The Priory by Dorothy Whipple
Blurb
The setting for this, the third novel by Dorothy Whipple Persephone have published, is Saunby Priory, a large house somewhere in England which has seen better times. We are shown the two Marwood girls, who are nearly grown-up, their father, the widower Major Marwood, and their aunt; then, as soon as their lives have been described, the Major proposes marriage to a woman much younger than himself – and many changes begin.
Review
This is my first book by Dorothy Whipple and I was not disappointed, in fact I went to Persephone Books and bought three more books by Whipple so I can read more of her work.
At the beginning of the book we are introduced to Saunby Priory which is owned by the cricket obsessed Major Marwood. Major Marwood has two daughters living with him who he chooses to ignore most of the time and his spinster sister who he does nothing but moan about. Due to the Major’s love of cricket and despair about how his sister runs the house during his cricket weeks he decides to marry Anthea. Anthea is much younger than the Major but he thinks she will be perfect for taking over the running of the house and making things better during his cricket weeks.
The book soon moves from the Major’s point of view and his relationship with the Priory to Anthea’s. Anthea has always wanted to be happy and she thinks her way to happiness lies with the Major but then she realises that things are not as she dreamed about. We then begin to see the relationship Anthea has with the Priory and how she desperately seeks a friend.
This book really is all about relationships and the big relationship is the characters’ relationship with the Priory. Even when Christine gets married and moves away she is always drawn back to her beloved Priory. Penelope however has very different feelings about the Priory. The Priory is the centre of this book and every character we meet has some connection to it even if it is only fleeting.
There are so many things I love about this book; the Major’s quirks, especially his love of the telephone, the descriptions of the beautiful land around the Priory, how the events of the Priory seem to be reflected in the slow collapse of the scarecrow, the subtle humour, and I could go on and on. I could not put this book down and give it a big 5 out of 5 Dragons.
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About the author
Born in 1893, DOROTHY WHIPPLE (nee Stirrup) had an intensely happy childhood in Blackburn as part of the large family of a local architect. Her close friend George Owen having been killed in the first week of the war, for three years she worked as secretary to Henry Whipple, an educational administrator who was a widower twenty-four years her senior and whom she married in 1917. Their life was mostly spent in Nottingham; here she wrote Young Anne (1927), the first of nine extremely successful novels which included Greenbanks (1932) and The Priory (1939). Almost all her books were Book Society Choices or Recommendations and two of them, They Knew Mr Knight (1934) and They were Sisters (1943), were made into films. She also wrote short stories and two volumes of memoirs. Someone at a Distance (1953) was her last novel. Returning in her last years to Blackburn, Dorothy Whipple died there in 1966.
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