Customer Reviews

Northrop Hall (Severn House Large Print)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have to disagree with the editorial reviewer. I read this book because it was compared to Rosamunde Pilcher and Maeve Binchy. It's not up to the level of either of these great writers. Fans of Pilcher's "Coming Home" will recognize some similarities, probably because Bacon was trying to write something similar. But unlike "Coming Home," the characters are not well enough developed that we care about them, so when terrible things happen to them, it seems excessive rather than tragic. It lacks the richness and depth of other, better war novels. Not terrible, but disappointing.

This book starts out with an interesting story at the start of the twentieth century. It shows how good life was for the upper classes and what life was like for those who served them. The servants were about one step above serfs and their lives were virtually owned by their masters. When World War 1 breaks out, life changes dramatically in Northrop Hall. The servants go off to war, the eldest grand daughter of dowager Lady Arndale goes off to be a war nurse and her brother, who is to inherit Northrop Hall after his father,joins the army. There are vivid descriptions of trench warfare, disease, starvation, horrible war wounds and gassed soldiers. The soldiers are shot if they refuse to go out of the trenches and face almost certain death or wounds. At the end of the war, the characters left have all suffered losses in their lives in various ways.

This book could be read as an anti war book and it demonstrates in grim detail the realities of war, the lies of propaganda, and how out of touch the higher military were regarding the actual conditions on the battlefields, and how they made mistake after mistake. It also is a condemnation of the old class system that has died out in England.

I could not compare Margaret Bacon to either Rosamund Pilcher or Maeve Binchy in Northrop Hall. This book is too cynical and painful with badly damaged characters of all classes at the end.