![]() ![]() Tillingham, and he’s just one of the local stuffed shirts who also happens to have no great opinion of women.Įnter Beatrice Nash, an aspiring writer who has come to Rye after the death of her father to teach Latin to ruffian schoolboys. The Summer Before the War (Random House, 473 pp., *** out of four stars) is set in the picturesque village of Rye, England, which indeed was the adopted home of James. Well, there are certainly worse things in the world of historical fiction. ![]() Throw in a dreamy, Rupert Brooke-like World War I poet and an expatriate novelist modeled on Henry James, and you’ve got a concoction brimming with literary influences. Simonson ( Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand) is a bit like a home cook borrowing from professional chefs: her recipe calls for a dash of Downton-esque wit and gossip, a sprinkling of Virginia Woolf feminism, and a cupful of colorful characters, a la Forster’s A Room With a View. ![]() Forster in The Summer Before the War, Helen Simonson’s overlong but ultimately rewarding and moving novel about the last gasp of Edwardian England in 1914. ![]()
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