Mothering Sunday: A Romance (Vintage International)

It's Mothering Sunday, 1924, and Jane Fairchild, orphaned housemaid, is given the day off. Conveniently having no mother to visit, Jane is free to rendezvous with her lover, rich young heir Paul Shefington. Paul's parents have scheduled a lunch date to meet his fiancée's parents, so the house is empty. It will be the first time she has met Paul at Upbridge, and the first time he has asked her specifically to come in through the front door--signs, she believes, that this will be a farewell tryst as the wedding is only days away. Throughout the novel, there are hints that, although written in the present tense, the story is a retrospective, and that Jane has become a famous author. The events of this day have apparently become life-changing for her.There's a dreamy quality to the description of the lovers' meeting--yet I have to admit that I was getting tired of the repeated image of a map-shaped post-coitus stain on the bed sheets, which was mentioned over and over again with various details. Please. Spare me. The lovemaking itself is left to the imagination, but afterwards, Jane admires the way Paul walks, naked, through the room. It really never occurred to me, however, that this was a love relationship, at least on Paul's part. There's a moment when he lights each of them a cigarette as they lie naked in bed, and he places the ashtray on her belly, between navel and pubis. How romantic. And they never talk--no conversation at all. It just seemed to me that Paul was using an impressionable young woman of lower social class for sex, treating her more like an object than a person he loved. But Jane's interpretation of their meeting and of later events is quite different. After Paul leaves, Jane remains in the house, walking naked through every room with a sense of wonder and ownership, even eating the ham and veal pie that has been set out for Paul's snack.So what is there to admire about this book? Well, Swift has mastered the art of getting inside his main character's head. The novel is told by a third person narrator but strictly from Jane's point of view, so we're privy to her eye on every detail and to her thoughts, present and past, on that particular Mothering Sunday. Swift does a fine job of developing Jane's practicality, tempered by her youth, and of conveying her mixed emotions. While I found myself focusing mainly on the events and her character, after I finished the book, I found myself thinking more about its various themes: the effect of The Great War and the loss of so many young men, the changing relations between the social classes, the increasing opportunities for woman to be independent, the way memories can transform themselves and transform lives. And Jane discusses how, as a writer, she had taken the people and events of that Mothering Sunday and transformed them into her own novels. In that last regard, many readers have noted a similarity to Ian McEwan's Atonement. But I would also note similarities to McEwan's novella On Chesil Beach, in which the main characters are also greatly affected by a single sexual encounter. Both books also uniquely and unexpectedly link a private moment to the larger social changes occurring in the era.Overall, I can't say that I loved Mothering Sunday, but I do appreciate the way it lingered in my mind and opened up deeper meanings than were apparent on the surface.

When I saw the film version of Mothering Sunday, I knew immediately that I had to read the novel. The characters in the film are enigmatic—you can't tell why they are doing or saying what they are—and events jump from the past to the future, so I hoped that by reading the novel all would be clarified. The novel, I found, doesn't exactly clarify anything, but it does allow you to understand the events of the film better. Once you reconcile yourself to the fact that the entire novel takes place in a few hours (with a few flashes back and forward), you can adjust your expectations accordingly. Since completing the novel, I've passed it on to friends who have also enjoyed it. I'm intrigued enough by it to start reading other novels by Graham Swift.

This short novel takes place on Mothering Sunday 1924 and is about the last meeting between two lovers.This book was sold to me and described to me as a love story but that was not my experience of it. It is a book about the impassable barriers and confining trappings of class, wealth and gender. All of this makes for a much more interesting story than a love story. It is very impressive that Swift was able to deal comprehensively with all these themes in such a short novel.The protagonist, Jane Fairchild, is not particularly intriguing but the story about how she comes of age, finds her voice and her independence is.

I saw the film fist and have to say it was challenging but it prompted me buy the book and I am glad I did. After reading the book I felt how well the film was as to transfer the story into a film as not an easy task. I found both film and book thought provoking. I would have preferred reading the book first.

one of the pleasures of reading fiction is finding an author who can inhabit the life of a character, especially when the character is different from the author, such as madame bovary from flaubert. jane fairchild is such a character, which is made clear more than half way through the book.by borrowing cinematic magic, graham swift reduces distance and, drawing closer without switching from the third person, his literary camera pans, possessing his female character. drawing closer still, he allows her to possess the house in which she’s in, and possess all of its possessions, a situation dividing her by class, as she, a maid, intimately walks through the house of an upper class family having made love with a man of the upper crust, turning tables on him, a member of the privileged class, who’s perceptions, by rank, birth, and education, while entitled to him are, by opposite qualifications, denied her. ‘Paul Sheringham had seen, known, explored this body better than she had done herself. He had ‘possessed’ it. That was another word. He had possessed her body—her body being almost all she possessed. And could it be said that she had possessed and might always possess him?’ poor assuming sherringham.by comparison, in her moment of awareness, of consciousness, jane fairchild possesses more than her body, she possesses everything, and stands with the authors of the Yellow Wallpaper and the Alice books. ‘Can a mirror keep a print? Can you look into a mirror and see someone else? Can you step through a mirror and be someone else?’this is a moment for the future jane fairchild, which pivots on a memory of mothering sunday in 1924 of a consciousness. the events leading up to that moment and the outcome, by comparison, are incidental, and such events should always be more than incidental. it is jane fairchild’s awakening which moves her beyond the event and defines what she will become. to miss this, is to miss appreciating graham swift’s well-crafted story, where phrases are wrenched tight in place with an extra tug. graham swift is a wordsmith, and in this short novel he works wonders, to everyone’s advantage.

すごくいい。特に時間の描くことがとても上手だと思う。この小説家はいろいろな賞をもらったんです。

This is something that can be read and enjoyed at one sitting with time passing much at the speed of Jane's Sunday afternoon. The slow moment to moment pace of one critical day juxtaposed with the reflections of Jane's 90 year old self.

Swifts little tale, told by unreliable narrator, Jane Fairchild, orphan, mistress, housemaid, bookseller, writer, is written with a deft touch. But It is so self-indulgent that I got lost in the wordplay, the repetition and her life, looked back on from Fairchild's advanced age.

I liked the book. Good story line and well written.

Exceptionally well written. Simple yet profound meditation on the nature of memory.