The Chamomile Lawn by Mary Wesley ~ 1984. This edition: Black Swan, 1989. Softcover. ISBN: 0-552-99126-0. 336 pages.

My rating: 4/10.

It had its moments, but not enough to make it a keeper. Into the giveaway pile, to try its luck with other readers.

*****

In the summer of 1939, just before the start of the Second World War, a group of cousins assemble at a Cornish cliff side house. Lazing in the sun, lounging on the fragrant chamomile lawn, they are poised for whatever the future brings. Mary Wesley’s narrative follows them through the war, in a series of extended flashbacks triggered by the surviving cousins preparing to attend the funeral of a mutual acquaintance, a key figure in the family’s  fortunes.

That summer Oliver, newly returned from fighting in the Spanish Civil War, is in love with beautiful Calypso, who professes not to love anyone; 10-year-old Sophy is in love with Oliver. Kind Walter, his indolent sister Polly, and the twins from the nearby rectory, David and Paul, round out the cast of characters lounging the days away and enjoying the hospitality of Aunt Helena and Uncle Richard. When war is declared, the scene shifts to London, where the various marriages, affairs and misalliances of the cousins, the twins, Helena, Richard and Jewish refugees Max and Monika Erstweiler form a complicated and vaguely incestuous moving picture of lust, yearning and self-indulgence.

The Chamomile Lawn became a bestseller when it was first published in the 1980s, and much was made of the fact that the author, Mary Wesley, who apparently based much of the wartime narrative on her own experiences, was over seventy when it was released. A popular television mini-series broadcast in 1992 brought the novel to a much wider notoriety.

I can understand the popularity of the novel, as it does have an ambitious scope, a tangled, soap-opera-like storyline, and a generous enough amount of sexual goings-on to pique the interest of the most reluctant and jaded of readers, but I’m afraid I did not embrace it fully. This might be partly editorial, as the phrasing often seemed awkward to me, and I never entered fully into the story, remaining very much an onlooker as the author soberly and without much flair matter-of-factly related the action with an abundance of smutty detail which couldn’t help but leave me squirming – and not in a good way.

Little girls running about with no underwear and “respectable” gentlemen who should know better putting their hands up under those juvenile skirts; continual references to flatulence and erections and various other bodily functions seemed, after a while, to be over-telling; much too much information! The thing just felt smutty to me, and the story, though reasonably engaging, was completely unrelatable. None of the characters came to life for me, and I couldn’t drum up enough interest to really keep track of who was sleeping with who after a while, let alone try to get inside their rather nasty little heads long enough to work up some personal empathy.

It was hard work to finish this one. Perhaps because right before reading it I had just experienced Vita Sackville-West’s The Edwardians, which is a gorgeously written specimen of this sort of novel, an example of what it could be?

Mary Wesley isn’t even in the same city, let alone the same ballpark, as Vita Sackville-West and her ilk! Apples to oranges, or, rather, an overripe, sickly sweet, partly decayed banana (phallic pun fully intended, inspired by Wesley’s fixation on the male naughty bits) to an opulent bunch of hothouse grapes.

This is a damning review, and I’m sitting here having second thoughts about even posting it, but I think I will go ahead and just put it out there as an example of something which sounded great, received lots of positive press, but just didn’t click with this particular reader.

I didn’t hate the book, and I truly enjoyed some of the details the author shared about life and attitudes in wartime England, but the sexual stuff put me off. Not the fact that there was sexual content in this novel, but how it was portrayed.

Nothing was terribly graphic; I’ve read and happily tolerated – more than that – enjoyed – much more detailed portrayals of people’s fictional sex lives, but this one just felt off somehow. I’d hoped to be able to give The Chamomile Lawn to my elderly mother to read, but I don’t feel comfortable with doing so after reading it; something which seldom happens, as she quite happily tolerates a fairly broad range of “intimate” detail in some of the modern fiction we share and discuss.

I’m open to investigating some of the author’s other titles if they cross my path, because the story itself showed some creativity, but not planning on seeking them out in the near future. I will, however, be making a determined search for Sackville-West’s The Heir, which I know is around here somewhere, and which I desperately want to re-read, because reading All Passion Spent some months ago, and The Edwardians a day or two ago have reminded me what a stylish and clever writer Vita was, and how enjoyable really well-written “personality” fiction can be.

Edited to add: I’ve just registered The Chamomile Lawn with BookCrossing, and will be sending it back out into the big wide world on one of my next trips to town.