AN INCOMPLETE REVENGE is a novel about difference, and the consequences of that perception in the minds of the people who make up the surrounding community.
Wouldn’t it be nice if people were thrilled about difference? If they saw foreigners as intriguing or cool? If they wanted to talk to people who are not like themselves so that they could learn more about the world we live in? If they were eager to befriend such people to bring the richness of diversity into their own lives?
Unfortunately, as we all know, these reactions are not typical. Instead, people who are perceived as being different are usually victimized in some way.
In this story, one of Maisie’s friends Priss is at a loss as to what to do about her three boys. The family, although English, has been living in Biarritz, and so her boys speak French fluently. Priss, still grieving over the deaths of her three brothers during the Great War, decides one day that it would be a marvelous idea to bring the family back to England. Being posh, this necessitates that they will go to boarding school.
But the English boys at this posh venue are not thrilled about having three boys in their midst who speak French. And so when Priss goes there to visit her three sons, she discovers that they are sporting bruises, black eyes and other signs of beating. The headmaster believes that each boy should “march to the same drum.” And so Priss wisely decides to take them away and put them in an international school instead where “everyone is different.”
Similarly, Maisie Dobbs learns that the housekeeper at Chelstone ~ the country house of the Comptons ~ used to order only from a Dutch-owned bakery in the local village, because it was the best bread she could find. The owner, who calls himself Jacob Martin because he wants to fit in, has two children. The girl, being extremely good-looking is more-or-less accepted by her English counterparts. But the boy is not accepted. It seems that his problems started when one of his classmates discovered that his family spoke Dutch at home. Instead of being intrigued or thrilled, the boy showed his disdain by teasing. The teasing, turned into bullying and soon the young man (who Dutch name is Pim van Maarten) had no friends left. Naturally, he got into bad company. After one thieving escapade turned sour, his aristocratic companion was detained for only a few days. But Pim was sent to Borstal (the equivalent of Juvenile Detention) and then “released to the army” at the tender age of 13 so that he could fight in the trenches of the First World War.
Somehow, he managed to survive. But when he returned to the village at the age of 16 or 17, he found his family dead, his home a burned-out shell. The villagers covered up their crime by claiming that the family home had been hit during a Zeppelin raid. In fact, during a period of profound grief that turned into mass hysteria, they’d turned on the Dutch family, burning them alive in their own home.
This is a powerful novel by Jacqueline Winspear about the costs of being tribal, bigoted and unwelcoming to those who are not like you. Five Stars.
