The Town in Bloom by Dodie Smith ~ 1965. This edition: Corsair, 2012. Paperback. ISBN: 978-1-78033-301-4. 314 pages.
My rating: 8.5/10
After my mixed feelings about one of Dodie Smith’s “other” (meaning not I Capture the Castle) adult novels, The New Moon with the Old, and my rather shaky introduction to this one (I quit early on the first time of attempting to read it) I was very pleased to find that I did like this one, after all. A whole lot. Now isn’t that interesting?
Three ex-actresses meet for their every-five-years reunion dinner, hoping that this year, the eighth reunion, the fourth of their friends, the elusive Zelle, may join them, but it appears that this is not to be.
It’s been forty years since vivacious narrator Mouse (we never learn her real name), placid Molly and sleekly beautiful Lilian were all thrown together in the lively heyday of the 1920s London theatre scene. They have all gone on to varying degrees of success and happiness, and by and large enjoy their reminiscences every time they meet, but there is a shadow lurking regarding the unknown fate of the fourth of their jolly crew, who vanished (voluntarily) from her room in the theatrical boarding house they all shared and hasn’t been seen or heard from since, despite repeated pleas to join the reunion published in the personal ads of The Times.
As the three friends chat after their window table lunch, Mouse becomes increasingly intrigued by an eccentrically dressed woman huddled over her drab knitting on a park bench outside, who keeps glancing at the ladies inside in a surreptitious manner. Could it possibly be…?
An attempt to intercept the maybe-Zelle fails, but Mouse has marked the house her quarry disappeared into for future investigation. Meanwhile, the encounter has triggered a flood memories of the summer in the 1920s when the four girls came together in their unlikely friendship, and which ultimately saw all of them launched on their forever-after paths due to decisions made in the passionate heat of those few torrid months.
I hesitate to go much further in my description of the plot, because I did so enjoy unravelling it all on my own, but I will say that it involves a whole lot of sex. Thinking about it, talking about it, plotting how best to go about arranging it, and of course doing it. There is nothing at all graphic, aside from some teasing reference – “I should write down all the details in my diary but well maybe I’ll just let it live in my memory…” – but these girls are all, in their own ways, carrying on very active love/sex lives. Mouse is assumed to be the most innocent, due to her relative youth (she’s eighteen) and child-like appearance (she’s tiny and innocent looking) but she turns out to be nothing of the sort, absolutely throwing herself into the experience, and eagerly shedding her virginity with only a few meditative regrets:
I was very happy too – in a way; I am finding that out as I write. I am, somehow…exorcising the loneliness. It will pass, it will pass.
But with it will pass someone I shall be a little sorry to lose: myself as I was before last night. Aunt Marion had a book of poems by Charles Cotton which she bought for the Lovat Fraser decorations, and in one poem are the lines:
She finds virginity a kind of ware That’s very, very troublesome to bear, And being gone she thinks will ne’er be missed.I think one will miss it, but only for a very little while. Soon one will forget that it ever meant anything. Perhaps it never did; already I can almost accept that. The great plane tree outside my window is just as beautiful it was that May night when I last wrote in my journal, though its summer leaves are a little less green than the leaves of spring…
Shades of Cassandra Mortmain, I believe I detect in these youthfully self-focussed musings.
The novel gives a fascinating glimpse of the world of the 1920s’ theatre, being very much involved with backstage life, and the details Dodie Smith gives are worth wading through the occasionally tiresome teenage angst of our narrator, and the annoyances that her full-speed-ahead-towards-the-goal persona occasionally engender.
The theatre scenes of the first half of the book are fascinating, though the focus changes (dramatically) once the love affairs start. I did feel that perhaps Mouse’s experiences in the theatre were a bit too plush-lined – she seems to end jam side up pretty well each and every time she stumbles, being taken in and indulged and helped and sheltered again and again and again, even by those she’s deliberately wronged. Rather special, is our Mouse.
I was relieved by the ending, which wasn’t as blissfully neat and tidy as I feared it would be, though it glossed over a whole lot of bothersome details, citing their unimportance due to the passing of four forgetful decades.
Dodie Smith gained my readerly good regard by her willingness to show that there were no fairy tale endings, or, more aptly, that there are really no endings at all (except the very obvious final final one); life does go on and on and on, with no attainment of a permanent goal, and, furthermore, it (life) can continue to be exceedingly interesting, no matter what your birth certificate lists your age as.
Much has been made in some of the other reviews I’ve read about the unexpected feminist elements and the surprising frankness regarding sex in this book, but I didn’t at all feel that these were unusually daring, because though the novel was for the most part set in the 1920s, it was written in the 1960s. Though our mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers kept a discreet silence (for the most part) about their personal sexual affairs, there is no doubt whatsoever that their private lives were just as sophisticated as anything going on in this generation, so any sort of “Gosh! Golly! Gee whiz! These girls were downright modern in their escapades!” attitude gets nothing but a yawn from me.
To sum up, The Town in Bloom is a rather better book, in my opinion, than The New Moon With the Old, though I Capture the Castle still occupies a niche set well above either of these.
I have several volumes of Dodie Smith’s biography waiting on the TBR shelves, but I do believe I will investigate some more of her fictions first, if I can get my hands on them. It Ends with Revelations will be the easiest to obtain, and after that I’m not quite sure where to go. Possibly a play or two? Dear Octopus has been recommended to me as worthy of reading. And maybe a revisit to the juveniles, to dally for a bit among the Dalmations…
Leaves & Pages 
I rather liked The New Moon with the Old but found the beginning of It Ends With Revelations so stagnant that I abandoned it and Smith’s other novels completely, focusing on her plays instead. Still, I think I’d like to come back and read this one. It does sound interesting and I love the theatrical backdrop.
And yes, yes, a thousand times yes to what you say about reviewers who are shocked by how “modern” ye olde writers are about sex. We’re positively puritanical now compared to what people were writing for most of the 20th Century.
Do try Dear Octopus! I think it is wonderful and maybe even as good as I Capture the Castle.
This sounds a fascinating novel by an author I’ve heard of but haven’t actually read, offering perhaps a different – dare I say it, more “realistic” – view of the 1920s theatrical world so brilliantly captured by JB Priestley in “The Good Companions” & “Lost Empires” and, before him, by the great Leonard Merrick in novels like “The Position of Peggy Harper.”
Claire makes an intelligent & I think very valid point, as you do in your review, re: our puritanical attitudes to literary sex. There was obviously plenty of it about in the 1920s, as there was in the 1900s, the 1890s & every era before that. It seems that every generation prefers to think it’s responsible for inventing said phenomenon, conveniently overlooking the fact that their own parents, grandparents & great-grandparents etc had to have come from somewhere & could not have magically “sprung into existence” fully formed. Perhaps it’s true what they say about youth being wasted on the young?
This one is definitely going on the “to read” list. Thanks again for another eye-opening review.
Before you get your hopes up too high, BR, I just want to emphasize that this is a very “light” sort of novel, definitely not up to the level of Priestley’s “The Good Companions” either in literary quality or complexity.
I think the term “permanent adolescence” which I saw somewhere describes Dodie Smith’s style very well; it’s all very sophisticated jeune fille, which gets tiresome quite quickly when she lets herself go. And the sex is very much veiled from view, though they (the girls in question) all talk about how marvelous it is that they’re all getting some, and they definitely use it for catching their men’s attention in with various end results.
And yes, having reached a certain age myself, I do believe that youth is rather wasted on the young! 😉 They do occasionally tend to think that they invented some of this stuff, which gives me many a silent inner chortle.
This sounds like fun. I’ve read I Capture.. of course but not been tempted to try any others till now. I love books about olden-days theatre and I think I’d enjoy it.
This one has little echoes of ICTC here and there, perhaps because it too is voiced by a young narrator. Actually, that’s not really correct, because the narrator in Town in Bloom is actually in her fifties, looking back to when she was eighteen. But the effect is similar. I was very surprised by how much I enjoyed Town in Bloom, though it doesn’t reach the excellence of the other (I Capture the Castle) in my opinion. I really didn’t care all that much for the other Dodie Smith “adult novel” I read, The New Moon With the Old, so this one was a pleasant surprise. The theatre setting is very nicely done; one can tell that Dodie Smith had first hand experience there!
I liked The Town in Bloom very much, though – like you – didn’t feel it was in the same class as I Capture the Castle, which will always remain at the summit I think. But it’s a good read, and very funny at times. I love her improvised role in the play… And her clothes were rather wonderful too. (special interest for me)
Yes, the clothes were definitely a bonus, weren’t they? Loved how Mouse was so scornful of the whole dropped hip thing and preferred something that accentuated her no-doubt-excellent girlish figure!
I’m vastly fond of The New Moon with the Old, despite its undeniable flaws, and I don’t remember being crazy about The Town in Bloom. But you’re making me want to give it another try anyway!
Isn’t that interesting! I felt like DS had let us down a bit in New Moon, with the all-over-the-place storylines – some were excellent, others not so much. I had a real problem with the secretary – Jane? – who completely fell for the father and defended his unethical behaviour. Wasn’t he an embezzler or something of the sort? Or at least involved in some rather dodgy financial investments using other people’s money. That part made me squirm – couldn’t dismiss it! But I thought Town in Bloom more cohesive. Perhaps it is the first person narration; there is a single voice all the way through, versus New Moon’s multiple viewpoints.
Both are very readable; I am looking forward to tracking down some of the other novels and plays.
Adding this one to my list…
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