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Tag Archives: historical inaccuracy

When the Wheels Come Off: The Mitford Secret

27 Monday Mar 2023

Posted by Novelhistorian in Reviews and Columns

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book review, Chatsworth, contrived story, creepy manse, December 1941, Duke of Devonshire, flat characters, historical fiction, historical inaccuracy, Jessica Fellowes, Mitford family, mystery, Pearl Harbor, snobbery, social atmosphere, World War II

Review: The Mitford Secret, by Jessica Fellowes
Minotaur, 2023. 365 pp. $29

It’s late December 1941, and the Luftwaffe is pounding London. Deborah Mitford, daughter in a famous family related by marriage to the duke of Devonshire, arranges a house party at Chatsworth, the ducal estate. Among others, she invites Louisa Sullivan, onetime nursemaid of her childhood, now a private detective in London, and Louisa’s six-year-old daughter, Maisie.

As a guest where once she was a servant, Louisa worries that beyond Deborah and one other Mitford sister, Nancy, the aristocrats will resent her presumption. Louisa’s also missing her husband, Guy, the other half of their detective agency, who must remain in London.

With such a large cast, which includes Fred Astaire’s sister, Adele, and Kathleen Kennedy, sister to future politicians—both women have married Devonshires, or hope to—the mystery takes a while to set up. Then comes a village woman, uninvited, Mrs. Hoole, who insists the bluebloods check “the vestibule” for a vital object.

Sure enough, Louisa leads the charge and unearths a bloodied maidservant’s cap. Mrs. Hoole persuades the Mitfords to let her conduct a séance, during which it’s revealed that a maid was murdered at Chatsworth in 1916. Louisa sets out to investigate.

Imperial Japanese Navy photo of the Pearl Harbor attack, December 7, 1941 (courtesy U.S. Navy via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

Neither the Mitfords nor the local constabulary want her to discover anything that might embarrass the family, even after another death occurs. Fellowes creates the social maze of country gentility through which the London commoner wanders, with plenty of “no—and furthermore” to hamper her investigation. The story evokes old tropes: the immense, creepy manse, with more rooms than anyone can count; a séance; an old crime that cries out for justice. But Fellowes does just enough to make this narrative her own.

The author also has a keen eye for domestic detail. By chance, I visited the grounds of Chatsworth a half-century ago but never entered the house. This is part of what I missed:

Louisa was in serious danger of believing she was in an H. G. Wells novel and had been magically transported to Rome in a flying car. Ahead of them was a wide staircase that went up to a gallery, the ornate black and gold of the banister circumnavigating the room as a balcony railing. The floor was black and white chequered marble and a fire blazed in a hearth to the side—which did nothing to prevent the room from feeling freezing cold—and there were columns with marble busts atop.

The American guests aren’t the only ones with star power, for the Mitfords are quite a family. Daughter Diana married Sir Oswald Mosley, the British Union of Fascists leader, and sister Unity admires Hitler. Diana’s in prison and Unity’s psychologically disturbed, never left alone, whereas another sister, Jessica, in the United States, is mourning her husband, recently killed in action. Consequently, there are conflicts and divisions within this remarkable clan.

Unfortunately, Fellowes resolutely skims the surface, never getting deeper than the famous names. The characters have only a dominant trait or two and no inner lives to speak of. Louisa has no visible flaw except an impulsive way of asking questions, without which she wouldn’t be a private detective. Clichés like “supercilious sneer” punctuate scenes in which Louisa has tried and failed to elicit information from tight-lipped sources.

But even those shortcomings would matter less if the story made sense; about halfway through, the wheels come off. An RAF officer stationed near Chatsworth somehow allows the family and guests to visit the airfield—they even sit in the cockpit of a Spitfire—and he subsequently warns of a forthcoming air raid, many hours away. Nobody wonders how or why any of this could happen, so when the plot turns on the officer’s words and actions, they’re amazed. Right.

How frustrating to read a mystery, trying to think along with the detective, only to discover that logic doesn’t apply. Forget about placing yourself in the story, wondering how you’d react in a given circumstance, arguably the whole point of reading a novel. There’s nothing to hold onto amid the contrivance.

The historical background, or lack thereof, feels similarly tricked up. At least twice, the narrative refers to “fighting in France” or “men at the front,” phrases from 1916, not December 1941. Fellowes seems not to have heard of Dunkerque or the German occupation of France. A minor point, perhaps, yet telling; she doesn’t seem to have heard of Pearl Harbor, either.

This story begins only ten days after Japan attacked, and by the time the guests gather at Chatsworth, Japanese forces are ripping through Malaya and battering the gates of Singapore, both British possessions. The wheels have come off, for the world at large and the British Empire. But the Mitfords seem to feel nothing about this, nor do their American guests, citizens of a suddenly belligerent nation.

What are we supposed to make of that? Perhaps nothing, for this book is part of a best-selling series, its final volume.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book through my work for Historical Novels Review.

A Moral Tale Without a Compass: Once a Midwife

03 Monday Dec 2018

Posted by Novelhistorian in Reviews and Columns

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1941, book review, commercial fiction, draft resistance, feel-good fiction, historical fiction, historical inaccuracy, Holocaust, information dumps, midwifery, moral compass, Patricia Harman, racism, setpiece characters, West Virginia, World War II

Review: Once a Midwife, by Patricia Harman
Morrow, 2018. 487 pp. $17

Patience Hester, midwife of Liberty, West Virginia, senses the state of the world in November 1941 with terrible foreboding. Her husband, Daniel, a veterinarian and veteran of the First World War, has said that if war comes again to the United States, he will refuse to go. As healers, the Hesters’ moral predicament offers a compelling premise; add Patience’s past as a political activist for liberal causes and her distaste for Nazi Germany, and Harman has drawn her battle lines.

I wish I could tell you that Once a Midwife takes off from this promising platform, delivering a meaningful narrative that explores conscience and convenience. Unfortunately, directly or by implication, the novel lets just about everyone off the hook, which results in a moral tale lacking the requisite compass. Evil boils away until the dregs belong only to the local KKK or the SS assassins of Eastern European killing fields. Racism? Not here; the African-American characters may receive a cold look or two, but most everyone else is the soul of tolerance. Somehow, the Holocaust has become public knowledge in rural West Virginia a year before anywhere else, and, even more miraculously, nobody in Liberty voices prejudice against Jews, even at a meeting of America First, an organization notorious for anti-Semitism. Consequently, the bad guys are the few, irredeemable Them, whereas the good guys are Us. And since everyone’s the same underneath, why can’t we all live in peace and harmony?

Asking that all-important question in December 1941 might be a bit late, but, in any case, the people in this novel aren’t flexible enough to grapple with it. Patience tells the reader and other characters what she feels, referring to facts from her past or current events, announcements that turn a potential person into a headline. Daniel’s even less convincing, for he sounds alternately like a whiny adolescent and a holier-than-thou prophet. Rather than show why he’s a pacifist or have him struggle with his beliefs, Harman has him recite potted history that could have come from a seventh-grade textbook; when pressed, he tells generic stories about his war service. So he’s a talking head who’s got glib, half-baked answers for everything, not a deep-thinking man of conscience. But he’s not alone, for characters in Once a Midwife seldom talk to each other. They talk at each other, usually to dump information—and boy, are they misinformed.

I firmly believe that historical novelists should have poetic license, and that the writing and presentation matter ten times more than research. Still, I need to believe that the author has some sense of what facts she’s changing and why, whereas here, I question Harman’s grasp of the era, its events, and especially its timeline. The war seems to serve merely as a cauldron to dish up convenient plot points. Meanwhile, the premise contains enough untapped conflict to fill a novel by itself.

For instance, why doesn’t Patience — or anyone — ask Daniel whether, as a veterinarian serving a farm population, he’d try to get a deferment for an exempt profession, especially given his age? He might not listen, because he refuses even to register for the draft, but so much the better—another point of conflict with his beleaguered, overwhelmed wife, more room for him to show (not explain) his principles. Also, Daniel’s situation might have changed when, a year after Pearl Harbor, Selective Service lowered the age of draft liability to thirty-eight, a fact that the narrative doesn’t mention but a circumstance that offers another possible iteration of the same conflict.

But these moral complexities, which should be the novel’s strength, wind up resolving themselves. At several points, Patience wonders whether her husband’s a weakling or has taken dubious positions, for which she hates him for short bursts, invariably snapping out of it. It’s as though the narrative prevents the characters from getting too upset with one another—a common flaw in feel-good novels, but unfortunately, Harman pushes this into the realm of cluelessness. She evokes the hurtful, ignorant trope that divides Germany into a basically decent but cowed majority and a tiny sliver guilty of all evil, a morally simplistic position that denies history and insults the victims.

Worse, Harman underlines the (studiously low-level) bigotry, rampant jingoism, small-mindedness, and government propaganda visible in Liberty; weighs that against Axis lies and brutalities; and implies that it’s a wash. I must confess I nearly lost it when a group of German POWs recently arrived to West Virginia sing a Christmas carol and in this way prove their basic humanity to Patience’s satisfaction. With little hesitation–and even less thought to what they might have done–she gives a pass to men who’ve bloodied and terrorized half of Europe. Where’s the moral sense in that?

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

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