On Our Bookshelves: The Summer Before the War

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NOVEL: The Summer Before the War

YEAR OF PUBLICATION: 2016

REVIEW:

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I was really quite excited to read The Summer Before the War when the book came out in 2016. I’d enjoyed Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand tremendously and was looking forward to seeing what else Helen Simonson had to say. I can’t explain why on earth it took me until 2021 to read it, but I’m glad I finally did. I took it along with me on a driving trip from the east coast to the midwest and back this summer, dipping into it at rest stops and while lounging at the hotel pool. It did not disappoint.

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The Summer Before the War is actually rather ingeniously constructed. It starts as a slow-moving, low-stakes story in Rye, a small English town, in 1914. Beatrice Nash, a young woman, has been appointed the local school’s Latin teacher, due to the machinations of Agatha Kent, who has used much of her social capital promoting this slightly scandalous bit of gender progress. Beatrice, still reeling from the death of her father, is fleeing her controlling and unsympathetic relatives and has taken the job in an effort to maintain her independence, something rather hard to do, as the relatives control the purse strings, and female Latin teachers are not paid particularly well. Fortunately, she is clever, attractive, and charming, and Ms. Kent soon draws her into her family circle. Beatrice begins to enjoy the beauty of the coastal landscape while winning over the hearts and minds of (most of) the townspeople. There’s a hint of potential romance, a famous author (Mr. Tillingham, a stand-in for Henry James, who really did live in Rye), garden parties, country dances, a harvest festival, glorious weather. It’s not perfect–Ms. Simonson subtly but clearly demonstrates the parochialism and classism of society, the deficiency of options for women, the small town gossip and rigidity–but it’s a comedy of manners, and the pure of heart do tend to triumph in this genre.

Throughout, though, there are hints of the storm to come–the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand and some diplomatic troubles (Ms. Kent’s husband is in the Foreign Service) at first. Later, a declaration of war, parades, a performative patriotism…and enthusiastic and innocent young men begin to sign up to fight. Refugees from Belgium arrive and are warmly welcomed and housed–at least until some of the uglier ramifications of war make themselves apparent. The action and the timeline speed up, the stakes get much higher, and soon the parochial concerns are entirely eclipsed by the conflict–trench warfare, shell shock, senseless slaughter, trauma, and grief on an immense scale.

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I can’t help but think that the shift of style and tone of the novel was meant to mirror the experience of the characters themselves, from a beautiful and peaceful summer in a lovely town to the utter horrors of wartime. There’s a sweet redemptive note at the end when we learn what becomes of the surviving characters, a bit of hope for what can pass as a happy ending in 1920, while visiting the cemeteries abroad, with Beatrice financially and romantically secure, and intellectually fulfilled: “Under her happiness ran a thin vein of sorrow that millions like her would feel down the years. It did not stop their feet from walking, or prevent the quotidian routines of life; but it ran in the population like the copper wires of the telephone system, connecting them all to each other and to the tragedy that had ripped at their hearts just as it had ripped at the fields outside her window.”

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