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A Novel
by R.C. Sherriff
Book Reviewed by:This charming, timeless classic about a family of five setting out on their annual seaside vacation is "the most uplifting, life-affirming novel I can think of...the beautiful dignity to be found in everyday living has rarely been captured more delicately" (Kazuo Ishiguro).
Meet the Stevens family, as they prepare to embark on their yearly holiday to the coast of England. Mr. and Mrs. Stevens first made the trip to Bognor Regis on their honeymoon, and the tradition has continued ever since. They stay in the same guest house and follow the same carefully honed schedule—now accompanied by their three children, twenty-year-old Mary, seventeen-year-old Dick, and little brother Ernie.
Arriving in Bognor they head to Seaview, the guesthouse where they stay every year. It's a bit shabbier than it once was—the landlord has died and his wife is struggling as the number of guests dwindles every year. But the family finds bliss in booking a slightly bigger cabana, with a balcony, and in their rediscovery of the familiar places they visit every year.
Mr. Stevens goes on his annual walk across the downs, reflecting on his life, his worries and disappointments, and returns refreshed. Mrs. Stevens treasures an hour spent sitting alone with her medicinal glass of port. Mary has her first small taste of romance. And Dick pulls himself out of the malaise he's sunk into since graduation, resolving to work towards a new career. The Stevenses savor every moment of their holiday, aware that things may not be the same next year.
Delightfully nostalgic and soothing, The Fortnight in September is an extraordinary novel about ordinary people enjoying life's simple pleasures.
Excerpt
The Fortnight in September
On rainy days, when the clouds drove across on a westerly wind, the signs of fine weather came from over the Railway Embankment at the bottom of the garden. Many a time, when Mrs. Stevens specially wanted it to clear up, she would look round the corner of the side door and search along the horizon of the Railway Embankment for a streak of lighter sky.
The Embankment—stretching without break to right and left—divided the world for Mrs. Stevens. On her side was Dulwich and her home: long friendly roads, dotted here and there with the houses of people she knew. On her side, too, half a mile across the housetops, loomed the Crystal Palace, which sometimes in the autumn flashed golden squares of sunset over to them. Away beyond lay the open country and the trees—green corners of heathland where they used to go for picnics when Dick and Mary were children.
On the far side of the Embankment lay the other half of Mrs. Stevens's world: the half ...
Sherriff's novel follows the Stevens family of Dorset—Ernest, an accounts clerk; his wife, Flossie; daughter Mary (age 19), a dressmaker's assistant; and sons Dick (17), a stationer's clerk, and young Ernie (10)—on their annual two-week family trip to the southern seaside resort town of Bognor Regis, to which they have returned every summer since Mr. and Mrs. Stevens first visited on their honeymoon twenty years earlier. As the focus moves from one character to another, the reader begins to build a sturdy appreciation for the dynamics that create this highly functioning domestic unit. The novel's events are relatively mild, but as they become important to the family, they do to the reader as well. This is a family that shows its connection through small, non-cloying acts of thoughtfulness and kindness. The novel is narrowly focused and provides a compelling exercise in noticing modest joys and overcoming small hurdles...continued
Full Review
(735 words)
(Reviewed by Danielle McClellan).
Ethan Joella, author of A Little Hope
Makes you want to hold on to and notice more fully the people you journey the earth with. What struck me most was the essential goodness of each character... . I didn't want it to end, and when I finished it, I experienced the loss of a good vacation being over.
The Fortnight in September by R.C. Sherriff takes place in 1930 at the West Sussex seaside resort town of Bognor Regis on the south coast of England. The Stevens family is spending two weeks at the same holiday boarding house that they have been visiting since Mr. and Mrs. Stevens spent their honeymoon there two decades earlier.
For the American reader, the name Bognor Regis may be less familiar than other more well-known UK seaside destinations such as Brighton, Newquay, Scarborough, or Blackpool. What is the history of this seaside resort? What made it a popular destination for over one hundred years? How has it fared in today's travel climate?
The town of Bognor has one of the oldest recorded Saxon place names in Sussex. In a ...
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