My second read for the 1920 club was The Happy Foreigner by Enid Bagnold, a book which was re-issued by Virago back in the 1980s, though I don’t own that edition. I read a free copy on my kindle which I have had six years. Back in 2014 the Librarything Virago group undertook a Great War theme read, I acquired several books for that which I didn’t get around to reading, and this was one of them.
Enid Bagnold was herself a nurse and a driver during WW1, and in this novel she recounts some of the sights and experiences of those days. She had already published her Diary without Dates in 1917 – about her experiences as a nurse (another for my wishlist) and went on to write lots more novels, plays and poetry as well as raise a family. She is probably best known today for National Velvet but the only one of her novels I had previously read was her 1938 novel The Squire now re-issued by Persephone.
In a way there is a limit to what I can say about this novel – because there is really very little in the way of plot. This may account for the high number of one and two star reviews of Goodreads, I strongly disagree with those assessments, I enjoyed this book a lot. It has a very strong sense of place, characters coming second to that I think, but I found it all very evocative.
In 1918, as the war in Europe comes to an end, a young Englishwoman Fanny is working with the French army as a driver. She moves around the country driving officers from place to place, living in a variety of temporary accommodations and putting up with a lack of decent food. Fanny is part of a group of other women, several of whom are also English, her closest friend she refers to always by her family name of Stewart. The women have all been given rudimentary mechanical instruction and pretty much left to their own devices, orders come in for them to move on the next location and off they go.
In the city of Metz, a city with a large German population, Fanny and her colleagues are invited to a dance. Here she meets Julien, a French army officer with whom she falls in love. Their relationship, and their attempts to see one another as they are both moved around the country forms one the main plot lines of the novel.
“He seemed to close his eyes a little then and lean his head towards her. She looked at the drooping, half-lit head, and she knew that she had him without fear of escape. Knew too, that the moment was brief. Their recent, undeclared silence brooded as though still with them, half regretful and departing angel. “You will have other beauties,” she said to her heart, “but none like this silence.””
However, it is mainly Fanny’s experiences of France at this critical time that stay with the reader. Not everyone is as relaxed as Fanny, many of the French army are already sick and tired of the sight and sound of American troops. The years of war have clearly taken their toll. She is a tough young woman, resourceful and independent – she is able to find great peace in being by herself. Everywhere, she sees the scars of war, the devasted villages, signs in German, the ruined landscape.
“Upon a large rough signpost the word “Foucaucourt” was painted in white letters. A village of spars and beams and broken bricks–yet here, as everywhere, returning civilians hunted like crows among the ruins, carrying beams and rusty stoves, and large umbrellas for the rain.”
Driving a Russian officer to Verdun, Fanny spends the night in an underground citadel – where she is something of a novel sight to the men, who are frequently bemused that the English should allow their women to do such work.
“She no longer felt defiant towards the spoken and unspoken criticism she met everywhere: “What kind of women can these be whose men allow them to drive alone with us for hours, and sometimes days?” but had begun to apologise for it even to herself, while it sometimes caused her bewilderment.”
During a snowstorm Fanny sneaks out to meet Julien who is just across the river, their romantic evening almost ends in disaster and the risk of scandal when Fanny is prevented from returning by the snow until the next morning. On another trip Fanny is robbed by Chinese soldiers, and we get the sense of a country teaming with tired, hungry troops from all over the world.
In Charleville, Fanny is given a place to stay in a house by herself, here she waits several weeks to see Julien again, probably for the last time. Her return to England isn’t far off, and she takes the time to enjoy her solitude, until the homeowner returns furious to find Fanny billeted there.
Well it certainly took me long enough to get around to reading this one, but I am very glad that I did.
This sounds fascinating! I’m not organised enough to do the 1920 week – but I am greatly enjoying reading the reviews.
I found it both fascinating and evocative, I’m enjoying everyone else’s reviews too.
This sounds fascinating. Not So Quiet by Helen Zenna Smith really stayed with me, so I’d be interested to read this as a similar theme but set just after the war. I have The Squire by Bagnold in the TBR which I must get to soon as well!
Not so Quiet is a brilliant novel. I can also recommend We that Were Young by Irene Rathbone a similar novel. I think these fictionalised versions of what these women did are both fascinating and important. It’s a shame they aren’t more widely read.
Oh great, thanks Ali, I’ll look out for the Rathbone.
I picked up “A Diary without Dates” in a second hand shop ages ago and haven’t got round to reading it yet, but this review has inspired me to give it a go!
Oh good, really hope you enjoy that. I need to get myself a copy.
I also have a rather battered second hand copy of A Date Without Dates that I have yet to read. Glad you enjoyed this one. It sounds a fascinating read.
It was fascinating, I hope you enjoy Diary without Dates, I’m definitely keen to read it now.
From your review I get this is not a traditional historical fiction. Still, it sounds fascinating. Thanks for posting.
Well probably not strictly speaking historical fiction as it was written at around this period rather than much later. There isn’t a strong plot, but many good novels don’t have a strong plot, it’s not always important. The strong, evocative sense of place makes up for it.
Sounds wonderful Ali – books like this, which capture women’s experiences during the war, should be in print because it’s easy to forget the part the played.
Absolutely, I do agree. I can probably see why this hasn’t been reissued recently, it’s probably not a novel that would have wide appeal. I think it’s so important these stories of women in WW1 are not lost.
Ah, I’ve been wondering where I’d heard Bagnold’s name before, so your mention of National Velvet solves the mystery. A different war and role, but in some respects this sounds a little like Inez Holden’s novella, Night Shift, inspired by her experiences of factory work during WW2. A fascinating insight into an important role.
Yes, accounts, whether fiction or non fiction are so much more powerful when written during the period I think. Night Shift was a fantastic little novella, and like this very revealing.
That sounds a very interesting one. She certainly wrote about some varied topics!
Yes, she certainly does seem to have.
[…] HeavenAli […]
Glad this was a success! I’ve still not read anything at all by Bagnold, and don’t have this one, but sounds like a great spotlight on the time. Even if not plotty!
Yes, a very good spotlight indeed. Plot isn’t always crucial anyway.
Whenever I think of a woman driving for the war effort, I visualise that ginger-haired girl in the English mini-series of mysteries Foyle’s War. (I’ve never finished watching the series, but I’ve enjoyed the episodes i’ve seen.) The style of writing in this Bagnold novel sounds a little like Sarah Orne Jewett’s Country of the Pointed Firs, although set on the east-coast of the United States and written a few decades earlier, because it simultaneously feels like a lot happens in the book — you’re always meeting someone new and observing developments in their lives and community — and, yet, when it comes to trying to summarize it, it just feels like LIFE.
Yes it does feel like life. I also enjoyed Foyles’s War, a different war but such a good series.
I love to read the women’s life on war period and your list is astonishing!! Never heard about this books but now they are in my TBR ! Thanks for this wonderful review!
Excellent, hope you enjoy it.
I am clearly late to your blog but thanks for your recommendation of the Happy Foreigner. I have just finished reading it and as you say it offers an amazing insight into the life of a woman driver in the immediate aftermath of the war. My grandmother drove lorries for the Canadian Lumber Corps in France in 1917 & 1918 so I am particularly intrigued by the tale.
She, my grandmother was the inspiration for Julie in Robert Keable’s war novel Simon Called Peter. If you enjoyed Happy Foreigner you might enjoy Simon Called Peter (published in 1921) as it has a strong female lead and also captures the life of the time.
I’m glad you found me.
Thank you for that recommendation.