My first book for this week’s 1952 Club (hosted by Karen of Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings and Simon of Stuck in a Book) is Richmal Crompton’s Linden Rise. Crompton is much better known for her Just William series for children, but she also wrote a large number of adult novels of which this is one. I’ve previously read two others, Family Roundabout and The Old Man’s Birthday, both of which I enjoyed, so I hoped for a similar experience with this one.

The novel begins in 1892 with fifteen-year-old Tilly Pound arriving at Linden Rise, a cottage in the village of Priors Green. The Culverton family from London have taken the cottage for the summer and Tilly has been employed as housemaid – her first job. Despite their money and comfortable, privileged lives, the Culvertons are not a happy family: Mr Culverton is having an affair with another woman and his wife is fully aware of it, leading to a tense and unloving marriage. Edmund, the eldest child, is Tilly’s age, a serious, humourless boy, very unlike his carefree younger brother, Richard. There are also two girls – pretty, selfish Althea, and the youngest, Vere, who is considered sullen and miserable and is largely ignored by the rest of the family.

As Tilly settles into her new role, the Culvertons come to rely on her more than they know, and when they return to Linden Rise permanently several years later, she comes back to work for them again, this time as head housekeeper and cook. A lot has changed in the intervening years and Tilly isn’t impressed with the direction in which some of the family members’ lives have gone, so she decides to do what she can to put things right.

As you would expect from an author more famous for her children’s stories, Crompton’s child characters are very well drawn and I think that’s why I enjoyed the first part of this book more than the later sections. She knows the sort of conversations children have, the things that are important to them, the eyes through which they look at the world, and how unthinkingly cruel they can sometimes be. Once the children have all grown into young adults and the focus is mainly on their romantic relationships, I felt that the book seemed to lose its charm a little bit. I did love Tilly, though, who remains very much the same throughout the book – reliable, practical and never afraid to speak her mind.

Linden Rise has a lot to say about parenting, a theme that is also an important part of Family Roundabout. Mr Culverton, preoccupied with the other woman in his life, is largely an absent father who barely appears in the novel. Mrs Culverton also shows little interest in the raising of her children, engaging a governess, Miss Maple (another character I loved), for their first summer at Linden Rise. Mrs Culverton makes it clear that she only feels pride in two of her children – ironically, the two most unpleasant ones, Edmund and Althea – while the other two, Richard and Vere, frustrate her with their refusal to conform and behave as she expects them to. I felt so sorry for Vere in particular; Richard at least has a happy nature and doesn’t really care what people think of him, but Vere struggles with feelings of rejection and abandonment even as an adult.

Despite the serious topics the novel covers, there’s also some humour – and a happy ending, at least for some of the characters! I didn’t enjoy this book quite as much as the others I’ve read by Crompton, but I did like it and I’m glad I chose to read it for 1952 Club.

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Some 1952 books previously read and reviewed on my blog:

East of Eden by John Steinbeck
They Do It with Mirrors by Agatha Christie
The Merry Mistress by Philip Lindsay
Excellent Women by Barbara Pym
The Birds & Other Stories by Daphne du Maurier