Maeve Binchy helped me through day one of this silly and inconveniently-timed cold I seem to have contracted but by the end of day two I was ready for something even less challenging and so I curled up Friday night with The House on the Cliff by D.E. Stevenson. Everything about this book is simple – the writing, the plot, the characters – which makes it the perfect thing to read when your brain is feeling a bit fuzzy. Though published in 1966, there are very few details in the story to date the book and it feels like something both written and set much earlier.
Elfrida Jane Thistlewood is twenty-one years old and working as an actress in London when she spots a mysterious advertisement in a newspaper, placed there by a law firm looking to make contact with her mother. Elfrida gets in touch to let them know that her mother has recently died only to discover that her grandmother, who was estranged from her daughter after her youthful elopement, has died and left the family home, Mountain Cliff, to (in the absence of her mother) Elfrida. It is extraordinary news and Elfrida, whose mother spent much of her final illness dreaming of her childhood home, cannot wait to see Mountain Cliff for herself. When she does visit, she falls in love with it. Despite having no money of her own to maintain it, she decides to keep Mountain Cliff, leave the stage (which she was not particularly attached to), and go and live there permanently.
As befits a light romance, everything goes relatively smoothly for Elfrida. All of her neighbours love her and she loves them, finding the community of kind, sensible people she had longed for amid the flashy insincerity of her theatre friends in London. Mountain Cliff’s invaluable housekeeper and handyman not only stay on after learning that Elfrida won’t be able to pay them but even invest some of their own money into building up the farm and maintaining the lands that come with the house. There is a sinister cousin – a shifty character from Montreal – but his brief appearance does not do much to establish him as a real threat. The only tension here – and it is never very tense – is over which of her admirers Elfrida will pick. Will it be the matinee-idol she used to act with in London, the kind and well-off neighbour she befriended so easily, or the boyishly energetic junior partner at the law firm which has been handling her affairs? It is clear from his first introduction which man will emerge victorious but, as always with Stevenson, it is fun to see the story unravel, especially since so little of the story is actually focused on romance. Instead, mostly we see how Elfrida adjusts to her life in the country, falling in love with her new home by the sea.
The nice characters are nice, the nasty characters quite nasty, and nothing particularly unexpected happens in the entire book but it is just that which makes it delightful. There is nothing wrong with reading about nice things happening to nice people. There was not a lot here that particularly stood out for me – I doubt I will remember many of the details a month from now – but it was a pleasant story to immerse myself in for a few hours on a rainy night. And it did remind me of one of the great attractions of Stevenson: she understands that there is no romantic fantasy as satisfying as one that revolves around real estate. Books that feature several men vying for the attention of the heroine are fine; books that add in the unexpected inheritance of a fantastic house and the joy of establishing it as your home are much, much better.
The Captive Reader 
Great review! “There is nothing wrong with reading about nice things happening to nice people” — so true that I want to embroider it on a pillow or something.
Thanks, Elizabeth. I would want one of those pillows, too!
I think you may have convinced me to try more of Delderfield! I’m one of those people who have only ever read “To Serve Them All My Days,” which I enjoyed but found the prose not quite elegant enough to sustain my attention for such length. Are all of his books in a similar style?
You threw me a little by mentioning Delderfield in a response to a Stevenson post but I can only assume you’ve be combing through the archives! I adore Delderfield and rank him as one of my favourite comfort read authors (far, far, far ahead of D.E.S. though behind other favourites like Eva Ibbotson, Georgette Heyer and Anthony Trollope). He is a storyteller not a stylist so the joy of his books comes from the characters and plots, not the construction of his sentences. To Serve Them All My Days is fine but I love A Horseman Riding By and the Swann books the best.
Yes! So sorry to be confusing. I’ve been reading through all of your archives and happily adding books to my TBR list! I was trying to figure out which of his books to try next.
“The unexpected inheritance of a fantastic house…” Oh, yes! I see what you mean. Double fantasy, along with the adoring swains!
Have you read Rumer Godden’s China Court? If not, might I give it a recommendation? Godden is a bit (a whole lot!?) more cerebral than D.E. Stevenson, but the basic premise is the same. Well, there’s only one man involved, but the inheritance of the fantasic house angle is certainly in there.
Or The Scent of Water by Elzabeth Goudge, one of my favourites of hers. Middle-aged woman unexpectedly inherits house. The romance is in there, but it is definitely not “traditional”; the ending is more poignantly realistic than traditionally “happy”.
Both are lovely reads when one is not feeling up to par.
I’m battling (have mostly conquered?) a bout of the flu here; in recovery mode I am re-reading juveniles and 1950s & 60s finds from my father’s bookshelves.
I have one D.E.Stevenson on hold here for possible Christmas Day reading – The English Air – so it was lovely to see a DES review. And I may dip into Maeve Binchy at long last. My mom said they are a bit of a gamble – some great & some not so, so I’ll keep that in mind.
Hope you’re feeling better every day, Claire. More wintry weather in our future, I hear. Minus 14C here this morning, with a lazy wind. (Too lazy to go around you so it goes right through you.) Brrr! Stay warm & (I guess this is more applicable to a Coast-dweller) dry! 🙂
Thanks for the recommendations, Barb. Godden and I do not get along – I’ve tried at least four of her books now and did not enjoy any of them – but I have not yet read anything by Elizabeth Goudge and am looking forward to tracking down some of her books.
My cold lingers on, though it is happily one of those half-hearted ones. My nose may be stuffy and I may sound like I have a frog in my throat but I feel absolutely fine aside from that and have lots of energy to run about with Christmas preparations. My brother and his girlfriend both seem to have caught this awful flu and they are decidedly worse off.
Oh, I so agree with you regarding real estate in romances. The inheritance of houses (or cottages) and the subsequent “nesting” scenes are as cozy as it gets. One of the others of that theme that has stuck with me is Thorny Hold by Mary Stewart.
I have less patience with cottages; if I’m going to have a real estate fantasy, it’s going to be on a wildly impractical scale!
Sounds perfect for a cold! And for some reason I found ‘a shifty character from Montreal’ very amusing. And how I agree with your final line – books about inherited houses definitely trump books about love triangles.
I suppose if you’re going to have a sinister Canadian figure, Montreal is your best bet. It’s difficult to take a villian from Saskatoon seriously, isn’t it?