Back in the early 1990s I spent a glorious holiday in south west France, in the home of a dear friend who had gone to live there. That stay was my inspiration for buying a French house myself a few years later, but also, while I was there, my friend insisted I read the first of what became known as the Cazalet Chronicles. The Light Years grabbed me immediately and I seized on the following three volumes as they appeared. I've read a few more of Howard's books since then, but always remembered these as being particularly special. So when I read a review of The Light Years on Book Snob I ordered myself a copy. Would I love it as much the second time round -- absolutely! The second vol was on order before I'd even finished the first, and I've just started reading it, so you won't have heard the last of this series.
The Light Years begins in the summer of 1937. Set mainly in the large country home of the large, comfortably off Cazalet family, the story actually begins with the servants:
The day began at five to seven when the alarm clock (given to Phyllis by her mother when she started service) went off and on and on and on until she quenched it. Edna, in the other creaking bed, groaned and heaved over, hunching herself against the wall; even in summer she hated getting up, and in the winter Phyllis sometimes had to heave the bedclothes off her. She sat up, unclipped her hairnet and began undoing her curlers; it was her half-day, and she'd washed her hair. she got up, picked the eiderdown up from the floor where it had fallen in the night and drew the curtains. Sunlight refurbished the room -- making toffee of the linoleum, turning the chips in the white enamel washstand slate blue. She unbuttoned her winceyette nightdress and washed as her mother had taught her to do: hands, face and - circumspectly - under her arms with a flannel dipped in the cold water.
Yes, one of the many great joys of this novel is the way the servants get to share the story - there are several tremendous set pieces where the huge amounts of food produced by the kitchen, or the numerous duties of the housemaids, are listed in loving detail. For this is a house of many servants, made necessary by the size of the Cazalet family (a helpful family tree is printed at the front of the book). The owners of the house are the oldest generation, father known to his children as the Brig, owner of a highly successful timber business, and his wife, known as the Duchy on account of her rather absurdly autocratic manner. Then there are their four adult children - Hugh (disabled in the war) and Edward, who work with their father, the youngest son Rupert who teaches art and longs to be a full-time painter, and unmarried Rachel. The three men are all married - Hugh to warm kindhearted Sybil, who he adores, serially philandering Edward to elegant Villy, who retired from the ballet to marry him and finds few outlets for her energy and creativity, and Rupert, whose first wife has died, to beautiful, shallow Zoe. Rachel is in love, but this has to be a desperate secret, for she loves her female friend Sid, and the two live an agonising life of concealment. Then there are the children, ranging in age from about five to about fifteen -- too many to tell you all their names, but they play an important part in the story.
The novel covers about a year in the lives of this disparate group of people. They are of course held together by their family ties, and on the surface appear to be pretty much in accord. But you won't be surprised to hear that there is a lot bubbling around under the surface. Even in the most seemingly harmonious relationships -- that of Hugh and Sibyl, for example - we are made privy to the secret thoughts of each member of the couple, and see how they are going out of their way to do what they believe will please the other one -- eat out, or go to the theatre for example -- and so frequently end up doing something neither actually wants to do. Villy hates sex, but always responds 'Lovely' when Edward, as he always does, says 'All right?' afterwards:
She called it a white lie to herself, and over the years it had come to have an almost cosy ring. After all, she loved him, what else could she say? Sex was for men, after all. Women, nice women anyway, were not expected to care for it.
Then there are the agonising passages between Rachel and Sid, agonising not only because they have to conceal their love from everyone else, but because love means something very different to each of them - for Rachel it is pure, intense but absolutely sexless, and she would be amazed if she knew the depths of Sid's very physical desire for her.
One thing that necessarily hangs over all the domestic detail of the novel, and impinges more and more as the year goes on, is of course the disturbing news from Germany. At first this seems very distant, and nobody takes it particularly seriously. But by the end of the book, Chamberlain is making visits to Hitler and everyone is afraid there may be a war. The effect of this differs from person to person, of course, but it's the older children who seem in many ways the most affected. Beautiful, sensitive Polly is overtaken by terrible panic, her cousin Christopher realises he is a conscientious objector and makes plans to run away from home, and young Simon sees it as a possible means of escape from his dreaded start at public school.
Although published in 1990, this really is a book that would suit anyone who loves the great period of British fiction from between the wars. Howard, born in 1923, was exactly the age of the teenage girls whose minds and hearts she so wonderfully evokes here - she said, indeed, that their characters each expressed an aspect of herself at that age, though it's tempting to see her most in Rupert's daughter Clary, whose great ambition is to become a writer. But don't get the idea that this is just a period piece - the period detail is a joy, but truly it's a book about human beings, with all their flaws and their secret anxieties, and as such just as recognisable today as in 1990 and in 1937. Wonderful stuff -- if you haven't read it, please do so forthwith, and if you have, probably time for a re-read.