little bit of the mice, and now they were being treated as something to play with – they might at least have offered her a bit.”
I liked the relationship between William and Catherine, again it seemed marvellously realistic, and their affections are not over blown or flowery but true. William’s disappointment when he fails to buy his wife some pink silk stockings which he had set his heart on buying her, for instance is really touching. The people upon who Elizabeth Cambridge must have based her characters lived a long time ago – and yet their hopes and fears are our own. Early twentieth century Oxfordshire countryside and gardens are bloom again in Elizabeth Cambridge’s affectionate descriptions.
This Persephone edition accompanied me on a visit to the Persephone shop in London on Tuesday – and has got my April reading off to a lovely start. ( )