Customer Reviews

South Riding

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South Riding is a massive novel (564 pages)--but a quick read.

It deals with a huge cast of characters. Sarah Burton is technically the main one; but the tapestry is enormous, and Holtby has such a sure touch for characterization that she breathes life into even the minor figures.

In breadth of scope and generosity of heart and mind, Winifred Holtby reminds me of George Eliot. She seldom judges, though she obviously has her preferences and dislikes. She sees the interrelationships of all classes and all actions.

But Holtby is a better stylist than Eliot. She is both clear and poetic, both brief and profound. Her apprenticeship as a journalist served her well. She gets right to the heart of feelings and facts, yet they shimmer with life and richness.

She is particularly good on the imponderables--why a sensible and self-confident progressive like Sarah Burton should fall so incongruously in love with a feudal troglodyte like Robert Carne; why Carne should sacrifice everything for his neurotic-and-psychotic wife Muriel.

She is also good on depicting the sweep of history. Though her characters are real people, they are also emblematic of historical trends: the long slow death of the landed aristocracy, the encroachment of urbanization and industrialization, the flattening of tragedy and democratization of hope.

A wonderful book

I hope the recent BBC/Masterpiece Classic version of "South Riding" will compel more people to read this beautiful book, and I hope its publisher will issue a new edition here in the states. It is superb.

In "South Riding," Winifred Holtby presents a mosaic of Yorkshire life in the 1930s, exhibiting profound understanding and compassion for a wide array of characters of different classes, ages, and aspirations. There are probably about 15 main characters involved but she is so skillful in describing each of their circumstances that I had no trouble keeping track of them as I progressed through the book. Each chapter is like a perfect short story of its own, providing a character's background or motivation, introducing an obstacle or conflict, showing people as allies or at cross-purposes, always moving the action forward.

"South Riding" has everything: family love and family dysfunction, selflessness, greed, romance, loneliness, poverty, wealth, sex, births, deaths, folly, nobility, humor, hope, despair, good and bad government, conflict, compassion, corruption, and both sad AND happy endings! It is similar to George Eliot's "Middlemarch" in its ambitious, broad canvas of English life and its attention to individual detail. But I agree with another reviewer here that it is less long-winded and preachy than Eliot (sorry, George). Holtby's style is brisk and clear and very easy to read. I believe "Middlemarch" was set in 1830s England, and I wonder if Holtby was consciously writing a "Middlemarch" for the 20th century. She certainly succeeded admirably. Sadly, "South Riding" was first published in 1936, a year after Holtby's death at age 37.

Having read the book, my only regret is that so many of my friends have not. Perhaps the 2011 TV adaptation will give it new life. To those who liked the TV show, please DO read the book. As is often the case, the book includes more detailed plot and characterization. It's beautiful and wise, and highly recommended.

I would never have read this if a friend had not lent it to me with the news that Masterpiece would soon be airing the dramatization of it South Riding. It took me a couple of chapters to get into the story. Unlike other reviewers, I did have trouble keeping so many characters straight and was too lazy to keep looking back at the list with descriptions at the beginning of the book. It was also a little annoying to keep being switched from character to character every chapter or scene, but that is a typical writing device. But, soon I was completely engrossed in the life and times of the characters of 1933 South Riding, Yorkshire. What a gem of storytelling. By reading the book so soon prior to watching the BBC production, however, I was quite critical of the show. They left out so much! They would have done much better to have dramatized it over several episodes as Masterpiece Theatre productions used to do in the good old days. I did find the casting superb, and I'm sure if I had seen the TV production later or had not read the book, I would have found it fine.

It's difficult to summon enough superlatives to adequately describe this ambitious, epic novel. Other readers have rightly compared "South Riding" to Eliot's "Middlemarch" and the two books are indeed very similar in theme and sweep. Holtby drops a literary magnifying glass on the fictitious Yorkshire city of Kiplington and its environs; her characters range from gentry farmers to rural slum dwellers and everything in-between. Her everyday heroes are a struggling, reactionary farmer, an elderly and maternal alderwoman, a fiery and progressive school teacher, a bright girl desperate to escape the slums - and so many more. The book begins slowly and there are so many characters and threads to follow, I found it slow-going for almost 100 pages. But when it finally took off I was absolutely riveted. The cover blurb on my copy of "South Riding" indicates that it is primarily an "opposites attract" sort of romance, but this book is far more ambitious and compelling than that, showing how ordinary people did and did not adapt to the broad social changes of the 20th century. Holtby's writing is very straight-forward but there are some extraordinarily lyrical passages and moments of exceptional insight, beauty and grace. I am so glad I stuck with this book - it is just spectacularly rewarding.

There is a minor character in the book, a middle-aged woman who is dying of some unnamed wasting disease. Her story is not as well-integrated to the plot as are other characters, and I wondered why she was included. Her purpose in the narrative becomes very poignant when you realize that the author was terminally ill as she wrote "South Riding," and that the book was published postumously after her death at age 37.

As every schoolboy knows, or at least as every schoolboy knew before the local government reforms of the 1970s, the county of Yorkshire was traditionally divided into three ridings, North, East and West. Those schoolboys who inquired (as I did) why there was not a South Riding were generally told by their schoolmasters in a lofty tone of voice that as the word "riding" derived from an Old English word meaning "a third part" it would be illogical for there to be four ridings rather than three.

Winifred Holtby clearly also seems to have felt that there should have been a South Riding, as she used this as the title of her best-known novel. She is not writing about the area around Sheffield which is today known as South Yorkshire, but which in the 1930s was still part of the West Riding. Her South Riding is her native East Riding by another name; like Hardy, she used the device of disguising real places under fictitious names. Hull becomes Kingsport, Beverley Flintonbridge, Bridlington Hardrascliffe, and so on.

Although written in the fourth decade of the twentieth century, "South Riding", is in many ways a traditional nineteenth century novel. With its linear narrative, omniscient narrator and panoramic view of a wide cross-section of society it is reminiscent of the work of Dickens, Bennett and the George Eliot of "Middlemarch". Another literary influence appears to have been Charlotte Bronte. The portrait of Robert Carne, an aloof, patrician Yorkshire squire struggling to cope with the burden of a mentally-ill wife and to bring up a young daughter, owes a lot to Edward Rochester in "Jane Eyre", and there are certainly similarities between Carne's wife Muriel and Rochester's wife Bertha. (Holtby's contemporary Daphne du Maurier also drew upon "Jane Eyre" in her "Rebecca").

Holtby was politically on the Left; she was a convinced socialist, pacifist and feminist. A combination of political radicalism and artistic conservatism was, however, more common than one might think. In some leftist circles it was customary to decry artistic modernism as "bourgeois formalism". Holtby herself did not go so far. She was by no means hostile to the modern movement; she wrote, for example, a critical appreciation of Virginia Woolf. She believed, however, that a novel with a traditional structure was a better vehicle for conveying social and political ideas to a wide audience than a modernist one, and "South Riding" is very much a novel with a political message. Much of the book describes the proceedings of the South Riding County Council and the struggle by the reformist faction on the Council to bring about social reform in the teeth of much determined opposition from conservative elements, of whom Carne is the most prominent. The eight sections into which the novel is divided are named after various committees of the Council, such as "Education" or "Housing and Town Planning".

I will not attempt to summarise the plot, as there are numerous interconnected strands, following the fortunes of a large number of characters drawn from all sectors of society. The most important strand deals with the relationship between Carne and Sarah Burton, the headmistress of a girl's school, who falls in love with him. As Carne is a traditionalist landowner, deeply reactionary in his political views, and as Sarah in many ways represents the author's own social radicalism, theirs might seem an unlikely romance. (Sarah's close friend, the elderly Alderman Mrs Beddows, is a portrait of the author's own mother). Yet Holtby, unlike some writers with a political agenda, was not so prejudiced that she refused to see any good in her opponents. She makes little secret of the fact that she finds Carne's politics deplorable, but allows him some good qualities as a man. He is not a capitalist ogre but a man who, by his own standards, tries to do his best for his wife, his daughter and even his workers and tenants, despite his straitened financial circumstances. Most of his income comes from farming, and farmers have been badly hit by the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Another of Carne's good qualities is his honesty, a quality not shared by all those who claim to speak for progress. Another important thread in the book is a scheme by the Machiavellian Councillor Anthony Snaith to develop a piece of land for social housing. Although such housing is indeed desperately needed by the poor of the district, Snaith's real purpose is to make a good deal of money from a complicated land deal. One of the most vividly-drawn characters is Snaith's hypocritical associate, Councillor Alfred Ezekiel Huggins, a devout Methodist lay preacher and equally devout womaniser who somehow manages to reconcile both his womanising and his corrupt scheming with his conscience. Joe Astell, a radical Socialist Councillor, is not personally corrupt, yet in his zeal for social reform allows himself to become associated with Snaith and Huggins's scheme, something which Carne resolutely refuses to do.

A third major plot thread involves Lydia Holly, an academically gifted schoolgirl from a poor working-class family whose future is threatened when her mother dies and she is forced to look after her younger siblings. Mrs Holly is one of a number of characters suffering from terminal or life-threatening illnesses. This reflects the fact that Winifred Holtby was herself seriously ill while writing the book and knew that she did not have long to live. (She died, in fact, shortly after completing it and did not live to see it published).

Yet this is not a morbid or depressing book; in many ways its conclusion is an optimistic one. Although the book was written at a time of economic hardship, Holtby does not dwell on misery but offers a positive message that conditions can be changed for the better, and her optimism can be admired even by those who do not share her political analysis. My one criticism would be that there are perhaps too many plot threads, making it difficult to follow the changing fortunes of so many difficult characters. Overall, however, it is a powerfully written depiction of English provincial life during its period.

I saw this presentation on Masterpiece Classics, and had never read...or heard of the book. Usually, when I enjoy a play, or movie, I like the book even better, so I decided to read the book. I really enjoyed it. It was a new find for me....always nice, and a treat. I found they had done a superb job with the play, following the book nicely. I'm only sorry the author did not write more books, as I'm sure I would read them also. The heroine was 'before her time' with lots of energy and wonderful goals. You even come to enjoy and sympathize with the antagonist before it's done. Nice touch, delightful read.