Part of the Furniture

Early in 1941, having just seen off at Euston Station the two young men whom she has loved for the best part of her seventeen years, Juno Marlowe is hurrying down a London street with her ill-fitting shoes in her hands. Aeroplanes thunder overhead; a battery of guns opens up. When a stick of bombs falls she cowers, then takes to her heels in flight. She is rescued from this nightmare by a gaunt stranger, frail and older than his years; guiding her up his front steps, he offers her the protection of his house. Given this respite from the bleakness of an existence where she has no home and family to turn to, Juno encounters first tragedy, then a series of events that take her to a house in the West Country and the blossoming of an English Spring into which war only occasionally intrudes. Here she may find peace, here she will no longer just be part of the furniture. Mary Wesley’s new novel, full of her customary warmth and joyful wit, encompasses all manner of emotion and experience with a striking clarity of sense and expression. Forming a triptych with her other wartime novels, The Camomile Lawn and A Sensible Life, this is one of her finest yet.