Embedded Files
Barbara Willard
This is interestingly shift to the perspective of oustiders to the family the Mantlemass books are based around. It also has a nice reversal of the formula from some of the earlier books. They tended to revolve aroud a character trying to find their origins whereas in this those origins are made clear early on and part of the driving force of the book is wondering how they will resolve. Lilias, is a wonderful character, someone who has had to struggle in life and consequently has little tolerance for what seem the whims romantic scruples of her daughter - niceties Lilias could ill afford. This theme of generations at cross purposes to each other is common in children's books and in this series as a whole but is particularly vivid in the relationship of Lilias and Ursula. At one point the book talks about the age old battle of youth and age. I felt that Lilias, in her desire not to let the sacrifices she has made go to waste sometimes fails to see how her daughter need not make the same sacrifices. The book is more complex than that though, Lilias doesn't just act out of insecurity but has concrete motivations. It is a story of how stuborn Lilias has had to be to gain independence as a woman and how that stubornness can lead to miscommunication. The reader is left balancing their suspected foreknowledge with what is going on, working out how they will combine. In that way it feels a little like a mystery where you find out who did it in the first pages and the story is in finding out how that came to be or how others will come to share your understanding.
A sense of how you construct your identity and image of yourself is a key theme of the book, particularly through Lilias whose image of herself as "The Iron Rose" is both sustaining and limiting. For a book where lots is about self-image it has a couple of lovely scenes where a character transcends uncertainty into a feeling of surety and rightness that allows them to stand strong in the face of an overwhelming world. Fittingly both Lilias and Ursula get one of these moments showing their similarity despite their differences.
This story of change and evolution across generations is mirrored in the changing times. The Medley's trying to reach back to recapture the earlier days of Ghylls Hatch and the stud book and the change that the prosperity of the forges brings, in interest from overseas, in the balance of the estate and in the diminishing of the forest that has given the community its identity. This tension between immediate imperatives and what we consider important on a wider scale smoulders in the background, never really addressed in the way that such tensions often do.
I would recommend this book mostly for the sheer force of Lilias's personality and for the chance it offers to view familiar characters from the outside again.
Written by Jack.
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