Return Journey by Barbara Goolden

I love taking a trip to the secondhand bookshop in Wantage, which is less than half an hour from my house. It’s a real treasure trove, and I never come away empty-handed or anything like it. Among my recent haul was Return Journey (1954) by Barbara Goolden, and I was so taken by the premise that I started it immediately. But before I looked to see what it was about, I was drawn in by those stunning cover. Isn’t it a beauty?

It reminds me a lot of a village called Lower Slaughter that isn’t a million miles from me, and where I once accidentally gatecrashed a fete.

“You do not feel,” said the Assessor gently, “that you are altogether satisfied with your Record?”

“Most dissatisfied,” confessed the New Arrival. “I have the feeling, you see, that I am a complete failure.”

The Assessor take up a file. “You were, I think, an English spinster of the upper middle-class, living in the country?”

“Hampshire,” prompted the New Arrival, “the Surrey side, very convenient for London. Not that I myself liked town life, the traffic always confused me. I was killed, you recollect, by a tram. So bewildering. I thought it was going, when, in fact, it was coming.”

The ‘New Arrival’ is Veryan Meadows, and the place she has newly arrived is the Pearly Gates. Before her record is read, though, she is given the option of returning to Earth for any year of her life. And she can choose whether to have a change of heart, a change of mind, or a change of physical appearance. She chooses to go back to her youth, and to be beautiful.

Isn’t that a brilliant premise? Well, it swept me away, certainly.

As it happens, it was the most brilliant thing about Return Journey. I enjoyed reading the novel, but I feel that Goolden could have made more of the idea.

When she is sent back on her terrestrial way, the celestial powers that be decide to give her an added attribute, along with her beauty – the ability to express her opinions. She has always been rather shy and unsure of herself – which, coupled with plainness, led to an unhappy life as ‘an English spinster of the upper middle-class’. So here she finds herself again, the daughter of a minister in a small village. She is unused to having any male attention, and doesn’t quite know what to do with the sudden attentions of, among others, the curate. Any young gentleman is bewitched by her looks; any older man or woman seems to think she is unnecessarily odd. And you can sort of see their point. While the Assessor gave the ability to express her opinions, she does seem to be [a] pretty stupid and [b] bizarrely literal. Any turn of phrase is taken at face value, and her repeated questions madden quite a few people.

It’s unclear whether she remembers her heavenly adventure, or realises that she’s having a second lease of life. And that’s the major drawback of the novel for me. If we had Veryan reflecting on the differences this time around, or cynically thinking about how beauty has altered perceptions of her, it would be rather intriguing. What a lot to explain. Instead, it’s an enjoyable small-town novel where the heroine is unusually pretty and unusually dim. It’s good fun, but it rather wastes the initial premise.

Goolden is neither dim not literal, and she is rather good at one of my favourite authorial tricks – showing when characters are inadvertently revealing their true nature, or using quick narrative asides to send up the characters. Return Journey ended up being one of those novels that slightly frustrated me, because it could obviously have been better than it was – if Veryan had had an ounce of the wit and intelligence that Goolden has, it would have been much improved. More fun than seeing a virtuous innocent be virtuously innocent.

So, this has ended up one of those confusing reviews where I might sound more negative than I feel. Return Journey is fun and diverting. It’s only that I think it could have been truly brilliant. Maybe next time around?