Fairley Family
3 total works
In this complex and satisfying conclusion to Hocking's trilogy the war is over, and the warriors have returned from their far-flung adventures. But London is bleak and grey, and Alice feels stifled by her job in local government. Both her sisters are married, and their widowed mother has a new husband and a new, rural life. With the savage winter of 1946-47 come the first icy intimations of the Cold War, and the betrayal that will darken the lives of friends who have known each other since schooldays.
It is 1939, and great changes come running to meet them all, snatching at their innocence and steadfast convictions and tossing them far away. Alice, Ben and Guy travel overseas, serving in the same war but on very different battlegrounds. For those who stay behind, Judith, Louise, Claire and Daphne, the struggle is to preserve the home, to keep things going, no matter what. But the sudden insecurity of the war confuses them. it gives them new strengths and fresh dreams, but leaves them still furiously hunting for a future, hoping that the old familiar beliefs will be patiently waiting for them to catch up again. In the second volume of Mary Hocking's excellent trilogy, England joins the world in its march to war, sweeping along the members of the Fairley household, their relations and friends.
'What's so special about a son? Why doesn't she care about her daughters?' Mary Hocking brings good humour and sympathy to her depiction of the Fairley sisters growing up in their close-knit West London neighbourhood before, during and after the war. Here, in the first novel of a trilogy, the girls are sheltered in a world whose traditions of hard work and frugality are upheld by their Methodist father, Stanley, and their strong quiet mother, Judith. But, as love comes to Louise and adventures tempt Alice and her friend, unease lurks and terrible rumours travel from Germany - auguries of the catastrophe to come.