It’s always exciting when there’s a new set of Furrowed Middlebrow titles from Dean Street Press, and I always want to read all of them. I got a couple as review copies, and went straight to A House in the Country (1957), partly because I thought I’d already read it and realised I hadn’t.
I love books about houses, and particularly about rambling old mansions. This one is enormous and in a little village – and is the place that Ruth Adam, her husband, and a handful of relatives and friends decide to rent together. What they couldn’t afford on their own, they can manage as a household of eight. Incidentally, A House in the Country is marketed as a novel, but it is very heavily based on real life, including the names. So is it a memoir or a novel? Probably a fictionalised version of real life, in the mould of the Provincial Lady series. It doesn’t really matter. It’s just a delight.
Though the first page of the book warns the reader that it will be far from an unalloyed delight for the group experimenting with this venture:
This is a cautionary tale, and true.
Never fall in love with a house. The one we fell in love with wasn’t even ours. If she had been, she would have ruined us just the same. We found out some things about her afterwards, among them what she did to that poor old parson, back in the eighteen-seventies. If we had found them out earlier…? It wouldn’t have made any difference. We were in that maudlin state when reasonable argument is quite useless. Our old parents tried it. We wouldn’t listen. “If only you could see her,” we said.
She first came into our lives through the Personal Column of The Times. I have the advertisement still. Sometimes I look at it bitterly, as if it were an old dance-programme, with some scrawled initials on it which I had since learned to hate.
If that sounds like quite a bitter opening, then don’t worry. It’s better that we know all will not end well, to ameliorate the sadness when things start to go wrong – but I was still about to dive into the joyfulness of the first chapters. Quite a lot of space in the book is devoted to finding, taking, and inhabiting the house. They assign rooms, they decorate, they marvel at the extraordinary beauty of a magnolia tree on the lawn.
Moving house is one of my favourite themes in literature. Moving somewhere this magical is a dream to read about, with hope in the air offset by the gentle bite of the narrative. Because Adam writes very amusingly, somewhere between the self-deprecation of E.M. Delafield and the snark of Beverley Nichols. She sees herself and her companions and her new neighbours with clear eyes, willing to see the best in all and unable to avoid highlighting the less good. It’s a complete joy to read, and the through-line of mild cynicism prevents it from being cloying.
The only difficulty with the book being heavily based on real events is that it messes up the structure of A House in the Country a little. The second half of the book covers a great deal more time than the first, as inhabitants splinter off and are replaced – sometimes by new long-termers and sometimes by short-term rentals who might deserve more than the few, funny paragraphs they are given. But Adam has to cover a lot of similar years in a short space, and she chooses to rush through some events and characters rather than let the book become repetitive.
And the end of the book, as they have to leave the house, is as sad a description of mourning as I’ve ever read – prepared as we were from the outset. Yet, somehow, I still look back on the book as fun, light, joyous. I suppose it has a bit of every emotion felt in a love affair – albeit a love affair with a house.
My kind of book, most decidedly. I am (unfortunately) obsessed with houses – having had a bit of a peripatetic existence and no place to call my own until late in life.
I would never be brave enough to take on a big house project myself, but I enjoy reading about others who do.
I was just looking at this on the Dean Street site and thinking how wonderful it sounded – glad to hear it lives up to the great premise! I’ll definitely be picking it up sooner or later.
Excellent! I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Sounds just lovely Simon. I thought I had read it too, then realised I was thinking of the Persephone of the same name! :D
WHich is great but very, very different! I was thinking of Bernadette Murphy’s novel of the same name, about which I remember v little.
By chance I very recently discovered Dean Street’s Furrowed Middlebrow series (I was actually looking for a classic British crime novel to read) and was very tempted by “House in the Country.” I opted instead for “Table Two”. Your review makes me realize what I missed — “House” may be my next selection from the series! If you’re interested BTW I did love “Table Two,” which mixed an Angela Thirkell-like fantasy with a surprisingly realistic look at the life of working women during the Blitz.
I just reviewed this today. I really enjoyed it too. I liked the details of moving and settling into the house. I particularly loved the gardener Howard.
Oo I have Table Two on my shelves waiting, I think. Such a great bunch of books.
Dean Street Press sent me the ARC of this along with Miss Mole (unsolicited!). I read Miss Mole but didn’t get around to this one, but I hope to read it soon.
Lovely! Both amazing books.
What did yu think of Miss Mole? I would like other recommendations for Ruth Adam, I tried another of her books but couldn’t read it (forget the title now) but I loved this one (house) and I admired and enjoyed her non fiction round up of women’s place in the last century: ‘A Woman’s Place’.
My interesting book to read, thanks for sharing.
Great review! I have ordered this one already, so now I’m especially looking forward to reading it. It feels timely too since I just moved from a rental I’d lived in for a long time and am hoping to buy a house soon.
Thanks Elizabeth! Hope you love it – maybe one to read when you’re not too anxious about broken boilers etc though :D
I really enjoyed this one and also appreciated the warning at the start which helped me not get too invested in them living there forever!
Yes, it would have been so crushing otherwise!
Oh, I love that opening! What terrific writing, it’s definitely making me want to try this book that I have no way of reading, hahahaha. Curse you, Atlantic Ocean! :P
Curse it! You can get the ebook, if you can cope with that.
This sounds very good and I love the covers on this series.
They’re lovely, aren’t they? This house pic is so inviting.
I loved this book and found it unputdownable! Thank you for recommending it. It’s strange it should be so gripping as when it comes down to it it’s about the house and her relationship with it – unusual and beautifully told.
Have you read any other fiction books by Ruth Adam? Would like to read more but a couple i’ve dipped into do not seem so interesting.
I haven’t yet- it seems quite hard to get hold of