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Chatterton Square

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Chatterton Square

By: E. H. Young
Narrated by: Patience Tomlinson
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About this listen

'You don’t mean you're going to divorce him?' Miss Spanner said with horror. A sophisticated, emotive novel, Chatterton Square concerns the complex web of relationships between two neighbouring families, the Blacketts and the Frasers. Framed by the advance of the Second World War, the subtle mechanics of marriage and love are laid bare through the observation of three of the marital options open to the mid-century woman: unmarried, separated, miserably married.

©2020 Preface © Lucy Evans; Afterword © Simon Thomas (P)2021 Isis Publishing Ltd 20th Century Classics Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction

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I love fiction written and set in the early to middle 20th century & enjoy gentle, insightful books about everyday people and their lives so had high hopes of Chatterton Square. They were quickly dashed. I found it hard to work out which character was which - was that the story or the narration - and began to care about them even less. The writing in itself is good but the stories of the square's inhabitants were uninteresting and uninspiring.

Dull

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So, so boring. I have no time for any of the so called characters. If any made its way into my awareness, I didn’t care.

Well read.

As I had no idea who was whom; or what the plot was; and I like the narrator, it is great for dozing off and you can’t miss anything important or interesting. Neither features.

Great for a nap.

Good for sleeping

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E H Young's subtle, witty, feminist, unconventional novels of the early twentieth century deserve to be much more widely known, and for a Bristolian like myself, their setting in Bristol (Young's 'Radstow'), and especially Clifton ('Upper Radstow') is an added pleasure, as we trace the characters' movements around the familiar streets and landmarks of this lovely city. As in many of Young's novels, the 'Bridge' (Clifton Suspension Bridge) represents an actual and psychological dividing point between city (representing convention and restraint) and countryside (space, nature and freedom to be oneself).

In 'Chatterton Square' (which, for anyone familiar with Bristol, I'm going to suggest is loosely based on Canynge Square) we are given a vivid insight into life in England at the time of appeasement (September 1938), and the divisions and anger generated by Chamberlain's 'Peace in our time'/ Munich agreement. (Those who were relieved because they believed that war had been averted being bitterly opposed by those who felt the UK government had sold out.) It had echoes for me of the current bitter Brexit divisions in the UK.

The book is excellently narrated and there is the bonus of a short critique/review at the end which comments on divorce law in Britain at the time and the way in which many people were trapped in unhappy marriages, both by law and by social attitudes towards divorce. It also points out that E H Young often champions middle aged spinsters (pleasingly represented by Miss Spanner in this novel) of which there were many in this period after so many men died in World War One.

If you like Elizabeth von Arnim or E M Forster, I think you will enjoy this novel.

A rare treat to hear an E H Young novel!

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I loved this novel, which is thought provoking, historically illuminating and also compelling listening. Patience Tomlinson is perfect as the narrator, with just the right pace, and just the right characterisations. I’m so pleased women authors from the 1930s and 40s are being rediscovered - I can’t get enough of them.

Thought provoking and entertaining

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