When I first picked this off the shelves at a lovely bookshop in Clevedon, I was thinking what you might be thinking – that Dear Austen (2005) is about Jane Austen. In fact, Austen was Bawden’s husband – who died in the Potter’s Bar railway accident in 2002. This short book takes the form of Bawden writing a letter to him, which is used as a device for explaining everything that happened in the aftermath of the crash. I suspect everybody in the UK will be familiar with it – to anybody not, I refer you to Wikipedia!
“So this is to be a personal letter about the events as I see them, telling you what has happened since that bloody accident on 10 May 2002 to all those who loved you and to some of the other stupidly trusting passengers whose lives were ended or destroyed. A year after they killed you, the contractor who was supposed to maintain that stretch of railway track declared a profit of sixty-seven million pounds.”
This is no ordinary book about grief, if such a thing exists. There certainly is grief, but there is also anger and frustration – at the maintainers of the railway who wouldn’t take responsibility; at the government that decided a court case wasn’t in the public interest; at previous governments who had privatised the railways and thus let upkeep slip.
It’s a moving and personal book, held tightly together with Bawden’s authorial control, her eloquence, and her ability to analyse her changing emotions with wisdom and insight. Not the most cheerful of books, of course, but well worth reading.
Say… are you looking for more novellas? Because I can recommend Adore by Doris Lessing if you hven’t read it. I reviewed it on my blog while back. The film they made of it wasn’t bad, but the novella was powerful. Also, another one I can recommend is Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (which I think you can get free via the Gutenberg Project). Also, Fredrik Backman wrote two novellas – “A Deal of a Lifetime” and “And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer”. FYI
I’m trying to read from my shelves, but always happy to hear recommendations! I do have Herland waiting on my shelves.
Oh then DO read it. Such an interesting story, and very much something to think about in today’s world.
This must be an incredibly painful read, but I can imagine her wanting to get that anger out. Desperately sad.
Absolutely – she handles the tone so well, considering how hard it must have been to write.
I’d forgotten about her connection to the Potter’s Bar accident. There were a few interviews she gave some years later which were very moving.
She mentions a documentary too, which I haven’t seen. She certainly seems to have been tireless in her fight for justice.
Oh. I didn’t know this. Although I’ve only very rarely written to authors, I think I would have sent her a letter of condolence because she is an author I’ve loved for a long time.
I discovered her children’s stories when I was at teachers’ college, and moved on to her adult fiction in my feminist phase of reading in the eighties. (#ReadWomen is nothing new!)
This makes me realise how lucky we are in the age of the internet. I didn’t know this about Bawden because her books stopped being stocked and promoted in our bookshops, and bookshops, along with the library, were…. until the internet… my only source of books. If they didn’t stock it, I didn’t know about it.
She’s not the only one who thinks that privatisation has been a ghastly mistake.
I’m intrigued about her novels – I’ve only read A Woman of My Age and wasn’t very impressed, but have others on my shelf waiting.
I enjoyed this one too, I found it very poignant but Bawden manages to balance her grief and anger with telling her story sensitively, she never forgot the other families either.
Yes, very good point – it definitely felt like she was a voice for all of them
I thought this was a beautiful read. And happy to see a mention of the bookshop in Clevedon – my mother lives there so I know it well!
Oh, nice! They were so welcoming – I’ve only been once, but would love to go back.
I already knew and had read Nina Bawden, but I discovered Austen Kark in 1998/99 or so. He wrote a humorous, sweet memoir called Attic in Greece about his wife’s and his attempts to renovate a house in Nafplion in Greece. On one of my first visits to Greece with my Greek boyfriend (now ex-husband) we looked up that house (they were not there at the time) and wrote Austen a letter to say how much we enjoyed the book and the loving but realistic way he portrayed modern Greece. And he wrote back, bless him, such a lovely, lovely man! We were devastated to hear just a year or two later that he died in the Potters’ Bar train crash.
Oh how lovely to get a letter from him. That book is mentioned in passing in Dear Austen, and did sound very appealing – glad to hear it’s good.
I read her book Humbug as a kid and the atmosphere of it haunted me for years, although I could barely remember what it was about. I had to post in a “What book was this?” forum a few years ago. Wasn’t too surprised when I found out that she was a Virago author. It’s still the only book of hers I’ve read (to my knowledge) — I’ll have to look through your reviews to find another to read.