Although the Victorian part of this novel takes place primarily in 1849, the novel itself actually opens ten years earlier, in 1839.
Sixteen-year-old Imogen Hadley, the daughter of a vicar in out-of-the-way-but-lovely Cornwall, is absolutely besotted by antiquarian Arthur Grantham.
Imogen’s father is a collector, and he has Book of Hours for sale. A Book of Hours is best described as a Medieval prayer book. But what makes each one so special is the amazing artistry of the paintings within, which are painted by tiny brushes and are mostly used to illustrate capital letters. However, this did not prevent many artists from adding landscapes, animals, people, and plants to their decorations. They were extremely popular in the fifteenth century, in northern Europe.
And so THAT SUMMER opens with Arthur Grantham journeying all the way from London to Cornwall, to inquire about Vicar Hadley’s Book of Hours.
What is so amazing about this opening is how author Lauren Willig creates the emotional tension between these three characters.
We have high-spirited Imogen, young and naive, her knowledge of relationships governed by a diet of romance novels. As Jane Austen would have said of her, “her mind [is] about as ignorant and uninformed as the female mind at seventeen usually is.”
We learn that Grantham is a widower with a seven-year-old daughter, which means that he is considerably older than Imogen, probably about twice her age. What Grantham actually thinks about Imogen is a lot less clear. But what is easy to see is that he is very happy to be the object of her devotions.
Then there is Imogen’s father, who loves her dearly and wants to protect her. Unfortunately, Vicar Hadley is now an elderly man, who is not well. Tentatively, he tries to make his daughter understand that marriage is not the same as romance, and that she should wait to understand her feelings more clearly before rushing into marriage with Grantham. But, he is no match for his daughter’s high spirits. He simply does not have the energy to insist that she wait.
And so, of course, she marries her man.
Shortly afterwards, her father dies.
And so, when Imogen finally arrives as a new bride at the Grantham family home in Herne Hill in South London, she is completely alone in the world. Like so many women, she is thrust upon her in-laws, and forced to make her place among them.
Of course, there are difficulties. The only in-law Imogen actually has to deal with is Grantham’s dead wife’s sister Jane. Naturally, Jane is not at all pleased to see her. Far from deferring to her as the new mistress of the house, she refuses to budge from her place as Lady of the Manor. And so, Imogen is always made to feel that she is the unwanted guest.
Ten years later, all the hopes that once animated Imogen’s ideas of a blissful marriage with Grantham are long gone. For he neglects his wife, leaving her to engage in a daily battle of wills with his sour sister-in-law Jane. It does not help that Imogen suffered two miscarriages, and has no children of her own. The only light in her life is her stepdaughter Evangeline (Evie) Grantham, who calls her “Mama.”
And so the scene is set for one day in 1849, when three painters arrive at the house. They include Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), the famous pre-Raphaelite painter, and two fictional characters Augustus Fotheringhey-Vaughan and Gavin Thorne. (As I experienced this novel in audio form, please forgive my spelling.) All three men are early members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and the two fictional characters play key roles in what happens next.
As this novel takes the form of a braided narrative, we have another strand set in the present-day (in 2009), which involves a completely different cast of characters. Julia Conley of New York is a financial consultant who has lost her job. She makes various attempts to find a new one, but nothing is happening. Her father is a well-regarded surgeon with a second family—a wife and two sons—whose members are flourishing. Although Julia is close to her dad, she is also haunted by memories of her mother, the first wife, who died when she was five years old.
One day, a letter arrives telling her that her mother’s Aunt Regina has left her a house in Herne Hill. Having nothing better to do, and happy to escape her despondent life in New York, Julia flies to London to take charge off her house. Of course, she doesn’t plan to stay long. All she needs to do is clean it up, put it on the market, and sell it. Then she can return to New York.
Of course, things do not go to plan. And here, I have to commend Ms. Willig for writing a very strong contemporary strand to this novel. In my experience, braided novels are usually very strong with the historical strand, but fizzle when it comes to the contemporary strand of the novel, mainly because contemporary characters don’t seem nearly as interesting as the historical ones. However, in this novel, Ms. Willig has found two characters that make this part of the novel sing. There is Julia, with her American directness masking grief and abandonment issues. And Nick—British, charming and upper-class—who has his own grief and abandonment issues to deal with. There was something about these two very prickly, but charming characters that kept me glued to the page. This was quite an achievement, because this part of the novel had to stand against the tragedy that consumed Imogen 160 years earlier.
As there are many references to Shakespeare in this volume, it might interest you to know that Shakespeare’s heroine Imogen, the central female character in his play Cymbeline, is a princess who was wrongly accused of infidelity.
