Lady Clementina ffinch-ffarowmore's Reviews > The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets

The first of my ‘theme’ reads this month. This is a story of England in the mid-1950s, when rationing was coming to an end, Jazz ruled large, Elvis was first appearing on the scene (though not yet in England), but the shadows of war still loomed large. Our ‘heroine’, eighteen-year-old Penelope Wallace, lives in her crumbling old ancestral home, Milton Magna, with her rather young mother, society-beauty, Talitha, and sixteen-year-old brother Inigo, who attends school but whose whole life is music and his guitar. Penelope attends classes on literature and art history, has a part-time job, and is preparing to spend some time in Italy the next year, and oh yes, she is besotted with singer Johnnie Ray. At home, the family is dealing with money problems, having to maintain Milton Magna (Penelope lost her father in the war, before her and her brother were even old enough to really understand it), each in their own way (her mother by wanting Penelope to marry money, and her brother wanting to make it big in the music world, much to her mother’s horror since that would inevitably involve him going away to America). Penelope and her family are pretty eccentric themselves but her somewhat uneventful life changes when one day at the bus stop she meets Charlotte, and through her, Charlotte’s aunt Clare, who’s in the midst of writing her memoirs (and happens to know Penelope’s parents though Penelope doesn’t immediately know how) and cousin Harry, a budding magician, determined to win back his ‘love’ Marina Hamilton….

This was my first Eva Rice book and I simply loved it (well, technically it was my second but the first was Who’s Who by Enid Blyton, so it doesn’t count as a novel). Reviewers have compared this one with Nancy Mitford and with I Capture the Castle and they’re right—the book definitely, especially at the beginning, has a very Mitford feel about it and also feels a lot like I Capture the Castle (the eccentric family, crumbling old house), but that said, it’s also its own story. I really enjoyed the story and all the characters, and especially the craziness and humour. Each character is very individual, well drawn out, eccentric, and interesting—none of your ‘ordinary’ people here, and there isn’t one (except, may be Marina), that one doesn’t ‘like’ or one wouldn’t mind knowing. I thought Rice captures the 1950’s world and indeed, the atmosphere (the ‘feel’ of it) really well—the world of music particularly, which makes perfect sense given her background. The tone remains light-hearted and humorous throughout, but the book also does give one a glimpse of the issues teens of the day then had to face (besides being teens that is)—to come to terms with a life that wasn’t in the midst of war (“I guess the strangest thing about your generation is that you grew up with war as your normality.”) and though the war’s over and there’s a new-found freedom, it’s shadows and impacts still remain with them, and aren’t something that can simply be shaken off. And Rice manages to do this without losing that light-hearted tone. Of course, I loved all the literary allusions and references (from Blyton (she of course, had to be there) to Hardy, and Scott Fitzgerald) as I usually do. And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the illustrations—the little illustrations, not of characters but things that appear in the book—a taxi, a teapot and cup, weather vane, and such—there is a human or two but not, as such, specific characters in the book, and these I thought were really cute and great fun as well. This was a perfect beginning for my June theme reads, one I really enjoyed. I definitely want to be reading more of her books!