With thanks to the publisher for the ebook
It probably comes as no surprise that after Hurricane Season, I was in need of another palate cleanser – my collection of Dean street press books were the obvious place to go.
The House in the Country by Ruth Adam is not to be confused with the Persephone title of the same name.
“This is a cautionary tale and true… Never fall in love with a house”
Straightaway then we sense that perhaps this story of a love affair with a house won’t be an entirely happy one.
There is still a lot of joy in this book, and it was a pleasure to spend time with. Really a quite different book though to the previous books I have read by Ruth Adam.
“It was the end of the war, and we were very tired of the squalor. We were tired of the blackout edging obscuring the daylight from the windows and of breakfasts of powdered egg eaten at noon because one had been fire-watching last night. We were so very tired of disorder – of living in one room to save fuel, of the smell of scraps boiling up for the backyard hens, of beds in the downstairs rooms and of grubby air-raid shelter in the tiny neglected garden.”
The novel – I think it is safe to still call this a novel, just – is based on Ruth Adam’s own experiences of sharing a large country house with some other families after the war. Here the narrator is unnamed until late in the book when she is revealed as Mrs Adam – i.e. Ruth herself – her husband is also unnamed – but we can take him to be Ruth’s own husband Kenneth Adam – who later became a director for the BBC. Together with their own three children and assorted friends and relations Lefty, Bob, Timmy and Diana the family set up home in a large country house in Kent.
After living through years of wartime privations, bad food, cold, unsuitable housing, blackouts and rationing Ruth and her friends decide to live the dream they have had so long. The fantasy life they talked about through years of hardship – to live in a house in the country where they will have space and privacy and the opportunity to enjoy the world around them in all its beauty. They envisage open fires and good food – a larder stocked with hams. An advertisement in the Times – a large country house for rent, attracts their attention – the finances carefully worked out – everything divided by six – and it’s not long before they are actually moving in.
There is a lot of lovely detail here about setting up the house – allocating rooms, decorating, and laying out their scant pile of furniture and possessions in the large spaces of this thirty-three roomed house. All houses have their quirks and odd little features, even small ones. This house comes with a temperamental boiler, five kitchens a resident bat, stabling and a wonderful garden stocked with flowers. It is also possessed of a head gardener – Howard – who once worked for the previous owner – and has been taking care of the empty house throughout the war. He is a marvellous character – prefacing almost every speech to Ruth with the words “don’t you say nothing…” before immediately setting off to put right what ever is wrong. He fixes the boiler, sees about leaks, and intercedes with his late employer’s daughter who turns up wanting her lino and apple tree retuned. Howard is a marvel with one of Ruth’s young sons she is charmed by the affect this new way of life is having on him.
“Every boy should have a year at the heels of an old craftsman sometime in his life. A dozen nursery schools could not have given Colin the half of what Howard gave him. Howard accepted him, with serious and conscientious calm, like a schoolmaster who has got countless generations of boys through their first Latin primer and then let them go, satisfied that the foundations have been well laid.”
Howard will have absolutely no truck with the nearby village. However, Ruth’s household include those who could be called loosely – BBC types – and they impress themselves on the villagers by producing a radio star to open the village fete. Many of the relationships built up through the years spent in this house are with those who come to work here. There are a succession of staff – and in the description of their comings and goings, working days and carefully worked out rotas I can see something of those socially historical details that Ruth Adam writes about elsewhere. The world has changed, and those who work in large house now have set hours, duties laid down and timetables stuck to – these are the kind of details that Ruth Adam is so good at laying before her readers.
The novel covers something like eight years – and so there is a sense of time hurrying by – and perhaps a few pages cover quite a length of time. Some of the original residents of the house move on – new arrangements are put in place – money becomes an issue. There are triumphs and disasters – and some pretty horrific rats – and the house changes with the departure and arrival of those who come to stay, this includes paying, foreign guests and household staff who become part of the family.
We know from the beginning that this wasn’t a forever home – and so the time inevitably comes when Ruth and her family leave this house – there is a sense of poignancy and moving on. The end of an era for them, and a lovely reading experience for us.
Great review and well-written post! Expecting more of your posts! 🙂
Thank you, hope you enjoy them.
This sounds lovely apart from the rats! Given how important home is in most people’s lives it’s surprising houses don’t feature more in fiction although Anne Patchett’s The Dutch House may set a trend.
Houses are great vehicles for storytelling, I think. I bought The Dutch House for my sister at Christmas she really liked it.
I think most of us have a ‘dream’ house – and I suspect most of them would prove to be not quite what we had hoped for. Imagine having to keep five kitchens clean – one defeats me on a bad day!
Yes, those kitchens would have been beyond me too. My dream house wouldn’t be especially big.
Sounds like we had a very similar experience! Lovely review.
Yes I think so, thank you.
Lovely review! It’s so nice to learn about a “new” author. I must definitely check out Ruth Adam — I’m not familiar with her work but your comment about her use of sociological details is quite intriguing. I love novels about how people form these webs of connections & extensions of the family structure beyond biology; I’m also quite interested in reading about those brave souls who decide to “live the dream” (I think this is a tourist slogan somewhere or other!). I only recently discovered Dean Street Press and its Furrowed Middlebrow Series when I was browsing for a classic crime read. The books really looked interesting and I almost picked this one (confession here: I loved the cover) but opted for “Table Two” instead. Table was a thoroughly enjoyable read (I finished it last week) so I’ll definitely be coming back for more.
Glad you like the sound of this one. Dean Street are excellent. Table Two was such a good one, loved the details of office life.
This does sound rather lovely, almost reminiscent of some of Barbara Pym’s wartime fiction from the Civil to Strangers collection (which I read fairly recently). Maybe some touches of The Diary of a Provincial Lady, too. You really do make it seem very absorbing…
Perhaps more the PL, though not a million miles from Pym I suppose. It was a lovely read.
Lovely post, Ali, and it sounds like this was the perfect antidote to the harshness of Hurricane Season. And much more like autobiography than fiction, but nevertheless still lovely. Makes me long for a house in the country myself!!
It was a good antidote. I love the idea of a house in the country until I consider the practicalities. Especially as I don’t drive.
This does sound evocative of a very particular time. The second quote you pulled conveys so much. I’d be really interested to read this author, where would you recommend I start Ali?
Well her book A Woman’s Place is highly thought of (published by Persephone) though I haven’t read it yet. I loved I’m not Complaining by her, an old Virago.
Thanks Ali!
This must be a fascinating read just for the insights into daily life right after the war.
It was a lovely read, a good glimpse at how things were changing and also how desperate people were for some comfort and peace after the war.
What a lovely review Ali and this seems like one of those quiet but interesting reads!
Thank you, yes that’s a pretty good description.
I loved this – like you of course I’m really interested in what happened just post-war and the societal changes which, as you say, we see through the lens of the house. It was good to be prepared for the sadness of leaving right from the start, I think, as it stopped me getting too invested in them living there forever. Loved all the details, even the sad ones.
Those post war societal changes always interest me. I was sad to see them leave the house, but glad we had known that from the start.
[…] of all, thank you to the bloggers who alerted me to this book: Liz at Librofulltime and heavenali. I’d never have found this one without […]
Funny, I’d forgotten the Persephone title, but immediately thought of the Carr novel, A Month in the Country (I think?). This sounds like a delight. And brings to mind Lettice Cooper’s A New House, which is a favourite of mine.
I also loved A New House, this one was a delight.