For me, this is the hardest type of book to review. A fairly complex novel, light on plot that is the second in a trilogy, by an author perhaps not many people read anymore. I ask myself – who will be interested? – ha! Oh well, years ago I made a rule to review everything I read – and so here we are.
Love in Winter is the second novel in The Mirror in Darkness trilogy by Storm Jameson, rather absurdly I read the first book Company Parade seven years ago. It would be fair to say my memory of it was practically nil. Yet that didn’t really spoil my reading of this one – thankfully, I had my own old review to look back at as a slight memory refresher. This trilogy is only a part of a series of interconnected novels written over a period of about twenty years.
Margaret Storm Jameson was born in 1891 the daughter of a sea captain and former ship builder in Whitby North Yorkshire. She was very political, involved in the suffrage movement, taking part in the women’s pilgrimage march in 1913 she was a founding member of the Peace Pledge Union, and a supporter of the Labour Party. These influences are present throughout this novel – and much of her other work I suspect.
There is a strong autobiographical element to this novel too – the relationship at the heart of this novel between Hervey Russell and Nicholas Roxby representing that of Storm Jameson and her husband Guy Chapman. Storm Jameson like her heroine Hervey Russell, also a writer, preferring to keep her own name for work.
This novel takes place six years after the end of the Great War. Yorkshire woman Hervey Russell is living in London, she is still only about thirty, though she has been married for some years and has an eight year old son. After the war, Hervey’s husband Penn Vane decided that despite being well past the usual age he would take up a place at university. Their marriage has not been a happy one, with Penn’s decision to go to Oxford leaves Hervey having to support herself and her son alone. She has already published two novels but her foray into the literary world has not been quite the success she had hoped. Working on her next novel which will be part of a trilogy, she also works for the Literary Review – run by the wife of one of her great friends. With her career proving unsatisfying and existing within an unhappy marriage Hervey is longing for a new beginning.
Hervey’s cousin Nicholas Roxby (who due to complicated family conflicts Hervey hasn’t met in years) has been terribly affected by the war. He has turned his back on the family money – separated from his wife he sees his life as being over. Meeting Hervey changes all that. Nicholas has been managing an antique shop and is about to set up his own house as a showroom for antique furniture. Theirs is meeting of minds, but it is also the start of a love story.
“‘…do you know that for a fortnight I have gone about saying to myself “Hervey”, and carrying your letters.
In silence she showed him his own five or six, worn from being rubbed together in her pocket with keys and pencils and a provident knot of string. Nicholas reddened as though he had been much younger, and said: ‘Oh my dear Hervey.’”
Hervey and Nicholas are immediately drawn to one another but their burgeoning relationship is complicated by the fact they are both married and Hervey has a child to think about. The two of them have a lot of soul searching to do, decisions about divorces will need to be made, the path before them does not run smooth.
The war still casts a long shadow, it changed so much, men and women have been changed by it – some physically many emotionally. There are several men, damaged in various ways by the war in this novel – and we meet the women who have to live with those effects.
“With despair she understood that the War had taken the fullness of his life and energy. Less than a whole man survived. She saw that women have more than one reason to fear war.”
Outside of the story of Hervey and Nicholas we have the stories of the wider society that surround them and to which they are each connected in some tenuous way. There is Thomas Harben the industrialist, Marcel Cohen a newspaper magnate, Louis Earlham, a former soldier and now Labour MP – a man who has known poverty, and whose life is still far from easy. The working class ex-soldier Frank Rigden a trade unionist and his wife, living in the new cheap housing that has sprung up to accommodate families after the war. There are others – there is a large, complex cast of characters, Jameson does give us a brilliant sense of this shifting society, those looking towards politics to change things and those trying to make money. At the centre of all these people is William Gary, another war damaged man, a man of wealth who pulls the strings of many men of business and politics.
Love in Winter was an enjoyable read, but not a quick read, a novel of some ambition it feels very much like a middle novel in a trilogy – a novel perhaps building up to something. I know the third novel None Turn Back centres around the General strike of 1926. It’s a book I have had for years, but I felt I had to read this one first, and I am glad I did.
I’m interested Ali 🙂 I have Company Parade in the TBR and you’ve encouraged me to move it to the top of the pile. Mixing fiction and politics isn’t easy but it sounds like she manages it well.
Thank you, I really hope you enjoy Company Parade. I think Storm Jameson is such an interesting writer, I shall definitely read more.
Jameson has been on my tbr for so, so long, but have yet to read any of her fiction – only a really good essay called Mr Robinson and the Georgian Novel. But I am certainly interested! Also love that I’m not the only one who reads a series so far apart that I might as well not have read the first one 😀
I know, I really should have invested in a copy of this book years ago. She is such an interesting writer, she seems to have written several books about the same family. I must continue to read her.
You could have given some sense of what this “very political” POV is; omitting that seems like omitting the heart of a body. We can guess from your details, but you could have articulated it clearly. Ought to have.
There are no ‘oughts’ on someone’s personal blog – though perhaps there are for commenting etiquette. Please be polite!
” She was very political, involved in the suffrage movement, taking part in the women’s pilgrimage march in 1913 she was a founding member of the Peace Pledge Union, and a supporter of the Labour Party.
Thank you, glad you noticed that. 😉
I don’t understand why you felt the need to be so rude in your comment. It’s fine to have an opinion but you could have made it in a way that was more respectful
This does actually sound very good and one I’m pleased to be alerted to, so I’m not put off by your opening sentence! It looks very interesting in the way she puts her personal politics around the Left and women’s issues into her work, areas I enjoy reading about if not shoehorned in too clumsily (and even then, to be fair!).
Thank you, I think you can definitely detect her personal values in the novel, but she doesn’t rub your face in it too much.
I’m interested, Ali, what a great review! I love this period, as you say, so much in people’s lives had changed after the War and would go on to change even more. Some ‘Bohemian’ tendancies creeping in, but not everyone could live like the Bloomsbury crowd. And I love a review that doesn’t tell me the whole story… Am intrigued and off to see if I can track down the trilogy. Thanks!
It really is a fascinating period so much was happening. Women’s lives were definitely changing and the War was still everywhere in a sense. Hope you can track the books down.
I’m definitely interested, Ali, since I have this trilogy on my TBR! Storm Jameson is another fascinating woman author, and I loved this post – so interesting, and it sounds from what you say as if she manages to mix the political and the personal so well, somewhat like Ellen Wilkinson did in “Clash”. The fact that the third volume covers the General Strike makes me think she’s covering similar territory too. Lovely review, and I must try to dig these out soon!
Ooh yes, I had forgotten our Storm Jameson conversation on Zoom. Lol. I think there would be a lot to interest you in these books. I am looking forward to reading the third because after reading Clash by Ellen Wilkinson, I am fascinated by the General Strike.
I’ve been aware of Storm Jameson for a while without knowing too much about her particular style or areas of focus – so, I’m grateful for this introduction to her work, even if it is the second instalment in a trilogy! It sounds as if she captures those shifts in socio-political dynamics really well, in a very interesting period of social change. Definitely a writer I’ll bear in mind for the future. 🙂
I think it’s that socio-political element that I find so fascinating in novels of this period. Jameson clearly had her own interest in portraying it faithfully. Glad to hear you might be interested in reading her one day.
This is all completely new to me but it sounds good, thank you definitely an author to look out for.
Happy to introduce you to a new author.
I was given pause by your first paragraph; at times reviews are ridiculously difficult to write. Yet it seems the most important reviews are for the books that no one else is reading or currently caring about simply because of that fact. Thanks for your extra effort in writing this one.
Also, I guffawed aloud at a few comments. What a treat to have such ! fiesty ! commentors on a difficult blog entry!
Thank you. Yes, I do like to tell people about books that aren’t so well known now.
Thank you Ali I love your reviews and I loved this review. Storm Jameson is a wonderful writer. I’m actually rereading Company Parade at the moment. I was very intrigued when I read a few weeks ago a slightlier earlier novel of Jameson’s called That was Yesterday published in 1925. Copies are available on Abebooks. It was an earlier volume of this series which had all the main characters and the birth of Hervey’s son and deterioration of her marriage to Penn. it concluded with Hervey going to London to work just where Company Parade starts. It was a great novel but is not included when the trilogy was republished by Virago. This earlier forgotten volume helped me with understanding the characters and plot. Very puzzling why this novel disappeared from the trilogy. Anyway thank you so much Ali for your insightful reviews
Thank you very much. That earlier novel does sound interesting. She seems to have written quite a few books about this family. I think there is another trilogy about Hervey’s grandmother.
This is a great review and intriguing too. I’ve only read one of Storm Jameson’s novels, The Hidden River. It’s about a French family shortly after the end of another war, the Second. I have forgotten a lot of the details – I think there’s some coming to terms with what people did during the war – but I thought it was very good, it felt very solid and ‘real’ although Jameson herself was of course not French. I definitely want to read more of her work.
I have got a copy of The Hidden River, so it’s great to know it’s good. She’s such an interesting writer, and I definitely need to read more by her soon.
So…all of her books are connected somehow, many of them around this one family, in different eras or focussing on different characters? Wow, right up my street. Like Simon above, I’ve got several of her novels (and, stories, too, I think?) but have never read one. This interconnectedness though…cinches my interest (in connection to your enjoyment, of course). Maybe you’ll be inspired to carry on without waiting another seven years. Ha
Well they aren’t all connected, she wrote a lot, but she seems to have written a couple of trilogies about different generations of the same family.