Welcome to the seventh of my ‘Calendar Chaos’ posts, in which I take the books I received in my 2024 book advent – each cover representing a different period of time – and review them for you!
Up first in April is APRIL and the book is The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim.
Read on to find out more…
Blurb: The discreet advertisement in The Times, addressed ‘To Those who Appreciate Wistaria and Sunshine’, offers a small medieval castle for rent, above a bay on the Italian Riviera. Four very different women – the dishevelled and downtrodden Mrs Wilkins, the sad, sweet-faced Mrs Arbuthnot, the formidable widow Mrs Fisher and the ravishing socialite Lady Caroline Dester – are drawn to the shores of the Mediterranean that April. As each, in turn, blossoms in the warmth of the Italian spring and finds their spirits stirring, quite unexpected changes occur.
The Enchanted April, published in 1922, is a witty and delightful depiction of what it is like to rediscover joy.
Review: This is very much a novel of its time, with language and attitudes that feel very dated now to modern sensibilities. I’m actually quite torn about how to respond to it because while reading the book I found myself captured by the same San Salvatore magic as the characters and was swept away in their transition from dreary unhappiness to sunny joy. But then, on reflection afterwards I could see things that just didn’t work in terms of the story content. So this has to be a review of two parts: head and heart!
Head review: For a novel that feels quite transformative – bringing four disparate women together and having them find common ground through exposure to natural beauty and each others’ quirks – the final resolution of the story is sudden, abrupt and out of place.
Most of the book is a gently humorous look at Lottie Wilkins, Rose Arbuthnot, Lady Caroline “Scrap” Dester and Mrs Fisher – their inner worlds and personal demons, via internal monologues, and via their external interactions with each other over accommodation and food arrangements. Then suddenly Mr Wilkins and Mr Arbuthnot are brought into paradise to join their wives, and Mr Briggs (the landlord) reappears unexpectedly, and suddenly the tone feels more like a farce, with be-towelled meetings and misunderstandings left and right. I have some sympathy with Lottie and Rose reconciling with their unappreciative and emotionally unfaithful (respectively) husbands, as we have seen their lingering hopes for the men they chose, but I have no idea why poor Scrap was suddenly paired off randomly with exactly the kind of grabby hero-worshipper that she had tried so hard to escape!
It all felt unnecessary and I couldn’t help feeling the story would have been far more satisfactory if it had stayed with just the four women and their changing attitudes, leaving them to deal with their relationships however they saw fit after the final page had turned on their San Salvatore retreat.
Heart review: With all of that said, while reading this book I was definitely transported and Lottie’s newly discovered love for life and her enthusiasm for sharing it felt as infectious as when I read Anne of Green Gables as a child and fell head over heels for her raptures over paths and lakes and spare rooms. I found myself agreeing wholeheartedly with the concept of appreciating love and beauty in the here and now, regardless of justice, reciprocity or societal expectations. And it wasn’t just Lottie’s joy that I felt: I understood Rose’s anxious insecurity about her marriage and how far she should bend her personal values to meet the man she loves partway; I empathised with Scrap’s weariness of being treated as some sort of goddess but never seen as a human being, with feelings and thoughts of her own; and I ached for Mrs Fisher’s stern loneliness, adrift in a world that had moved on without her and left her longing for the rose-tinted past.
Overall, I think this is one of those books that will either touch your heart or it won’t. If it doesn’t, then it is a rather dull story about four unhappy women bickering in an Italian castle before being summarily paired off, mostly with the same men they started with. If it does, then it is a gentle glimpse into a heavenly summer spent suspended in a splendid bubble of isolation, with the power to magically transform long-time discontent into fresh starts full of joyous wonder and unselfish love. Definitely a Marmite read!
About the author:
Elizabeth von Arnim (31 August 1866 – 9 February 1941), born Mary Annette Beauchamp, was an English novelist.
Born in Australia, she married a German aristocrat, and her earliest works are set in Germany. Her first marriage made her Countess von Arnim-Schlagenthin and her second Elizabeth Russell, Countess Russell. After her first husband’s death, she had a three-year affair with the writer H. G. Wells, then later married Frank Russell, elder brother of the Nobel Prize-winner and philosopher Bertrand Russell. She was a cousin of the New Zealand-born writer Katherine Mansfield.
Though known in early life as May, her first book introduced her to readers as Elizabeth, which she eventually became to friends and finally to family. Her writings are ascribed to Elizabeth von Arnim.
