The Song of Hartgrove Hall: A Novel by Natasha Solomons

The Song of Hartgrove Hall: A Novel.  Natasha Solomons. Penguin Random House, LLC. December 2015. 400 pp.  ISBN#: 9780147517593.

Harry Fox-Talbot spends most of his time reliving the years since 1946 when he first met the love of his life, the love who has died a year ago and whom Fox finds it extraordinarily difficult to live without.  Fox’s passion is music but since Edie died he has no incentive to compose, play or even poorly sing anything.  In fact Fox is obviously deeply depressed and stuck in his grieving.

This looming melancholy for the reader ends as Fox shares his memories.  In 1946 their home at Hartgrove Hall, was falling apart and was in such deep financial straits that initially the family decided it must be sold.  However, Fox and his brothers decide they will unite to restore Hartgrove Hall and the accompanying farm to its original splendor.  Into this almost impossibly challenging situation comes Edie, a famous wartime singer.  Fox instantly falls in love with her but her romance seems to grow for Jack.  But Fox is quite oblivious for whom Edie’s attentions are really pining.  Thus he escapes Hartgrove Hall, abandoning his brothers’ project and telling himself that sending money is an equivalent way of helping them to restore their home.  While away he pursues his passion of composing and having orchestras perform the folk tradition oral stories common to the English countryside. For loving your brother’s fiancé is definitely forbidden. Later that reality will change to a need for forgiveness, but the real question is who was responsible for breaking Jack’s heart?

As a mourning widower, Fox has a new project when he discovers that his grandson, Robin, is a four year-old prodigy musical genius.  He can sit down and play absolutely anything on a piano without looking at musical notation.  As the narrator describes these astonishing scenes, the reader can almost hear the music to the point where one is mesmerized by the talent and personality of this young boy and how Fox nurtures it, albeit through many challenging and dire situations.  For Fox is helping Robin to become a decent human being and not just a spoiled brat prodigy.

Fox also takes us back to the intricacies of his development as a composer and the genius behind those who conduct and present those works of beautiful musical art.

The Song of Hartgrove Hall is one of the best novels this reviewer has read.  It highlights both the greatness and smallness of human beings, also introducing the reader to the difficult and glorious moments of composers and musicians, as well as singers.

Highly recommended historical fiction that is absolutely delightful reading!

The Gallery of Vanished Husbands: A Novel by Natasha Solomons

The Gallery of Vanished Husbands: A Novel.  Natasha Solomons. Penguin Group (USA). August 2013. 352 pp. pbk. ISBN #: 9780142180549.

Juliet Montague is living in England during 1958, a time when change is slow to happen, especially for a woman like Juliet who thinks artistically, “out of the box,” but who lives in a conservative Orthodox Jewish community. Her husband has abandoned her and her two children, Frieda and Leonard.  But she isn’t free to divorce him as only Jewish men can divorce women and not the other way around.  So she more often than not elicits pity and gossip from her mother’s friends and acquaintances and her children are taunted by other children who hear their parents’ gossip about their missing father. It’s not a happy place to live yet Juliet chooses to focus elsewhere.  Her remarkable gift is “seeing” what makes a beautiful, successful painting or sketch in spite of the fact that she’s never been to art school or studied art.  She will be the key to fame for sharing this gift and will realize a new freedom in the daunting but exciting process!

Juliet’s grandparents came to America not because they loved each other but because of circumstances amazingly described in these pages; but they have learned to build their lives around traditional Jewish living, a focus that Juliet lacks and which they and her parents are frustrated. They just don’t understand why Juliet is not satisfied with living as a “widow” in a sense, an opinion that will later stun Juliet when she learns the truth about her marital status years later.

After Juliet meets the artist Charlie who paints a gorgeous portrait of her, he and his friends know a treasure when they meet it and talk her into directing a gallery show of their most recent works.  Up to now Juliet has grown to hate her job in the family business, so this opportunity she grabs, again to the consternation of her family. Now she works daily with these budding artists who are changing with the times and expressing a “new” way of seeing life, be it in objects, landscapes, portraits, or abstract expression. The novel continues with Juliet having a love affair with an older “war artist” and describes how her children react in different ways.  One reverts to the family’s Jewish traditional way of life and the other develops a passion for art, one his mother fails to nurture in some ways and elicits indirectly. But nothing is set in stone and they too will evolve in unexpected ways that the reader will get totally caught up in.

To say more would be to spoil a grand story, a trip to America and back to England, the turmoil and evolution of her children’s lives, and Juliet’s coming to terms with who she really is and how grateful she is to grab life as it comes at her, regardless of other people’s opinions and standards.

The Gallery of Vanished Husbands: A Novel is about living with passion amid the vicissitudes that life throws during the journey. It’s about truly “seeing” beautiful art, the meaning of tradition that comforts and doesn’t imprison, and more and more and more!  Well-crafted, full of humor and pathos, realistic yet transcendent, and more – this novel is highly recommended and a literate delight to relish and experience!!!

The House of Tyneford by Natasha Solomons

The House of Tyneford. Natasha Solomons. A Plume Book: The Penguin Group. December 2011. 368 pages. ISBN #: 9780452297647.

Elise Landau, a 19 year-old Viennese-born young lady, is forced to leave Austria due to the Nazi occupation.  A life of luxury, with a famous writer father and opera singer mother, is transformed into a world where Elise is now a servant in an upper class English country family.  Tyneford is a magical, fairy-tale land of beauty on land and the sea. Grievously homesick and missing the rest of her family, she waits for word from them while adapting to this new, difficult change in social status!

It turns out her sister and husband have made it to America but Julian and Anna have been unable to obtain a visa to leave Austria, but Elise doesn't know that. So at least Elise can hold onto hope while learning to adapt to the life of a maidservant. The novel fluctuates between her struggles to fit into this very different life and her finding peace as she gradually explores the beautiful land around her new home. Little by little, a normalcy develops until the son of her employer, Kit Rivers. They become friends who love the land and also love an occasional bout of unacceptable behavior that is quite harmless but shocks the daylights of both Mr. Rivers and Mr. Wrexham and Mrs. Ellsworth, the two who trained her in her hob duties. Wild and fun, these actions become the tie that draws them into a deeper closeness.

War changes everything and it's no different for Kit, Else, Mr. Rivers, the rest of the household staff, and the remaining fishers, farmers, and shepherds of Tyneford. The Germans begin to bomb Britain and the residents of Tyneford have their own secret defense force, helpless in a way to prevent the carnage of war but strong in a belief in their power to protect, a belief that ennobles all of Tyneford. Kit joins the military but quickly returns in a wounded state. Soon he will recover and leave, and from here the unbelievable happens. Relationships change in a way never anticipated by the reader and keep him or her rapidly turning pages to determine the possible, anticipated outcome. 

The House of Tyneford is a lovely book, soft and fierce in all the right places, and a tale that tells the wartime tale in so many different points of view, adding several subplots of care and love to warm the heart and elicit intrigue in all involved. Nicely done, Ms. Solomons!