I’m going to review these together. They were both quite wonderful, so much so that, pressed for time as I am this week, I cannot let them pass onto the “have read” list without mention. In my opinion, this trilogy, Vittoria Cottage, Music in the Hills, and Shoulder the Sky, have the Miss Buncle books beat all hollow. Good stuff! I can see these going on my treasured keeper shelf.

Please try to ignore the desperately ugly covers on these re-released paperback editions. I find them quite embarrassingly inappropriate to the content, which, while “romantic” enough to please the most sentimental, is not cloyingly so as these would lead one to believe. I had some explaining to do to family members who saw me reading these – “What the heck is that?! You’re slipping, old girl …!”

*****

Vittoria Cottage by D.E. Stevenson ~ 1949. This edition: Collins-Fontana, 1974. Paperback. ISBN: 0-00-613-444-0. 191 pages.

My rating: 8.5/10.

Middle-aged Caroline Dering has just been widowed, and, aside from her genuine and seemly sorrow at the death of someone who has shared her life for many years, she is not at all steeped in sorrow. Her lately departed spouse, Arnold Dering, was of a complaining and perpetually malcontented disposition. While  his wife and three children were accepting of his character – Caroline thought that he always meant well, and suspected that at rare moments Arnold recognized and truly regretted his deep pessimism – but by and large enjoyed themselves much more in his absence.

The scene is set for what is to become a series of three novels by descriptions of the village of Ashbridge and the far from cottage-like Vittoria Cottage, ancestral home of the Derings. Though she has merely “married into” the local family, Caroline fits into the local hierarchy almost immediately, and by and large leads a deeply contented life, caring for her children, volunteering for various worthy causes, keeping house and gardening. The children are all grown up, with James away in Malaya, and lovely but discontented Leda (she takes after her father in full) and boisterous Bobbie making their way out into the larger world from the safe haven of their village nest.

To-day Caroline Dering was not working in her garden. She had taken a basket and gone up the road to the gravel-pit to pick blackberries. There was a thicket of brambles, there, and Caroline knew it well. Every year she made this pilgrimage and every year she returned with her harvest of big, black, juicy berries to make into jelly and to bottle for the winter. It was curious (thought Caroline, as she began her task) how the years seemed to telescope when you looked back. Surely there were less than three hundred and sixty-five days between each picking! She remembered the first time she had come. She and Arnold had come together – they had just returned from their honeymoon and settled at Vittoria Cottage – but Arnold had not enjoyed picking blackberries, he had got a thorn in his finger and had torn his trousers on a wild-rose bush and he had suggested that in future they should employ some of the village children to undertake the task. After that Caroline had come alone until James was old enough to help … and then the little girls had joined the party and blackberrying had become an event, a yearly picnic, which took place, weather permitting, upon James’s birthday.

Now, once again, Caroline came alone. The girls had other things to do and Caroline had no use for reluctant assistants. Next year … would James be here? And if he were here would he want to come and pick blackberries on his birthday?

World War II has been over for several years, but England is still very much in coping and recovery mode. Society is fast changing into some sort of new normal, and though things are steadily improving, there is still food and fuel rationing, and a strong atmosphere of “making do”, which makes for some quite fascinating scenarios as we progress through the book and look over Caroline’s shoulder as she goes about her days.

Life in Ashbridge gets suddenly quite interesting with the arrival of the mysterious Mr. Shepperton, who is apparently very reluctant to discuss his past, and who arouses even more suspicion because he appears to have no old belongings or clothing, a real rarity at that place and time, immediately post-war – “everything new!” the village gossips whisper with raised eyebrows.

Caroline’s lovely younger sister Harriet, a successful actress ducking away to her sister’s home for a respite from a difficult and failed recent stage production in London, brings some ex-urban dash and sparkle to village gatherings, and with the unexpectedly sudden return of James from Malaya, and the trials and tribulations of Leda and her fiancé Derek, the local squire’s son, there is plenty of scope for complications, dilemmas, surprises and sometimes unexpected resolutions.

I thought the characters were very well drawn and (mostly) very believable. Caroline is our heroine, but she is not a perfect person by a long shot; her flaws are well on display, but we forgive her them because she is ultimately exceedingly likeable, as is her sister and most of the other players in this excellent domestic drama. It ends quite abruptly, but this served merely to make me keen to get my hands on the next episode in this extended tale, which I was fortunate enough to acquire along with its sister novels recently.

On to Music in the Hills.

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Music in the Hills by D.E. Stevenson ~ 1950. This edition: Ace Books, circa 1970. Paperback. ISBN: 0-441-54725-7. 282 pages.

My rating: 8/10.

Having more or less settled the fates of Caroline Dering and her sister Harriet Fane in the previous novel, Vittoria Cottage, this next one follows Caroline’s son James, who, at loose ends after his military service and several years spent “chasing terrorists” in Malaya, is looking towards his future.

Deeply in love with his childhood companion Rhoda, he is struggling with her rejection of his marriage proposal. While we suspect that she is in love with James in her own way, Rhoda fears that, as a rising professional painter, marriage would spell the end of her career goals, and that she would be a discontented wife as well as a poorer artist, having to split her focus between two roles, doing neither well.

James takes it very well, all things considered, and hies himself off to the community of Drumburly in Scotland, where he has been invited by his aunt and uncle to reside at the remote Mureth House, a prosperous sheep farm. Jock and Mamie Johnstone have no children of their own, and are hoping that their nephew might be interested enough in farming life to take over Mureth some day. James has always cherished a desire to be a farmer himself, so the situation looks like a success all around; the story follows some of James’s apprenticeship and details the day-to-day occupations of a hill farmer of mid-2oth century Scotland; quite nicely detailed and striking true in the telling.

We have sheep rustlers and romantic entanglements and, of course, more than a few misunderstandings between various parties, all neatly tidied up as the story progresses. Perhaps not as strong a narrative as the preceding Vittoria Cottage, but definitely engaging. I enjoyed it greatly.

The characterizations of the local inhabitants are often well drawn; we all know people just like these.

I’m looking through the book for a snippet to share with you, but am finding nothing really suitable – everything is so enmeshed with the  rest of the story that to take a bit out of context would do it no justice, so you’ll have to take my word for it that this is a well-written post-war domestic drama, with much to recommend it as escape reading in our hectic modern age.

Music in the Hills is followed by a third book to form a trilogy, Shoulder the Sky, also published as Winter and Rough Weather. I’d read this one some months ago, liked it a lot, and reviewed it here: Shoulder the Sky

Reading this trilogy has made me into a confirmed D.E. Stevenson fan. This is good stuff, for which I am ready to forgive some of the less than stellar output by this writer. She definitely had highs and lows in her output, but the Vittoria Cottage trilogy is quite decently lofty.