This book is for all the single women out
there. If you’ve ever been hopelessly in love with someone while knowing it
could never work, if you’ve ever wondered whether there’s something wrong with
you for preferring to be alone, if you’ve ever thrown a book at the wall
because it provides a fairy-tale romance as the only answer to real-world
problems, this book is for you.
Mary Lindsay, the heroine, is a civil
servant from London who prides herself on being practical. When she inherits a
cottage called The Laurels in a remote village from a distant cousin she only
met once as a child, the practical thing to do would be to sell it. However, to
her own surprise, Mary decides to live there instead, setting off a chain of
events that will affect not only her, but everyone around her.
Mary starts out believing that she is
incapable of love. The wartime death of her fiancé haunts her, not only for all
the obvious reasons, but because she could not return his feelings no matter
how much she respected him as a person. Similarly, she feels guilty because,
even though she lost touch with Mary Sr. after their one meeting, the older
woman cared enough to pass on not only her cottage, but a collection of
priceless miniature treasures such a blown glass tea set and a palm-sized ivory
carving. Mary Jr. comes to The Laurels with a deep-seated longing to learn more
about her cousin’s life, and about the imaginative, intuitive part of herself
she suppressed long ago.
This is, among other things, a book about
mental illness. Mary Sr.’s diaries describe a lifelong struggle with something
that we might call depression or bipolar disorder: “I can’t talk to people
because this illness isn’t like other illnesses (…) I remember Mother didn’t
[understand] when I was a child, and I said I was lying on stones and the black
walls were moving in” (ch. 5 p. 56, e-book edition). In the absence of therapy,
medication, or even a name to call her condition, she turns for support to her
Christian beliefs and her reverence for home and nature: “I am seeking the
goodness of God that waters the dry places (…) I shall fall into black
depression, and perhaps desperation too, but it will pass and spring will come
with celandines and white violets in the lanes … ” (ch. 5 p. 84). Similarly,
Jean Anderson, the Vicar’s sister, relies on religion to cope with her social
anxiety. In the middle of panicking about her brother’s request that she visit
the newly arrived Mary Jr., she feels comforted by the idea of God laughing
with her about her predicament (ch. 4 p. 48).
Elizabeth Goudge describes these characters
in tones of deep respect as well as compassion: “If many of [Jean’s] fears and
burdens would have seemed unreal to another woman, there was nothing unreal
about her courage” (ch. 4 p. 37). She does not reduce them to their labels or
overanalyze them with medical jargon, neither does she make fun of them,
minimize their problems, or idealize them as saints (although, to be fair, Mary
Sr.’s referring to her depressive episodes as punishment for her sins may grate
on a modern reader’s nerves).
What this book conveys, and what Mary Jr.
learns, is the interconnectedness of all people regardless of time and space.
She can still learn from her cousin and her fiancé, even after their deaths.
She can love someone and be enriched by it, whether or not that person feels
the same. Among her neighbors, the mutual empathy between two war veterans grows
despite their involvement with the same woman, and a wealthy landowner’s
business gamble becomes his salvation as well as his ruin. The web of plotlines
reaches all the way back to the construction of the local abbey during the
Middle Ages, in which a disfigured monk overcame his self-loathing and suicidal
thoughts, learned to carry himself confidently, became a healer, and inspired
his countrymen’s spiritual lives hundreds of years after his death.
“I wasn’t solitary. Everyone was me and I
was everyone” (ch. 7 p. 105). It’s not an original idea by any means, but it’s
one that needs repeating.
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