Robert Cedric Sherriff, best known for the play ‘Journey’s End’, published this novel in 1931.
It describes a fortnight’s family holiday in Bognor Regis, circa September 1930.
Mr Stevens, a clerk, travels by train to the seaside, accompanied by his wife, teenage son and daughter and younger son. They stay with their usual landlady, Mrs Huggett, whose guest house has seen better days.
We follow their humdrum adventures, because nothing too unusual happens – and much of it has happened every year.
But this book is much more than the perfect resource for social historians.
The holiday marks a watershed for some of the party, and serves as a rite of passage for the older children. We are led to understand that times are changing, that this longstanding family ritual may be sustainable no longer.
Mr Stevens realises that he has already reached the apex of his career, while Mrs Stevens remains timidly acquiescent, but isn’t quite sure that she enjoys these weeks on the coast.
Sherriff’s style is beguiling – mostly workmanlike, matter-of-fact, almost pedestrian, but just occasionally blossoming into rare poetic flourishes.
He seems to have been striving deliberately to employ ‘the language of the people’, but his authorly voice just can’t resist the impulse to celebrate the natural beauty of the landscape.
I found it charming.
December 2023
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