It was March 30, 1924. It was Mothering Sunday. Milly had her mother to go to. But the Nivens' maid had her simple liberty, and half a crown to go with it. Then the telephone had rung, rapidly altering her previous plan. No, she wouldn't be having a picnic.For such a short work, Mothering Sunday is a near perfect little gem; a book about memory and history and self-discovery. While within its pages, the main character Jane (who eventually becomes a writer herself) muses on the differences between “narratives”, “tales”, and “yarns”, author Graham Swift has chosen to subtitle this book “A Romance” and that descriptor with its dual meanings fits perfectly: right down to opening with “Once upon a time...” This book begins, indeed, with a scene of romance, and as it then twists and circles into ever greater revelations, I don't think it would be fair to reveal much of anything in this first paragraph: be forewarned if you find spoilers hereafter! As a final peremptory remark: I was fortunate enough to receive an ARC of this book, so the quotes I share may not be in their final forms.
Jane Fairchild, born in 1901, was a foundling; abandoned on the steps of a “good” orphanage that provided her with an optimistic name, a decent education, and an upbringing that left her suitable to enter into service to the upper middle-class of rural England. At fourteen, Jane was brought on as a maid for the Niven family (who had recently lost their only children, two sons, in WWI) and at fifteen, she began a sexual relationship with the only surviving son of the Sheringhams on the neighbouring estate. While at first this might have justly been considered prostitution, at the opening of Mothering Sunday, Jane makes it clear that for some years now she had been receiving pleasure in place of sixpence from Mister Paul. And yet, on this March day that feels like June, on a holiday in which household servants are permitted the day off to go visit their mothers (and since Jane, having none, is left at her simple liberty), Jane knows that this will be her last assignation with Mister Paul: he is set to marry in two weeks time. For now, she lies post-coitally naked in his bed (in his bed for the first and only time while the Hobson servants are absent from the house), and as she silently encourages him to feast his eyes, Jane watches as her lover slowly and meticulously readies himself for a lunch date with his betrothed. This day and this moment are so pivotal to the person Jane eventually becomes that it is returned to over and over, the author slowly providing more depth and detail, and even when Jane is in her 90s and being interviewed about her own literary career, this day is always in the back of her mind; the one story she has never told. There never was a day like this, nor ever would or could be again.
I enjoyed the many layers of meaning, some ironic, to this notion of “Mothering Sunday”: all the servants going off to their mothers, leaving their employers helpless as children; Jane herself having no mother; mothers of all classes having lost their sons to the Great War; Jane feeling that on this day she became the mother of the person she was meant to be; not yet knowing that she would never have children herself. In a terrific and suspenseful scene, after Paul Sheringham leaves for his luncheon, Jane wanders his family manse naked, and when she gets to the library, she opens a book and holds it to her bare breasts. When she returns home later, Jane's employer Mister Niven has distressing news ***spoiler*** Mister Paul has died in a car crash; perhaps intentionally ***spoiler***, and as he weeps against his young maid's breast, she can only respond as a consoling mother might. I also enjoyed the slow revelation of how Jane's experiences not only paved the way for her writing career but also how she transformed these same experiences into her fiction; as a meditation on the writing life, on Jane's long history with words and novels, this book took some deep plunges.
She would become a writer, and because she was a writer, or because it was what had made her become a writer, be constantly beset by the inconstancy of words. A word was not a thing, no. A thing was not a word. But somehow the two – things – became inseparable. Was everything a great fabrication? Words were like an invisible skin, enwrapping the world and giving it reality. Yet you could not say the world would not be there, would not be real if you took away the words. At best it seemed that things might bless the words that distinguished them, and that words might bless everything.So there is heft to this slim volume and marvelous skill at work on every page. Contrary to my usual complaint, I wasn't put off by this male author's attempts to speak from the female perspective; everything about Jane's thoughts and experiences rang absolutely true to me (and as though to preempt any such complaints, I enjoyed the notion that all of Jane's authorial influences were male because she was reading from the dead sons' adventure books collection, and besides, everything in 1924 was of masculine influence; hard to argue with that). So why only four stars? Mothering Sunday is a very clever and masterfully constructed book – the repetitions and circlings that take the whole book to lay out this one day that birthed an entire life is the art of a maestro – but while it completely engaged me intellectually, I wasn't made to feel very much at all. I still recommend this highly and wouldn't be surprised to see this title come up again at award season.
We are all fuel. We are born, and we burn, some of us more quickly than others. There are different kinds of combustion. But not to burn, never to catch fire at all, that would be a sad life, wouldn't it?
