The Weather in the Streets – Rosamond Lehmann

Amazon Editorial Review:

Taking up where Invitation to the Waltz left off, The Weather in the Streets shows us Olivia Curtis ten years older, a failed marriage behind her, thinner, sadder, and apprently not much wiser. A chance encounter on a train with a man who enchanted her as a teenager leads to a forbidden love affair and a new world of secret meetings, brief phone calls, and snatched liaisons in anonymous hotel rooms. Years ahead of its time when first published, this subtle and powerful novel shocked even the most stalwart Lehmann fans with its searing honesty and passionate portrayal of clandestine love.

Absolutely loved this book. I finished it (very) late last night and have been thinking about the characters on and off all day today. Surely that is a sign of a great book. Written in 1936 this novel was years ahead of it’s time, with it’s story of an extra marital affair, secret meetings and hotel rooms and the resulting consequences. Olivia is ten years older than when we last met her in the also brilliant An invitation to the waltz. Her marriage has broken down, and she lives with her cousin Etty in a small London house, works for a photographer and associates with other artists and writers in a somewhat bohemian style existence. Things begin to change when she meet Rollo Spencer, whom she had fantasised about in her youth, on a train. Like so many other authors of this period I have found the real brilliance of Rosamund Lehmann is in the detail – her writing is exquisite – but her sense of time and place, her characterisation, and the way in which those characters speak to the reader is just excellent. The way in which, for example, Rosamund Lehmann portrays Olivia’s sister’s children, as they play in the garden, in one small (not especially important) section is a fine example, it was just so beautifully written I was thoroughly impressed.