17 January, 2013

The Town House, by Norah Lofts. Book review



First published 1959. Edition reviewed: Hodder and Stoughton 1983, ISBN 0-340-15182-X. 350 pages

Set in and around the fictional town of Baildon in Suffolk, England, in approximately 1401-1451, The Town House tells the story of Martin Reed, who first built the house of the title, and three generations of his family.  All the main characters are fictional.

In 1401, Walter is a serf training to be a smith on the manor of Rede in Norfolk.  When he falls in love and the lord of the manor refuses permission to marry, Walter and his intended bride, Kate, flee to the walled town of Baildon in Suffolk.  If they can live there without breaking a law or being reclaimed for a year and a day, they will gain their freedom.  Walter changes his name to Martin, the better to avoid detection.  Making a living and raising a family in a strange town is no easy matter, and their new life is precarious, subject daily to the vagaries of fate and the arbitrary whims – both kindly and malign – of powerful townsmen and the Abbey that dominates the town.  Until rebellion flares, when tragedy strikes and Martin must make a choice.

This is a tale of medieval life as lived day to day by the ordinary people of a fairly ordinary town and its rural hinterland.  The cast ranges from the destitute to the minor gentry, by way of farmers, craftsmen, labourers, traders and merchants.  Kings and magnates and their doings hardly impinge on the lives of Martin and his neighbours (e.g. Agincourt happens during the period of the novel but is never mentioned).  The novel conveys a vivid sense of what it might really have been like to live in the Middle Ages as a near-destitute labourer, an impoverished knight, a clerk or a prosperous merchant. 

Martin’s tale of hard work for low wages, the daily struggle to avoid starvation, the joy from occasional acts of generosity, and the slow crushing of his and his wife’s modest hopes under poverty and injustice, makes compelling reading.  All Martin’s industry, ingenuity and skill count for very little against the casual abuses of power that thwart him at every turn, until an unlikely twist of fate suddenly gives him an unimagined opportunity.  Higher up the social scale, the daughter of an impoverished knight is almost as much a prisoner of circumstances, as are a poor knight and a girl of high birth with no dowry, and a little girl trying to understand how the grown-up world works and eventually recoiling from it in disgust.  Anyone with a rose-tinted view of the Middle Ages as all about chivalry, courtly love, tournaments and pretty dresses, will find The Town House gives a refreshingly different picture of how the rest of the population lived. 

All the people in the novel are individuals, with their own faults and motivations, hopes and fears, shaped by their upbringing and constrained by the society they live in.  Each faces their own dilemmas and must live with the consequences of their choices.  Each faces joy and tragedy and must cope in their own way.  The characters are so vividly drawn that their personal quandaries and vicissitudes are every bit as gripping as any thriller about great affairs of state.

The novel is told  in five overlapping first-person narratives, each recounted by a different character, interspersed with shorter sections in third person labelled ‘interludes’.  It is an unusual structure but an effective one, as it shows the characters and the interactions between them from several perspectives.  Actions taken by one character that seem inexplicable in one narrative become comprehensible in another when seen from a different point of view.  The writing style is deceptively simple, written in clear modern English.  I say ‘deceptively’ because many key events are conveyed by allusions and hints rather than spelled out explicitly.  Sometimes this reflects the character who is narrating at the time; for example, Maude Reed is a little girl of eight or so and the undercurrents of adult scandal bewilder her, though the alert reader can recognise the gathering clouds.  This is a novel that rewards concentration.

There is no author’s note, perhaps reflecting the date of first publication (1959), perhaps because there are no historical events or historical figures featured.  The historical detail feels very authentic.  A map would have been useful to set the fictional town of Baildon and the fictional port of Bywater in the context of the real places mentioned, but this is a minor detail.

Compelling family saga of three generations of a family rising from serfdom to prosperity in fifteenth-century England, with a powerful sense of authenticity and wonderfully human characters.

16 comments:

Sarah Johnson said...

You've made me want to pick up a Norah Lofts novel again soon! It's been ages since I read The Town House, and my memory of the finer details have faded, so thanks for capturing what I enjoyed so much about it. Family sagas remain my favorite type of novel.

Rick said...

the fictional port of Bywater

Are you entirely sure the book is actually set in England? :-)

This sounds like an interesting book. From the description it is realistic about medieval life without going the other way and beating the reader to death with unrelenting awfulness.

Carla said...

Hi Sarah! Nice to hear from you again. I'm not generally all that into family sagas, but I was most impressed with The Town House. I hadn't read it before, and was captivated, especially by Martin's tale. Really first-rate. I shall now go and look for the sequels! I'm glad you liked the review.

Rick - Definitely England. The Shire's Bywater isn't a sea port :-) I actually know one or two of the real places mentioned, and can make a guess at roughly where Baildon would be if it had ever existed.

Yes, it's well worth reading. Martin's tale is harsh, and there are some heart-rending events, but it never gets into the relentless 'beating the reader to death' mode that makes you want to give up in despair. I haven't quite figured out why; perhaps because Martin himself never gives up trying.

Constance Brewer said...

This sounds interesting. There are so few books that go into the daily life of the common people. I like family sagas if they are done well - think James Mitchner.

Carla said...

Constance - Well worth a read, I'd say. I liked it very much. Family sagas as a type I can take or leave - some of them grab me, some don't. This one did :-)

Rosie55 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Rosie55 said...

I first read these many years ago and have always loved this trilogy. Norah Lofts was a very knowledgeable writer but doesn't weigh her readers down with her knowledge but, as you say, uses it to make her stories very realistic about life.
There is a group over on Goodreads which has done a lot of research on NL, and there are discussions there on various titles.
And NL herself said that Baildon was actually Bury St Edmunds, where she lived.

Carla said...

Rosie55 - Hello and welcome! I thought of Bury St Edmunds as soon as Martin arrives in Baildon and sees the great abbey dominating the town.

Doug said...

I was quite amused by the statement that there was no mention of Agincourt. I was reminded of a report that a peasant on the field of Marston Moor on the day before the battle was advised by a military scout to keep well away because there was to be a battle between the king and Parliament. "Eh", he said, "has them two fallen out then?" I often wonder how people found out what was happening in past times. How, for example, did they hear that World War I had ended? You couldn't put a radio on, and newspapers were a bit behind the times for specific events, even assuming you could read. No wonder there were several deaths after the armistice.

Rosie55 said...

Thankyou. In the sixties and seventies, when I first read these, NL was often bracketed with and spoken of in the same terms as Georgette Heyer - ie good knowledgeable writers of quality historical novels. Then she seemed to have faded into obscurity while GH has remained more constantly popular. So I am pleased to see her work being appreciated again. I picked up a whole pile of her novels from Abebooks for pence a couple of years ago and enjoy dipping into them again.
I have only visited BSE once, a couple of years ago but will be holidaying in Southwold again this June and will make a point of going again and looking out for the Blue Plaque that the local Civic Society have put on her house.
Norah Lofts often made her houses the real heroes of her books, rather than the people who lived in them who often are only featured for the time they are associated with the house.
I seem to remember finding it a bit disconcerting with one or two of the later books in this sequence when I first read this that their stories stopped quite suddenly when that character moved on but it made sense in the context of "The House" being the focus of the books, rather than the occupant.
Now I'm going to have to dig out my precious original boxed paperback set and re-read them all. Though I don't have far to dig, they have always stayed on my favourites bookshelf for more than thirty years.
As a Kindle owner, too, I am delighted to see that the House trilogy and one or two other NL books are now available from Amazon for Kindle, presumably testing the waters before issuing others. Much as I love my printed books, if electronic versions enable more people to enjoy them, that has to be a plus.

Rosie55 said...

Thankyou. In the sixties and seventies, when I first read these, NL was often bracketed with and spoken of in the same terms as Georgette Heyer - ie good knowledgeable writers of quality historical novels. Then she seemed to have faded into obscurity while GH has remained more constantly popular. So I am pleased to see her work being appreciated again. I picked up a whole pile of her novels from Abebooks for pence a couple of years ago and enjoy dipping into them again.
I have only visited BSE once, a couple of years ago but will be holidaying in Southwold again this June and will make a point of going again and looking out for the Blue Plaque that the local Civic Society have put on her house.
Norah Lofts often made her houses the real heroes of her books, rather than the people who lived in them who often are only featured for the time they are associated with the house.
I seem to remember finding it a bit disconcerting with one or two of the later books in this sequence when I first read this that their stories stopped quite suddenly when that character moved on but it made sense in the context of "The House" being the focus of the books, rather than the occupant.
Now I'm going to have to dig out my precious original boxed paperback set and re-read them all. Though I don't have far to dig, they have always stayed on my favourites bookshelf for more than thirty years.
As a Kindle owner, too, I am delighted to see that the House trilogy and one or two other NL books are now available from Amazon for Kindle, presumably testing the waters before issuing others. Much as I love my printed books, if electronic versions enable more people to enjoy them, that has to be a plus.

Carla said...

Doug - Great anecdote about Marston Moor! I suppose for most people distant battles made no difference at all to their lives, and there was nothing they could do about them anyway, so would have been of limited interest even if people heard about them. Which may partly answer your other point; many people may not have been much bothered about finding out what was happening unless/until it affected them directly. From the 1500s and onwards there were printed news-sheets and pamphlets of various kinds, before then it was presumably announcements made in church on Sundays or the town crier.

Rosie55 - it's strange that one novelist should go out of fashion while another stays popular, isn't it? Fortunately Norah Lofts' books didn't disappear entirely. I noticed the blue plaque when I cycled through Bury St Edmunds last summer, so it is definitely there. I know what you mean about the way people disappear abruptly when they move away from The House, especially in the third book - which I suppose reflects the change from property passing on mainly by inheritance (in the first two books) to a situation where it is more often bought and sold and rented out (in the third book).

Annis said...

This trilogy is one of what I think of as "house" books, novels inspired by an actual place - in this case thought to have been "Sun Court" in Hadleigh, an ancient market town in South Suffolk.

Yes, we've become accustomed to Author's Notes and Historical Notes in our historical fiction, but back in the day they rarely made an appearance - I found this as well with Lofts' "How Far to Bethlehem". Can be a bit frustrating when you'd like to know what sources the writer used and where they employed artistic licence :)

Lofts' work still stands up well - she has an empathy for her characters which still captivates, unlike Jean Plaidy's, which I now find pretty dry stuff.

Carla said...

Annis - yes, the house is the common thread linking all the different people and their stories together through the centuries. Especially so in the later books.

Jean Plaidy's novels seem to be variable, as also are Nigel Tranter's, which may be inevitable given the number of titles they each produced. I re-read the Bruce trilogy not so long ago and was drawn into it all over again, whereas others seem rather weak. Haven't re-read any Jean Plaidy for a while, though. I completely agree with you that it's the characterisation that makes the House trilogy work so well.

Anonymous said...

I first read this trilogy in my early teens and have re-read all three more than once in the following decades. I simply cannot put them down once I begin. I too have a Kindle with the first two, but was dismayed to find that The House at Sunset is not available. Why!!!?? My paperback copy is either lost or disintegrated so now I am forced to order the hardcopy.

Carla said...

Anonymous - Hello and welcome! It does seem strange for the publishers to make two of the books available as e-books and not the third, unless the third is just delayed for some reason. At least it isn't totally out of print if there is a hard copy available.