The lovely people at British Library Publishing have sent me another excellent reprint in their British Library Women Writers series. Here we have a book originally published in 1942, the only novel of A.A. Milne’s niece, Angela.
Angela Milne – “One Year’s Time”
(10 July 2023, from the publisher)
Liza thought, we can’t go on if we’re not married. We’re marking time. When we were in London and he went out in the evenings, I was jealous if it was a woman, and if it was a man I was resentful, and I thought, he doesn’t want me to meet his friends. And when I did, either I was his girl friend or some one he had known a long time and would never be in love with, according to the occasion. And all the time I was waiting to be me. (p. 135)
In this interesting and incredibly frank for its time novel, published in 1942 but set in the 1930s, we meet Liza, who has a dull office job (it’s not weird that I liked the office scenes best, is it? I DO like an office-based novel) and Walter, who comes round one evening and becomes her lover almost immediately.
There’s no whiff of marriage, and of course it’s Liza who suffers, however modern she thinks she is: it’s Liza who is thrown into embarrassment when she makes up stories, especially when they’re staying away from home, for a weekend or the summer, and either she doesn’t get her own story straight or she worries, twisting, we imagine, her cheap Woolworth’s ring she bought herself, that Walter will blow her cover. As indeed he does to their neighbour in the countryside where they take a house – although if it was down to Walter, he’d go abroad to write his book, and he has no hesitation in doing so when he gets bored. Poor Liza is stuck: Walter wants his home comforts but taunts her with the horrific possibility of becoming a “little woman”, so she must be all things to him, just as he wishes.
The language of the book is almost 1920s and flapperish, though the two main characters are socially below that generation, but, “Voice from the back of the hall, what!” is the sort of style Walter uses. We constantly zip in and out of Liza’s head which can be tiring, but not as tiring as being Liza and having to watch her step at every turn, whether with Walter or in front of others. Liza is constantly thinking of time passing, and indeed an exact year passes in the book; and she’s also constantly comparing herself with other married and unmarried women. Money also seems to be a worry, although Simon Thomas carefully explains in the Afterword that she’s certainly not destitute.
Events cycle round: but while she regains some things out of home, work and love, she loses others, even having a hopeful prospect of one of these whipped away. This book would have been so shocking in its time, with its bed scenes, if not sex scenes, but it serves even now to show that people will be people (and, sorry, men will be men and get away with it), and that unmarried couples existed way before the licentiousness permitted by the Second World War.
As usual in these attractive and interesting books, there’s a 1940s timeline, a biographical note and a Preface that seems to see the power structure in the novel as I do, and the Afterword brings out the joint preoccupations of the novel with sex and money, transactional in nature the both of them.
Thank you so much to the British Library for sending me this book and others in the series in return for an honest review. “One Year’s Time” is available now. You can buy all the British Library Women Writers books (and more) at the British Library Shop (https://shop.bl.uk/ and this one here).
Simon T
Aug 12, 2023 @ 14:30:25
Lovely to read your thoughts, Liz – I’m so glad you found the novel interesting. Strange to think of Walter at war, isn’t it?
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Liz Dexter
Aug 12, 2023 @ 14:34:10
Oh he’d wriggle out of it and be in an office somewhere with someone to polish his shoes, surely! I can go and read your review now, which I’d saved.
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A Life in Books
Aug 12, 2023 @ 15:16:56
This is such an interesting series, particularly with the preface and timeline giving the novel context,
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Liz Dexter
Aug 12, 2023 @ 15:23:53
Yes, I’ve read nearly all of them and have enjoyed everything I’ve read, and the front and back matter do enhance them.
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kaggsysbookishramblings
Aug 12, 2023 @ 15:48:50
Sounds great Liz – and yes, must have been a few eyebrows raised at the time. I suspect I’ll want to slap Walter…
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Liz Dexter
Aug 13, 2023 @ 08:52:11
Yes, I’m sort of assuming you won’t be on Team Walter!
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madamebibilophile
Aug 12, 2023 @ 17:31:36
This sounds a great read. So interesting at the attitudes expressed not being what we would generally expect of the time.
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Liz Dexter
Aug 13, 2023 @ 08:52:42
Yes, it’s fascinating, they’re literally in bed together within pages!
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Black Knight
Aug 13, 2023 @ 16:08:03
Interesting to know the way of thinking and acting of people who lived a century ago.
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Liz Dexter
Aug 13, 2023 @ 17:12:04
Gosh, you’re right, it was nearly a century ago!
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heavenali
Aug 14, 2023 @ 17:51:41
I am skimming your review a bit, as I shall be reading this fairly soon I think. I like novels of this period where people behave more realistically than in conventional novels, and I, too, love an office based narrative.
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Liz Dexter
Aug 15, 2023 @ 08:37:13
You’re going to really enjoy this one, the office bits are fab!
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wadholloway
Aug 15, 2023 @ 01:41:03
Women definitely had the worst of it, eg, Katherine Mansfield, who was a generation older. But also, it’s my theory we look at these things through a 1950s middle class lens which was statistically the period when the most couples living together were married. Things were a bit freer before the War (and a lot freer for the working class). On the other hand, I take the point that Milne was there and I wasn’t.
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wadholloway
Aug 15, 2023 @ 01:43:44
PS. It’s a subject I’m sensitive about because in 1970, with an 18yo partner, I was at the cusp of that time when ‘living in sin’ became just ‘living together’.
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Liz Dexter
Aug 15, 2023 @ 08:40:10
That is interesting on your time frame! Although we were quite surprised that our next-door neighbours were rather shocked to find we weren’t married, in about 2010!! I think you might well be right about the 1950s lens, but also I am not sure this was written about / published about at all, as it’s not something I’ve come across, or Simon the consultant on the series had, and we have read a lot of 1930s/40s novels between us. Also worth pointing out these are middle-class people: he’s a lawyer and she works in an office but also has a small private income. I think I have come across more working-class people in that situation in interwar works.
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Book review - Stella Benson - "Pipers and a Dancer"
Aug 16, 2023 @ 08:00:51
thecontentreader
Aug 18, 2023 @ 16:28:27
Interesting theme, and ahead of time. I enjoy reading about people going outside the box. Often it seems they are more enthusiastic before going into the box, than when actually there.
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Liz Dexter
Aug 18, 2023 @ 21:14:31
Yes, ahead of its time in talking about it, but obviously of its time as the plot seemed entirely believable. I think the heroine wanted to get back into the box of convention, though, poor thing!
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Griff and Sarah Thomas
Sep 10, 2023 @ 19:07:29
I have read this to whet my already stimulated appetite as I have this one in my tbr pile. I like the sound of the office based scenes too, having spent more than 10 years working in different offices in the 1990s and early 2000s.
‘Your ‘you may be interested in this post too’ is a good feature’ and helped me to this post.’
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Liz Dexter
Sep 11, 2023 @ 10:55:37
I’m glad that feature helps: I enabled it but WordPress chooses what to suggest, so it’s good to know it’s useful!
I loved the office scenes in this one I have to say.
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