Rhododendron Pie – Margery Sharp (1930)

With thanks to Dean street press for the review ebook

Rhododendrom Pie was Margery Sharp’s first novel – it is famously hard to find and generally expensive when a copy comes up for sale. Therefore, there was great excitement among Margery Sharp fans when Dean Street Press announced it as one of the titles in their next batch of releases which are out at the beginning of January. I actually read this at the end of October – but have held my review back for a few weeks – it didn’t really seem quite fair to dangle a book in front of your noses when you couldn’t buy it for another two months – now at least you don’t have long to wait.

The story concerns Ann Laventie and her family. The Laventies are a family of social snobs, they see themselves as intellectual or artistic, they are cool and composed. The beauty of their surroundings matters to them enormously – an ugly chair for example is just not to be born no matter how comfortable it might be. Living at Whitenights in the Sussex countryside, they keep at arm’s length people they find dull or ordinary – and are known for not being very sociable locally. Ann however is rather different to her parents, her brother Dick and sister Elizabeth – she gets a lot of pleasure out of the ordinary things in life – and though she is proud of her family, and loves them, she feels unable to admit always to how she really feels about things.

One of the things Ann keeps quiet about is the odd family birthday tradition of presenting whoever’s birthday it is with a floral pie – a thing of beauty which naturally can’t actually be eaten.

“Every year she had hoped against hope, and every year the lovely inedible petals have cheated her. For she has a fundamental, instinctive conviction that they are out of place, Flowers are beautiful in gardens … and in houses, of course … but in a pie you want fruit. Apples. Hot and fragrant and faintly pink, with lots of juice … and cloves. She wished there had been apples in her pie.”

Dick is a sculptor, Elizabeth has become a writer of rather fine essays, Ann does not really have a talent – she is more down to earth, kind, practical and a good friend. Mrs Laventie had some kind of accident years earlier and is now disabled, and we get the impression that Mr Laventie takes himself off to Paris whenever it suits him to do so. The family have what they clearly all see as a more intelligent and progressive attitude to life. While the Laventies generally rather approve of the bohemian lifestyle of Elizabeth and Dick’s London friends and of people living together rather than marrying – Ann rather likes the idea of a white wedding with orange blossom and living happily ever after. She loves the garden at the family home in Sussex and enjoys living in the country. She does not entirely fit in with her sister’s friends in London, although on a visit to London, Ann easily makes friends and is found by everyone around her to be very likeable indeed.

“Ann settled down on the grass again with her chin on her fists and one shoe waving in the air. She wasn’t reading really, only pretending to, so that the others wouldn’t talk to her. It was too nice in the garden to talk. How queer to think she was lying on the surface of the world…an enormous warm green ball spinning slowly through space somewhere, under a lime tree like a sliver of grass, a minute pink dot.”

Ann is good friends with the Gayford family from next door – they are a large, noisy, loving family – a little chaotic, relaxed, and unpretentious and really quite different to the Laventie family. She is particularly fond of John Gayford, a gloriously ordinary young man, who works in the nearby town as a bank clerk. The Laventies sneer just a little at the Gayfords, react to a picnic invitation with eye rolling irritation and are certain that they are on a higher plane altogether.

“Ann reflected with pleasure that she was always known for English at sight – like Dr Gayford, who was invariably answered in his mother tongue whenever he tried to order a meal in French. They were English too – more than that, Sussex – and – well, Ann liked the Gayfords. And she liked Jimmy and James and Delia, and the next time an opportunity occurred she would say so. The flags of Ann’s rebellion swept on unchecked…”

When Gilbert, a handsome screenwriter comes to Whitenights from London to visit – he rather turns Ann’s head. Gilbert’s view of the future though would be totally different to Ann’s dreams – after a whirlwind visit to London, Ann is rather glad to get back home and happy to see stolid, sensible John Gayford again. John Gayford would not be the Laventie choice of suitor for their daughter however, John challenges Ann’s assumptions about him and his family – and while Ann has to find her way to her own happiness she must also find a way of reconciling her family to what she wants. 

Rhododendron Pie is a lovely book, in this first novel by Margery Sharp we can see something of the writer she was to become, as a debut it is excellent. A charming, whimsical novel which I am delighted to see back in print.