512 pages, Random House, ISBN-13: 978-0812983203
Sooooo…just what is The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson? A romance? Well, kinda; the main characters chase after one another for most of the summer, so there’s that. Is it historical fiction? We, yes, assuredly; it takes place, as the title states, during the summer of 1914 and before the Edwardian World and European civilization committed mass suicide. Is it a character study? Again, yes, as we see personages of differing classes and social orders rubbing elbows as they watch the autumnal storm clouds of war creep over their summer skies of peace. So it is a lot of things, even poetic: “The scents of honeysuckle and wallflowers rose on the salty breeze” is one such line, as is “She could hear the snort and jingle of a horse tossing his head in the street and smell the peppery scent of Mrs. Turber’s tomato plants wilting against sun-heated brick”. This book is as much a sensory delight as it is a picturesque novel.
The book is also very English in its droll humor and sedate pacing – sedate being a kind word, for there are whole stretches in which people talk and talk and talk and TALK and yet don’t seem to say much at all. Perhaps this is to mimic the lazy summer in which most of the book takes place, wherein the principal characters spend these days in blissful ignorance: Beatrice Nash, newly arrived Latin teacher to the village’s children; Agatha Kent, the “still a handsome woman at forty-five” who sunbathes nude in the backyard; her nephews Hugh Grange, medical student fond of “sectioning” the heads of chickens and Daniel Bookham, prankster poet. They know that war is coming and that their lives will change forever – yet they DON’T know just how much this is true. Like everyone else during that last summer of peace, the magnitude of the disaster awaiting them all was hidden behind bright sunny days filled with tea and honey and flirtation.
And when that disaster at long last hits it is as disruptive and devastating as only war can be, even if that war is supposed to End All Wars. In this way the book’s title is misleading as it takes us through the start of the war when that last summer all-too-soon becomes a distant memory. This is to be expected, I guess, seeing as how one cannot have light without shadow. And one cannot have life without death, for the War, of course, affects everyone and everything, especially the main characters whom we have come to know so well. The Summer Before the War is meant to be read in as leisurely a pace as a bright summer’s day. The pacing may seem sluggish, but it is meant to contrast with the stark, driven horror to come all too soon. And it is meant to show us the main characters as their all-too-human selves, warts and all – which means that when each of them meets their ultimate fates, it is that much more affecting.
