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Book Description
A short novel that was first published in 1932 by a niece of Lytton Strachey: in this 'sharp, unsentimental domestic comedy, the weather is something less than cheerful the day Dolly Thatcham marries the Hon Owen Bingham: "In the furious March gale, everyone felt as though they were being beaten on the back of the head and on the nose with heavy carpets, and having cold steel knives thrust up inside their nostrils."'
Frances Partridge, a lifelong friend of Julia Strachey's, who wrote a memoir about her called Julia, has now written a Preface for the Persephone Books edition of Cheerful Weather for the Wedding. In it she points out that Julia wrote very little but what she wrote was of outstanding quality.
Julia Strachey was renowned for her sharp wit and unusually beautiful prose style. 'After Cheerful Weather's appearance, the literary editor of The New Yorker wrote to Julia saying he would publish anything she cared to send him,' said Frances Partridge in Julia. 'It was evern said that her book was for a while obligatory reading for his staff.' Julia only wrote two novels but Cheerful Weather is her most lasting work. Virginia Woolf described it as 'a very cute, clever, indeed rather remarkable acidulated story...I think it astonishingly good - complete and sharp and individual.' The Observer, calling it ' the slightest but the more perfect' of her two novels, wrote: 'The observer is so sharp-eyed and so delicate-tongued that her book reveals, on one level, the rich absurdity of the participants, on a deeper level the helpless despair which they carry about with them.' Yet the overall effect of the book is very funny in a Forsterian manner, Dolly Thatcham in Cheerful Weather being out of the same stable as Lucy Honeychurch in A Room with a View and both the mothers, Mrs Thatcham and Mrs Honeychurch, sharing many appalling similarities.
Frances Partridge, a lifelong friend of Julia Strachey's, who wrote a memoir about her called Julia, has now written a Preface for the Persephone Books edition of Cheerful Weather for the Wedding. In it she points out that Julia wrote very little but what she wrote was of outstanding quality.
Julia Strachey was renowned for her sharp wit and unusually beautiful prose style. 'After Cheerful Weather's appearance, the literary editor of The New Yorker wrote to Julia saying he would publish anything she cared to send him,' said Frances Partridge in Julia. 'It was evern said that her book was for a while obligatory reading for his staff.' Julia only wrote two novels but Cheerful Weather is her most lasting work. Virginia Woolf described it as 'a very cute, clever, indeed rather remarkable acidulated story...I think it astonishingly good - complete and sharp and individual.' The Observer, calling it ' the slightest but the more perfect' of her two novels, wrote: 'The observer is so sharp-eyed and so delicate-tongued that her book reveals, on one level, the rich absurdity of the participants, on a deeper level the helpless despair which they carry about with them.' Yet the overall effect of the book is very funny in a Forsterian manner, Dolly Thatcham in Cheerful Weather being out of the same stable as Lucy Honeychurch in A Room with a View and both the mothers, Mrs Thatcham and Mrs Honeychurch, sharing many appalling similarities.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The 'midget of a village woman, like a mosquito' who pants and grunts around setting up the after-wedding tea may make this comment in passing, but in this short novel it is only too apparent that the marriage between Dolly Thatcham and Owen Bigham is indeed a totally mistaken idea. Bearing a resemblance to Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, the book takes the reader through the day of the wedding, the before and after - notably missing out the wedding itself. We are sucked into a clamouring household - each individual bearing their own preoccupations with an edginess typical of a 'big day'. That alone made me want to run in any and every other direction. The bride's mother, Mrs Thatcham has a birdlike nervousness and a prattling stupidity that is in direct contrast to her daughter's languid gloom and inability to make her voice heard. It is only 119 pages but it is exhausting in it's heightened emotions and lack of peace. For there is another man, and the other man loves Dolly too - although neither have ever said it and both seem too stupified to say it now, or even consider it worth saying. Joseph runs to find her as a hammer in his head bangs out 'stop the wedding' over and over again, but when he does find Dolly (after a comedy of just missing her in each room in the house) she is preoccupied with covering up the ink she has spilled over her dress and says shortly 'you can tell me anything you like afterwards'. Julia Strachey's writing is stunning. Her characterisation is entirely unique, yet describes everything in a way that is so recognisable you wonder how you've never seen it that way before. Like the little boy, Jimmy's, face with features 'so small they could hardly be seen, bunched up together as they were in the middle of his face, like currants in a penny bun when they all run into the centre together for some reason'. Or, Old Mrs Whistable who 'resembled the blackish nobbled and twisted stump of an old elm tree very much more nearly than she did a human being'. An exquisite, frustrating, unresolved tale - just as is the messy business of life.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I loved every second! This short novel (120pp) all takes place on the wedding day of Dolly and Owen. And it's very, very funny. There is a semi-serious romance storyline through the centre of it (should Dolly be marrying Owen? Will they actually get married?) but it is the host of secondary characters which make this novel (or perhaps novella?) so amusing. My favourites are brothers Robert and Tom - the latter spends the entire novel trying to persuade the former to change his emerald-coloured socks: "Robert, your mother would desire you to go upstairs instantly to take off those bounder's socks, Robert, and to change into a respectable pair. Will you go, Robert?" He is distraught lest their schoolfellows - 'men from Rugby' - be at the wedding and witness this calamatous social faux pas. Robert's iterated response is "Go and put your head in a bag." I kept hoping these two would crop up, even though they essentially said the same thing every time they appeared, it was done so amusingly and accurately that I could have read pages of Tom's serious monotone and Robert's complete lack of care.
And then there's dotty Nellie-from-the-village, one of the 'help':
"The gentleman that come to see about the hot pipes out in the lobby, said to me, ' have two of my own,' he said, 'what are both of them big strapping great boys by now. And oh... good golly! - what devils and demons they do be!' he said. 'Well,' I said to him, 'my son Teddy is exactly the very same thing over again,' I said. 'All the time this cigarette-smoking, they pointed boots, and all of it, why, devils and demons isn't in it with such as they are,' I said. No. Very decidedly not!"
The whole family, and especially servants, are very funny characters - slightly ridiculous, but not too exaggerated as to not ring true. I suppose that's why the humour is so good - rooted in the actual. Sort of a less-hyperbolic PG Wodehouse, perhaps. Crossed with Virginia Woolf.
If you're wavering on Cheerful Weather For The Wedding, I encourage you to give it a go I think it's entered my Top Five Persephone Books, and since I've read all or part of over thirty, that's not bad at all.
And then there's dotty Nellie-from-the-village, one of the 'help':
"The gentleman that come to see about the hot pipes out in the lobby, said to me, ' have two of my own,' he said, 'what are both of them big strapping great boys by now. And oh... good golly! - what devils and demons they do be!' he said. 'Well,' I said to him, 'my son Teddy is exactly the very same thing over again,' I said. 'All the time this cigarette-smoking, they pointed boots, and all of it, why, devils and demons isn't in it with such as they are,' I said. No. Very decidedly not!"
The whole family, and especially servants, are very funny characters - slightly ridiculous, but not too exaggerated as to not ring true. I suppose that's why the humour is so good - rooted in the actual. Sort of a less-hyperbolic PG Wodehouse, perhaps. Crossed with Virginia Woolf.
If you're wavering on Cheerful Weather For The Wedding, I encourage you to give it a go I think it's entered my Top Five Persephone Books, and since I've read all or part of over thirty, that's not bad at all.
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Very very rarely do I not read to the end of a book - but sadly I could not battle through the tedium of this slim volume. Completely contrary to all the comments I have read (on this website and elsewhere) I found the characterisation and style of writing exceptionally poor. Unfortunately I cannot comment on what happens during the second half of the novella but the first is taken up entirely with the wedding guests congregating at the bride to be's home at lunchtime. It was hard to form a bond (let alone a liking) for any of the characters involved because we were told so little about them - all of the observations were just .. pointless as far as I could see. I hate to speak ill of any book but this one (which I was so looking forward to reading) was a complete disappointment. Sorry Persephone - I read and enjoy many of your classics but this one was way below the bar.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Interesting idea but generally shallow characters
Oh dear, I seem to be in the minority here! Until now I have loved all of the Persephone republications that I have read, but I didn't care so much for this short novella. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Suzie
A perfect novella
This novella, written in the 1930s, is a delight from start to finish. The action takes place over the course of a day as friends and family gather at a country house for Dolly's... Read more
Published 19 months ago by Eleanor
gift
This was a Christmas present for my elder daughter and she was delighted with it.
Published on 6 Jan 2010 by Richard Hallam
Only the weather is cheerful
This book is really short, but introduces lots of characters in its pages. I felt I only knew two characters well by the end - the mother of the bride, outrageous in her inability... Read more
Published on 5 Dec 2008 by Miss Mapp
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