It takes very little for a book to entertain me on a lazy Sunday afternoon. All I ask for is a bit of romantic intrigue, a dash of humour, and ideally a Scottish setting. Susan Settles Down by Molly Clavering fit the bill perfectly.
When Susan Parsons moves with her brother Oliver to Scotland, she’s not quite certain what awaits her. The drunken cook is not an ideal introduction to her new home but, after years of following Oliver abroad during his naval postings while earning her own living writing, she is intrigued to try quiet country life in the home her brother has just inherited.
Even more intrigued are all of the Parson siblings’ new neighbours, from the kindly vicar’s family to the dreadfully gossipy Pringle sisters to the neighbouring farmer. Because what would the fun of a village novel be without villages to be upset/romanced/amused by the new arrivals?
The title gives the impression that Susan needs settling down but she is in fact very settled in herself when we meet her. She has the poise of maturity but retains the ability to laugh at herself, a combination that endears her quickly to others. Oliver, on the other hand, I find singularly unappealing. He is still angry about the injury that has caused him to leave the navy and left him with a limp, and can lash out at those around him. His sense of humour tends towards the juvenile and slightly nasty, with a penchant for baiting and embarrassing others.
There’s no plot to speak of – as it should be for a book of this sort – just a nice meandering flow as Susan and Oliver become more enmeshed in country life. Oliver, mentored by neighbour Jed Armstrong, finds an interest in farming to help him move on from the dashing career he’s lost while Susan finds plenty to occupy and amuse herself – though she would be more amused if Jed would not bait her so often to lose her temper.
By the end, both Oliver the lothario and Susan the spinster have found suitable spouses to help them settle even further into the community. All is well and ends just as you predicted it would early in the book – exactly right for a Sunday afternoon read. I loved Susan and enjoyed Clavering’s sense of humour (not to be confused with Oliver’s awful one), and look forward to rereading this in years to come.
More recently, I picked up the sequel, Touch Not the Nettle, eager to be reunited with Susan. A few years have passed since the end of the last book (this was published in 1939, while Susan Settles Down came out in 1936) and the married couples are all as happy as we left them. Susan (now in her mid-thirties? I’m struggling to remember ages from the first book but I feel like this was mentioned, though she is referred to by another character as a “young woman” here) wishes silently for a child, admiring her growing nephew, but thankfully this is not a book about that. Instead, the central character is a visiting cousin by marriage, Amanda Cochrane.
Amanda’s aviator husband has gone missing and is presumed dead. Amanda, tired of her husband’s philandering and spendthrift ways, had been planning to divorce him so her feelings about her uncertain widowhood are complicated to say the least. Exhausted after living with her dramatic, superficial mother, she has retreated to Scotland for some much-needed rest and no hostess could be more considerate than Susan.
Without charm to conceal the lack of plot, I found this heavy going. I still appreciate Clavering’s sense of humour but Amanda is a trickier character than Susan was, with heavy burdens she cannot free herself of. Amanda is given a love interest in her new surroundings and he is awful. Women can explain away a lot of bad behaviour to uncover the eligible man beneath but this takes it to a ridiculous level. He is rude, vicious, and almost always drunk. There are reasons (obviously) but it’s hard to ever see how he could seem appealing (his house is nice, maybe that’s it?).
The story gets exceeding dramatic, with madness, murder, and more deaths. The characters from the first book are all happily distanced from this – continuing on in their cosily domestic worlds, exactly as I want them to – but I wish I had been too. The sprightliness and good humour that I loved from the first book is gone and I have no desire to return again to Amanda’s dramatic life.
When Dean Street Press reprinted eight of Molly Clavering’s books earlier this year, I was so overwhelmed with excitement that I barely knew where to start. My only experience with Clavering had been Near Neighbours, reissued by Greyladies a few years ago, and I’d enjoyed it enough to want more. Overwhelmed by choice, I chose Dear Hugo for my reintroduction to Clavering. When, after all, have I ever been able to resist an epistolary novel?
The Captive Reader 