It’s been more than three months since I read Saplings by Noel Streatfeild and I think that tells you something about my feelings towards the book. I enjoyed it but, the moment I put it down, I forgot all about it. I was neither disappointed nor delighted by it, but it entertained me well enough while I was reading it for me to want to discuss it here.
Saplings chronicles the destruction of a once happy family as the Second World War intrudes and interrupts their contented existence. The opening pages as the family vacations on the beach at Eastbourne in the summer of 1939 make for one of the most intriguing introductions I can remember. You instantly known the characters of the four children (Laurel, Tony, Kim and Tuesday), their parents (Alex and Lena), and their caregivers (Nanny and the governess Ruth). The children’s perspectives, their anxieties and fears, their joy in having their father with them instead of at work, all seemed perfectly expressed. Briefly but brilliantly, Streatfeild made the reader familiar with all aspects of the Wiltshires’ inner lives.
And then, slowly at first, their happy lives start to fall apart. The children are evacuated to their grandparents’ house when the war begins, separated from their parents and, when school begins and the eldest children go off to their boarding schools, from each other. Their comfortable, safe lives suddenly have no center and the stresses and tragedies of war only cause each child to drift more and more from the happy, stable childhood they had enjoyed before the war and from the happy, stable people they had once seemed destined to become.
But it is not just the children Streatfeild considers, though they are the focus. Their mother, Lena, is, for me, the most intriguing character of the novel. She loves her well-ordered, pre-war life, with the children neatly taken care of by others, allowing her plenty of time with Alex. From the opening pages, it is clear that Lena has no intuitive mothering side to her:
Lena, without looking up from her magazine, felt Alex leave her side. He would have gone to the tent to put on his things. When they were first married, or even a few years ago, she would have gone with him. She would no have missed those seconds in the hot tent, the flash of passion that would have come from the closeness of his cool, naked body. But he had got so self-conscious, always worrying about what the children were thinking. She had faced that. He wanted to switch things. He wanted to be a family man, bless him. The children were darlings, but she was not a family woman, she was utterly wife, and, if it came to that, a mistress too, and she meant to go on being just those things.
But the war takes all that happiness from her, leaving her devastated and unable to cope. Just when her children need her to be strong, she falls apart. The widowed Lena turns to alcohol and affairs to fill the void left by Alex’s death and, for me, she was the most consistently well-written, believable character as her carefully assembled perfect world crumbles around her:
Lena was in an overwrought state. She had attained happiness. It had been a delicate matter to so balance her life that it reached near perfection, but with skill she had managed it. The war had no use for delicate adjustments, it had torn most of her happiness to pieces.
A number of other readers have remarked on how authentic the children’s voices were but I found them strangely simplified. The children evolve into bundles of neuroses and psychological clichés, too anxious and too articulate in their anxieties to feel real. It’s fascinating to read about such self-aware children but not particularly believable when their entire character seems to consist of nothing else but these fears.
Saplings is a very episodic book, which becomes a bit trying as you go on, jumping from one event to the next without preamble. I also found it wildly uneven in its attentions to the children. The eldest children, Laurel and Tony, are more examined than their younger siblings but, even though the focus is on them, they never seem to mature emotionally or intellectually, though the novel spans at least five years. Laurel becomes the bizarre focus of the final part of the novel, accused by a hysterical aunt of having had an affair with her husband, whoLaurel had innocently befriended and cared for and received a girlish pearl necklace from while he was recovery from illness at home. Laurel, at sixteen, is stupid enough not to understand the accusation.
All in all, a very interesting examination of the psychological impact of the war on those far removed from the fighting but whose worlds are nonetheless changed. I love reading social histories and memoirs about life on the home front during the war and this is a perfect fictional companion to those books. The children’s reactions here are extreme but still fascinating and Streatfeild’s writing style is incredibly compelling, pulling me along even when I found some of her choices unbelievable.
The Captive Reader 
Sounds like a pretty depressing book. Honestly I was drawn to your post because of the author’s name in the title. I’m a huge fan of the movie You’ve Got Mail and Noel Streatfeild is also the author of a series of children’s books about shoes (i.e Ballet Shoes, Tennis Shoes) that Meg Ryan’s character, Kathleen Kelly (owner of a children’s book store) mentions toward the end of the movie. I wondered if it was the same author. Her focus on the children’s lives makes sense considering she is also a children’s author, but I had no idea that she also wrote adult fiction. Thanks for teaching me something new today!
Yes, it is definitely a bit depressing, Though this is the first book I’ve read by Streatfeild, she did write a number of other books for adults under the pen name Susan Scarlett, some of which have been reissued by Greyladies.
I’m curious about this just as an artifact of Noel Streatfeild’s early writing. She ended up writing such wonderful children’s books — they didn’t shy away from sad things, but they were never depressing. I wonder what made her change. In her later books she writes the children’s voices exceptionally well.
As I say, some readers seem to have found the children’s voices authentic, I just wasn’t one of them. It’s not so much that what they are feeling is expressed poorly so much as I don’t feel it is balance enough with other emotions and concerns to feel realistic. All the children are a little obsessive and angst-ridden, which makes for a dramatic novel but doesn’t ring entirely true. She’d already been writing children’s books (Ballet Shoes, etc) for some years before this was written but I’ve never read any of them so can’t really put her skill here in context as far as the children’s voice go. That would be interesting to look at though, definitely!
I have been disappointed by several books that have been reissued. I have moved on and expect more from novels than was once expected, I think. Yes, I am taking into account the age in which they were written, but I still find them disapointing. The world has moved on. I was disappointed with Miss Buncle’s Book, I didn’t even finish it, similarly Greenery Street and another, the title of which escapes me. This isn’t to say that all reissues aren’t worthy of reissue. I loved von Arnim’s The Enchanted April, and Molly Keane’s Bad Behaviour, but I find that, for the most part, they are over-written, wordy for the sake of being wordy. I even think Dickens would have benefited by careful editing.
I’m pretty indifferent to when a book was published as I don’t find there is a huge quality difference between the new and old. I think any publishing house, whether they’re issuing new works or reissuing old ones, isn’t going to be able to please 100% of their readers 100% of the time since tastes vary so much. Just look at you and I – I adored Greenery Street but can’t be bothered by Molly Keane and think The Enchanted April is the least impressive of von Arnim’s novels that I’ve read!
It seems everyone is looking for something different in a book. I enjoyed Noel Streatfeild’s second and third book in her autobiographical trilogy. The second one, Beyond the Vicarage, tells of her experiences staying in London during WWII. The third one tells of her becoming a children’s author (Ballet Shoes, etc.) She started out as an actress. The second two books really show a slice of a time in history that no longer exists.
[…] am slowly warming to Noel Streatfeild. I wasn’t very impressed by our first encounter (Saplings) but everything I have read by her since then has, in varying ways, delighted me. Gran-Nannie […]