Good Daughters – Mary Hocking (1984)

(My second reading for All Virago/All August – although I read a lovely Abacus edition)

Mary Hocking has been a recent discovery for many of us over on the Librarything  Virago group. I read A Particular place a couple of months ago, and knew immediately I wanted to read all her books. How delicious it is to discover a new author. Mary Hocking – who it seems is scandalously out of print – is a lovely sort of mash up of Elizabeth Taylor and Barbara Pym, also her books seem reasonably easy to get hold of second hand -phew! Why someone like Persephone or Virago aren’t rushing to re-issue her books is something of a mystery.

Good Daughters is the first book in Mary Hocking’s Fairley family trilogy – I have the next two waiting to be read.  The novel opens in 1933, the world is on the brink of great change, and so is the Fairley family. Sisters: Louise, Alice and Claire live in a traditional family home ina suburban street with their parents. Stanley  Fairley is the headmaster of a boys school and a Methodist lay preacher. Although a loving father Stanley is quite strict with his daughters, he finds so much in the changing world around him to disapprove of. Louise wants to be an actress,and her requests to take acting parts in a dramatic society production are met with great suspicion. Alice invents stories, climbs trees and over the course of three years begins growing up and making sense of the world around her. Most of the story of the Fairley family is seen through Alice’s eyes who seems to be a fairly autobiographical creation.  The youngest sister is Claire a dreamer, who finds it hard to keep her sister’s secrets.

It was apparent that the head of the house was present. Although he lacked the stature for natural authority, being a little short of medium height, he nevertheless, on entering a room, contrived the impression of a substantial force; an effect achieved mainly by a certain fierceness of expression and the thrusting of his stocky body against the air as though he was forever pushing an unseen opponent before him. Forcefulness alone would probably not have been sufficient to sustain dominance over a long period of time, but he was fortunate in having his wife’s support. She had suffered in her own childhood from the lack of a man at the head of the table and was not minded to go through her marriage as her mother had hers. She therefore reinforced her husband’s position while not always accepting his judgement

Next door to the Fairley family live the Vaseyelin family, the Fairley sisters are drawn into the lives of Jacov and Katia and their faded mother, their father who doesn’t live with his family but plays Violin outside a London station. It is at the Vaseyelin house that they meet Guy Immingham.  Katia goes to school with Alice, and they are good friends, but Alice’sother friend Daphne Drummond doesn’t like Katia. Both Daphne and Katia’s families differ to the Fairley’s and  Alice’s involvement with them change her, and influence her understanding of the world. Daphne’s father is a deeply unpleasant man, Alice witnesses him with another woman, and his right wing politics have influenced the way Daphne thinks too.  Louise is friends with both Jacov and Guy, both of whom are involved with the drama she loves so much, Jacov in helping to produce the play she is hoping to take part in, and Guy as a fellow actor. Guy’s mother is a snooty woman who lives her life through her golden boy, she strongly disapproves of Louise and considering her determined to “get” her son. Claire is able only to fully commit herself to one friend at a time, and we see her changing childish allegiances and the way her friend of the moment directs her behaviour at home. Poor Claire suffers a bit from being the youngest often the last to know what is going on, required to keep quiet about things she is dying to talk about, and necessarily reduced to frequent tears when she incurs her sister’s wrath.

Mary Hocking re-creates family life at this crucial changing time in England’s history faithfully and realistically, there is a fantastic sense of time and place, lots of good period detail. Alice spends a lot of time at cinema, mooning about the 1930’s stars of the silver screen. Stanley Fairely keeps a eye on the news from Europe, and Alice expresses mild concern at Katia’s proposed trip to her Grandparents in Bavaria.

I know a lot of people out there are reading or planning to read Mary Hocking so I am loathe to say too much more about the story. This is an excellent start to a trilogy which I know know I will continue to enjoy, and I am looking forward to the rest of the trilogy with enthusiasm.