Chatterton Square

Product Information

After reading this blog, I was inspired to track down three of her novels in the lovely original Virago editions–Miss Mole, Chatterton Square and Celia. Any signs of the furthering of connections between the two households are also gravely frowned upon.

The unlikeable character of the neighbour, Mr Blackett, is a portrayal of human self-perception (take it in whatever degree you choose! With wit and insight, the intertwined stories of two families in a sleepy square in Upper Radstowe (Young’s fictionalising of Clifton in Bristol) contemplate a world in which we are all “groping in the dark” and must do our best to find our way in the shadow of the fear that "probably the way is wrong". There was no one in the world, except himself, who really cared for him, there were very few who cared for her.This beautiful novel is ostensibly about two families, the Frazers and the Blacketts, who live and love and like and dislike on Chatterton Square in a town in the West Country just before the Second World War.

By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions.Dispatched ROYAL MAIL FIRST CLASS with TRACKING next working day or sooner securely boxed in cardboard. The political differences are drawn with too bold a stroke, there are no grey areas, and being overdone and lengthily hammered in, it becomes tedious. I loved this book, though it took longer than I expected -- normally I can zip through a novel in just a few of days, but this was a fairly dense read. He is fascinated and repelled by the Frasers who have so much fun despite the somewhat mysterious absence of any husband and father.

And he didn’t like Bertha visiting with Piers, probably because Piers had done his duty and fought in the war and he had gotten injured while Herbert had evaded service. There is no real “action”, because we know that is coming within the year: there is no real ending either, but that doesn’t seem to matter.Down the road is another family that has as its head Rosamund Fraser and her five children, and a friend from childhood who is a spinster, Miss Agnes Spanner. Yet perhaps the greatest character of all, only ever alluded to, never exactly spelled out, is the looming likelihood of war.

Mr Fraser has left his wife and five children and Mrs Fraser seems generally content with her lot and has a very different approach to bringing up her children than does Mr Blackett. The novel concerns two families living next to each other on Chatterton Square in Upper Radstowe – Young’s fictionalised version of Clifton in Bristol. James Fraser and Flora Blackett are students at the same university and have developed a mild flirtation, and middle daughter Rhoda has begun borrowing books from Miss Spanner. The only one I felt somewhat lukewarm about was May Sinclair’s The Tree of Heaven – a perfectly good book, but a little loose or baggy for my tastes.The first of these was The Misses Mallett, published originally under the title The Bridge Dividing in 1922.