My Literary Travels

Exiled alone to hateful England, Elise Landau laments the tear that ripped her apart from her Viennese family.  She carries with her memories that pull at her heart, along with her father’s last novel, hidden within her sister’s viola. Hired to work as a maidservant in Tyneford, a country estate in Dorset, she sees in her life echoes of the Jewish exile to Babylon ages ago.  Lost without her beloved mother, the beautiful opera singer Anna, her intellectual father Julian and even her annoying older sister Margot, Elise struggles to adapt to her new life.  Despite her station and education in Vienna, she is reduced to a mere nothing in the new household and subject to the demeaning acts of the gentry who visit it.  She struggles to learn the most menial tasks, adapting to her new life but refusing to give up her dreams of once again reuniting with her family as soon as her parents can obtain a visa to America.  As she becomes more familiar with her new surroundings, she is surprised to find beauty and a sense of peace in them.  She grows to love Tyneford, despite her initial hatred of it, and finds community and friendship among its simple residents.  Even more surprising is the relationship that blooms between her and the young son of the manor, Kit.  As the turmoil in Europe grows each day and the possibility of her parents’ escape grows ever more dim, Elise finds herself relying more and more on the complicated relationship that both excites and soothes her.  She leans heavily on Kit and his father, seeking solace from the grief and loss she feels.  As time passes, her position in the household changes, the lines between servant and friend blurring ever more as the days go by.  Her changing status reflects the changing world around her.  Gone are the clear distinctions between class, crushed beneath the weight of war.  What will survive of the old ways?  Will Tyneford, Kit, Mr. Rivers and Elise herself emerge unscathed from the upheaval?  Or will they all be scared beyond healing?

This was a lyrical book, written with a richness that brings the period to vivid life.  Solomons’ characters, physical descriptions and soothing prose form the basis for a novel that touches the heart with its emphasis on the drastic change that occurred in England during the war.  In some ways reminiscent of Jane Eyre, the love story that finally develops is not an all-together surprising one but the fact that it takes so long to appear and blossom is the one complaint I have with the book. That’s a minor quibble, though, and the novel itself does not suffer because of it.  As an added bonus, I found Solomons to be occasionally light-hearted and funny, too, which, like her descriptive prose, lightened the novel immensely:

“Sometimes I hated her, but I enjoyed hating her from nearby.  From this distance I’d soon forget how much she annoyed me, and I’d miss her so much it would become unbearable.  I…concentrated on all the things about my sister that tormented me…none of this made me miss her less – despising my sister was a luxury belonging to the old life.  I looked forward with greedy anticipation to the moment when I could hate her again.”

“The Freud books…were disappointing…It’s all about ids and egos and superegos.  I think he puts his id, or is it his ego, into your superego and then you both experience sublimation.  It’s very complicated.”

All in all, a good read for anyone interested in the social novel of England at war.