The Summer Before the War: A Novel
By: Helen Simonson / Narrated By: Fiona Hardingham
Length: 15 hrs and 47 mins
First listen? Tickled pink! Second listen? Holy cow, the narration really killed it for me…!
I never listened to Simonson’s Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, but that book seemed so charming that when this book, The Summer Before the War came out in 2016, I was chomping at the bit, wondering what all Simonson would do with an era in history fraught with upcoming global turmoil, with suffragettes, with a definite class system in place. And Fiona Hardingham? LOVED her when she did The Luck Uglies (A trilogy I’m looking forward to listening to and reviewing in the future).
And when I got it hot off the presses as a New Release, and when I listened to it, I reviewed it over on Audible as “delightful book club listening”—it charmed my socks off, and kept me going through almost 16 hours of story. I was utterly captivated by heroine Beatrice Nash’s strivings for independence, by young Snout determined to make something of himself by devouring Latin, by Hugh’s steady determination to be a grand surgeon, by the many, MANY other characters who lived and breathed alongside the main characters as they progressed through the novel.
Beatrice Nash, after the death of a beloved father who encouraged her to speak her mind, to have goals, to believe that she was equal to men, comes to a small town to be the school’s new Latin teacher to young men. That she’s a woman is practically scandalous; that she’s so young is definitely frightful. Still, Beatrice and her benefactress do not back down, and the story follows her on her journey in life at a leisurely rate. Suffragettes are introduced, aristocrats are likewise, and the cousins Hugh and poet Daniel join together to make Beatrice’s life not so odious.
WWI looms at the beginning, then it arrives with its promise of glamour and adventure, then Simonson turns it into full-on bloody chaos by the book’s ends. Such a progression, I still think, is deliciously done, and we see innocence turn into terror turn into mind-killing exhaustion. And there are more well-done progressions as we see relationships evolve and devolve and perhaps evolve again, all based upon the global conflict and upon women’s fights to be seen on the Homefront. I liked how Beatrice was progressive without having toooo many characteristics that would be out of place in 1914, and I enjoyed Simonson’s forays into exposing the sheer and utter bravery of women coming forward as outspoken, as intelligent, as artists. And I even liked the women who lived within the male dominance, who toed the line, but who still had plenty of chutzpah in the way they went about getting things done.
Sounds like an awesome listen, right? Especially since it ends on notes of the horrors of war and just what all that does to the characters, particularly to young Snout.
Uhm, noooooo. I’m soooo sorry Ms. Hardingham, but in this audiobook your male characters… every… single… one… save Snout, came off flat, came off with imperious and strident tones, came off bitter. They were all total pills. Plus an atrocious American accent, a flitty French one, and a tendency of shouting even though the text indicates that something was said in moderated tones, was absoLUTEly ear-jarring! We get to the end, to the blink back a tear or two scenes, and instead of heartfelt conversations between doomed characters, we get snide sneering tones and, lemme tell ya, this time around those tears fairly dried up right quick.
So all in all, it’s a good story and miiiiiight be worth the almost 16 hours of it, if you have the time to kill and wanna bit of well-researched history in there with your fiction, and especially if you want a sense of what it was to be a woman during the era. And it’s worth it, maaaaybe, if it’s on sale or going in a 2-for-1 credit promo.
But otherwise?
The narration might make you long for the whole icepick to the ear thing. And that’s never a good thing.
Hmmm… Still, the writing’s good enough that I’m wondering if Simonson’s much-lauded debut is good.
I shall wait for a sale, shall I?
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