The Dreaming Suburb

What R. F. Delderfield does well is to evoke a sense of England goneby. Writing from the distance of 40 or so years, he captures the zeitgeist of England between wars: the daily routines, the language, the small moments that add up to a life well lived - or not.

As in Delderfield's other works, the protagonist is a veteran of the Great War. Unlike either David/P.J./Pow-Wow or Paul Craddock, Jim Carver is neither scarred by the war (physically or mentally), nor single. He returns home to his seven children and the still-warm body of a wife who has just succumbed to the Spanish flu, determined to make a better life for his family.Although there are several characters to whom Delderfield has given starring roles, if you will, Jim is ultimately the soul of the book; Delderfield deftly portrays both his striving for a better world, as well as his aloofness from his family, particularly oldest son Archie with whom his relations are tenuous at best.

Also not unlike either To Serve Them All My Days or Long Summer Day, Delderfield is at times extremely long-winded. I plead guilty to occasionally needing to skim his work, rather than read closely. That said, Delderfield succeeds marvelously at the goal which he has laid out himself in the introduction: his "attempt to photograph the mood of the suburbs in the period between the break up of the old world and the preambulator days of an entirely new civilization."

Perhaps in another year, I'll feel up to the sequel, The Avenue at War.