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A Novel
by Helen Simonson
Book Reviewed by:A good book is like the perfect fruit tart; how juicy the filling, how flakey the crust depends not only on using the freshest ingredients but also on the deft hands of the baker. In her debut novel, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, Helen Simonson crafts an enchanting tale, brilliant in its simple yet profound insight into human nature - a light and crisp perfection. Her characters etch themselves into your head and heart, lingering long after the last page has been savored.
Major Pettigrew, resigned to the fact that the happiest years of his life have passed, resides in the small English village of Edgecombe St. Mary. A stately widower of 68, the Major has lived his life with propriety; honor and duty to family and country rule the day. He is first introduced to us wearing his deceased wife's housecoat, which he puts on from time to time for the comfort that it brings. Mrs. Jasmina Ali, owner of the small grocery store in the village, comes to collect for the newspaper delivery, and finds the Major distraught, having just learned that his only brother has passed away. Guiding him to a chair, Mrs. Ali offers to fix some tea. The Major recalls that she is a recent widow, her husband having died of a sudden heart attack a little over a year ago.
"'It is very dislocating,' she said. Her crisp enunciation, so lacking among many of his village neighbors, struck him with the purity of a well-tuned bell. 'Sometimes my husband feels as close to me as you are now, and sometimes I am quite alone in the universe,' she added.
'You express it perfectly,' he said. They drank their tea and he felt a sense of wonder that Mrs. Ali, out of the context of her shop and in the strange setting of his own living room, should be revealed as a woman of such great understanding. 'About the housecoat,' he said."
Edgecombe St. Mary with its traditional stone houses, rose gardens and open fields seduces us; we feel the earthy dampness, inhale its fragrance. We understand the deep and emotional connection that belonging to such a place evokes.
"He liked the clover, evidence of the country always pressing in close, quietly sabotaging anyone who tried to manicure nature into suburban submission... Below him, the Weald of Sussex cradled fields full of late rye and the acid yellow of mustard. He liked to pause at the stile, one foot up on the step, and drink in the landscape. Something - perhaps it was the quality of the light, or the infinite variety of greens in the trees and hedges - never failed to fill his heart with a love of the country that he would have been embarrassed to express aloud."
Not much changes here from one generation to the next, but such idyllic paradise comes with a price. Anonymity is nonexistent, opinion and commentary plentiful. It is both exclusive and inclusive depending on who you are. Edgecombe St. Mary is the ultimate metaphor for life itself, rarely black and white but mostly shades of grey. How do we decide what to hold on to and what to cast aside? Such is the dilemma that Major Pettigrew and Mrs. Ali both struggle to reconcile. Sometimes, just when we believe we have life all figured out, along comes an ah-ha moment, a chance to jump the line and change direction. Suddenly faced with possibilities once never imaginable, the anguishing choice is between staying on the tried and true path worn comfortably smooth or taking the new unfamiliar one, bumpy, muddy and leading who-knows-where.
Helen Simonson masterfully breathes life into Major Pettigrew, Mrs. Ali and the others using lyrical prose to create a tale so colorful, so rich, that I deeply regretted reaching the last page of their adventure. This autumn-of-life love story - messy, funny, complicated and filled with the promise of possibility no matter what your age - is not to be missed. And like all good things, including fresh fruit tarts, the memory of enjoying it will make you smile whenever it comes to mind.
This review was originally published in March 2010, and has been updated for the
December 2010 paperback release.
Click here to go to this issue.
Helen Simonson shares some thoughts on her writing, her life and Major Pettigrew in an interview with our reviewer, BJ Nathan Hegedus:
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand offers an enlightening view of the divide between provincial and cosmopolitan, traditional and contemporary. What made you want to write about this? Was there a Major Pettigrew or Mrs. Ali in your childhood village?
Major Pettigrew may look, at first, to be the very image of the tradition-bound, English man who would live in a village like mine. Yet I wanted to show that none of us is our own stereotype – not even the English! The Major is an individual and he reflects the struggle we all face between daily life and ethics, between cherished traditions and the desire to be free. I wanted to show how humor, and some truth, lives in the gaps between our intentions and our actions in this regard.
Mrs. Ali fascinated me because she is everything an English woman like me would aspire to be. She is educated, cultured, gracious, open - and she lives in the country. Yet her Pakistani heritage brands her as a permanent outsider. I wondered how it must feel to have grown up in England, just as I did, but then to have fellow citizens, deny you your place. Mrs. Ali's dignity, in the face of all the petty insults of provincial life, seemed a story worth telling.
Which came to mind first: the story you wanted to tell or the characters with which to tell it?
One day I sat down to write a story just for me; not written with regard to how it would be read by others. My thoughts went home to the countryside I miss and the Major simply showed up; opening the door of his home, Rose Lodge, to Mrs. Ali from the village shop.
There were many ideas stored in my mind: how inheritance corrupts families; the urge of communities to define themselves by excluding outsiders; what 'family' really means and what we might really be prepared to give up for our principles. I tried to set all these 'big' ideas firmly in the background and just let people walk about in the village of Edgecombe St, Mary. I always tried to follow the action, not dictate a particular story line. Of course, there came several moments where I had to sit the Major down and ask him, ever so politely, to please hurry up and decide what to do next!
You say that Major Pettigrew first came to life as a short story. At what point did you realize that you had a full-length novel on your hands?
I was very nervous to show this story to Clark Blaise, the short story writer with whom I was studying at the time. Because it is so deliberately NOT a gritty, contemporary tale, I really thought he would hate it. Instead he met me with a huge smile and told me, very excitedly, that he thought I had found my novel. I showed it to a few other people and their happy response and eager questions about what the Major would do next, seemed to suggest that I was on to something. It seemed an alarming but wonderful responsibility.
Read the full interview
This review was originally published in March 2010, and has been updated for the
December 2010 paperback release.
Click here to go to this issue.
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