Book Reviews

A multi-faceted family saga over 60 years

There can be no other way to describe this book other than a family saga, complete with tragedy and powerful injustices; ‘but that were the times’, is no excuse. There were times when my stomach was in knots but this book is not one I could put down.
The blurb talks about an inscription on a ring May 1966 and August 1966. The dates are significant but only as an anchor and reveal to the story. In the 1960’s in a small Northern England community, what people think of you is important, although the freedom of the sixties is causing the powerful influence of the church to fray at the edges. Propriety is something that parents hold dear, and the Priests, it is not just their powerbase that is threatened, and their substantial income. I like to think of it as moral blackmail; there is an expected standard of behavior and stray outside those unwritten laws, woe betide you.
A 15 year old girl is pregnant; shock horror, but under a façade of caring, a priest has the answers and the parents of Beatrice Gardiner grasp the lifeline. The priest arranges for Bea to be closeted away as a governess to two children to an aristocratic French family; a good earner for the church.
When the baby is due, the priest has arranged for a birth home (imagine the Irish Magdalene homes and you should get the picture); another earner for the Church, the State paying fees, and then selling the newborn off for adoption.
Ballard writes the narrative as a combination of backstory and stages in history leaping back and forwards. It is the life of siblings and the effects that Beatrice’s ‘condition’ has on the whole family that is the core. It is well written and I was captivated mostly by the emotional trauma, more so than the complex familial narrative, which in itself earns high merit.
This is why I say it is multi-faceted, because a reader can latch onto many strands of the story and I venture to say, this may be influenced by the readers age. I experienced the 60’s and saw this battle of what is what and what it is not to be. It is the maelstrom of feeling that Beatrice feels and the helplessness of those nearby whose desire might be to step in and help, but that pesky old propriety and how you will be judged by your neighbours prevents good sense, and love, to prevail.
And the story, as complex as you could imagine, is just about how parents and the institutions of the time damage the offspring, and then it repeats itself. Cover ups, untruths, hiding behind a façade, veiled threats, and that is the whole tragic story.
I cried a number of times in this gut wrenching story, mainly I suppose, because I knew my own facet. A wonderful read and well worth 5 stars.