Guard Your Daughters

I’d kind of dropped out of the loop a bit with Persephone books but Diana Tutton’s Guard Your Daughters was prominently displayed in the Cambridge Heffers just before Christmas so I bought a copy and raced through it in a couple of days.

This post-war novel features one of those bohemian, female-centred households consisting of five sisters and narrated by nineteen year old Morgan who has something of the charisma of Cassandra from I Capture the Castle. I loved the rambling old house and the episode where the sisters are initially reluctant to play French cricket in the damp garden with a soggy ball but get completely involved and finish the game in high spirits.  

I liked the daughter Cressida who cares how things look and the elder married sister Pandora who is unafraid to challenge her parents. When her father objects to a young man visiting because it upsets their mother (who is clearly not well) she calmly asks ‘Are we a convent father?’
 
 A review I read somewhere complains that the sisters call each other ‘Darling’ too much but those of us who have read a lot of Nancy Mitford and all five volumes of The Cazalets are well used to that! Just when you think the novel is getting a little twee towards the end the dark undercurrent resurfaces and although the attitudes towards mental health would now be questionable it is sympathetically written. Highly recommended.
 
I’m also ploughing through Violet Powell’s leaden biography of E M Delafield. Waaaaay too much recounting of every plot of every novel and Delafield was very prolific.  The only time the biography really comes to life is the chapter in Elizabeth’s own words which describes  her life as a postulant in a convent at the age of 21 and the touching reason she decided not to become a nun.

Occasionally when Violet Powell describes Elizabeth packing empty Christmas cracker boxes with earthy primroses to give to friends or the moment a robin from her Devon garden flies into her bedroom after her death at only 53 you get glimpses of what this book could have been.  We are well overdue for a definitive biography of E M Delafield.  Happy New Year!