Customer Reviews

The Small Hours of the Morning

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A quiet little book, clearly delineating a number of characters who are destined to intertwine; you barely feel the silken snare that grips you that will force you to complete the book -- small hours of the morning or no. By then you are caught up in caring for the characters and their foibles; you keep spinning out ways that, against all odds, everything will come out all right for them.
How can such simple, seemingly more-or-less innocuous actions result in such irreparable harm and danger? There are a couple of vile persons, believable enough for you to feel sorry for their near and dear ones; and several truly engaging others for whom you will feel pity and desperate hope. A true find for the compulsive reader!

This is the first Margaret Yorke book I've read, so I had no idea what to expect. While I'd found it in the "mysteries" section of a used bookstore, it is not at all a "mystery" in any technical sense but a finely honed study of a fascinating group of interrelated characters in a smallish English "suburb" outside of greater London. What each character does subtly affects the others, and it is very much a love story, and a story of longing, emotional damage and growth. One of the characters has criminal tendencies which propel into motion certain violent and tragic consequences that ripple through our cast of characters (including some of the local constabulary), but it is in no way a "murder mystery" or anything of that nature.

If you are a fan of Ruth Rendell books. you may well find this one to your liking. Like Rendell, Ms. Yorke carefully paints quietly vivid portraits of her main characters. Very quickly you realize how interconnected all the characters are, almost claustrophobically so in this small town, and I definitely started caring about several of them early on. Writing in compact, direct prose, Margaret Yorke manages to achieve what feels as much like a literary novel as any kind of genre piece. By halfway through the book I was already feeling that I would be sorry when it was over, when I would have to "let go" of these people and their world.

Despite the fact that the reader gets to see everything all the protagonists do (i.e.: there is nothing "hidden" from you by the author), I still experienced some surprises in the final third of the book, and I found the ending quite moving indeed -- I even had a few tears in my eyes as I closed the book.

Based on my experience with this novel (which appears to have been written fairly late in Ms. Yorke's long career), I'm now very much looking forward to reading more of her books. This is a writer of substance, and of psychological discernment. Quite a rewarding discovery for me -- I recommend this book highly if you like well-crafted, understated psychological novels about everyday people and the way their lives intertwine: some are happy, some frustrated, some optimistic, some emotionally damaged, some aging, some loving, some repressed, etc.

The type of human observation Margaret Yorke employs here is timeless, and, unlike many books from the 70s, this one feels not-at-all dated. A very strong novel indeed, by any yardstick.