Hostages to Fortune

If you ever watched 90s' sitcom, Seinfeld, you'll know that it famously purported to be a show 'about nothing'. Nothing being everyday life, people going to work, watching television, talking to friends, struggling to find a parking spot. 

It made me think of it when I was reading Hostages To Fortune, a 1933 novel. It chronicles the life of Catherine from 1915 to the late 1930s as she raises her children, runs the house and supports her husband, the local doctor in a small rural town.  She does some gardening, writes a novel that she puts away in a drawer and life goes on. In many ways, it is a novel about nothing. 

Catherine's first child, Audrey, is born while her husband, William is away serving in the war. Later he returns early, invalided out of the army, and the couple move and have another child, a son, Adam. Later they go on to have a third child, Billy the Aggressive. There is always too much to do, but Catherine largely just gets on with it. Sometimes she is tired or cross or feels overwhelmed. 

"The terrific business of keeping her house warm and clean and household fed and clothed took up all the foreground of her mind. There was no time to love Audrey and Adam. By the time she had provided for their bodily needs  she had little energy left for their affection. She didn't want to love anybody or to be loved. She wanted to sit down, and not even to think."

The busyness of daily life takes up all her time with little apparent progress. But the children start to grow up and stop coming to her to referee their arguments. And when she looks up she sees the world around her changing too. Cars and roads take the place of horses. Trees are cut down. Noticeboards and litter start to appear on the roadsides as day trippers from the city visit.

This book is beautifully written, I think. But beautiful writing like beauty of any sort is often subjective. What is less subjective is the timeless sense of a woman wrestling with inner dilemmas, life, love and children. The main character, Catherine, might be a wife and mother in rural England in 1933, but as people, we really haven't changed that much. 

"I think anybody's life looks a little dull...to outsiders...But it's interesting while you are living it," says Catherine at one point as her teenage daughter rails against the dullness of her parents' lives. 

To the reader this depiction of everyday life is far from dull. It's full of insights and thoughts that will stay with you long after you finish the last page. 

This is definitely one of the best books I've read this year. Pick up a copy of Hostages to Fortune in our shop.