The Camomile Lawn [antikvár]

INTRODUCTIONThe beginning of this novel is brilliant. We quickly know, without any laborious feeling that we are being force-fed information, what Helena is like, and what her husband Richard is like, and why. Before we meet them - or before they arrivé off the London train - we know about their nephews and nieces, Calypso, Walter, Polly and Oliver, whose stories we shall be following. We know about ten-year-old Sophy, and Heiena's dislike of her; and we see fortyish Helena in her deckchair through Sophy's eyes, as she perches unseen in the ilex tree. We know the house is on a height above the sea. We know Calypso is breathtakingly beautiful. We know it is the summer of 1939, with war imminent. And all this in two relaxed, seductive pages.The only other crucial characters are identical twins, the rector's sons, who are part of the group and will be important for Polly; and the Austrian Jewish refugees Max and Monika (who is 'good without being boring', and ultimately tragic). They will be important for everyone, before the end. But the novel is shockingly illuminating about the way ageing, blimp-ish Englishmen, who had fought in the First World War, rather admired Hitier and - before war was declared -assumed concentration camps must be 'splendid places', and doing people 'a power of good'. Calypso too has met young Nazis on her skiing holiday and thought them 'awfully nice'. The rector's wife is such a decent woman that she just cannot believe Monika's account of what is happening to the Jews. 'I hope Monika exaggerates. It really is hard to believe that even Hitier - surely our propaganda -1 mean that exaggerates too.'The author has no comment to make; she just tells how it was. Since she never explains anything, the novel may need