Mrs. Fytton's Country Life

I should have realized that if I was going to factor in a third book of lighter reading on top of heavier fiction and non-fiction books that one possibility was getting caught up in the lighter reading and neglecting the other. Sort of a path of least resistance approach to reading, which come to think of sounds like DT's approach to life, but I digress. That possibility
is exactly what happened as after finishing "Diary of a Provincial Lady, I moved on to read and finish Mavis Cheek's, "Mrs Fytton's Country Life," while making very little progress in "Daniel Deronda."

This is another novel about life in an English country village, but this time more modern - probably about the 1990's. Angela Fytton's husband has divorced her and married a younger woman. Part of Angela's strategy to get him back (don't ask) is to move to a small village in Somerset. Among other things this means the two teenage children from their marriage will move in with her former husband and wife numero dos producing, as expected, chaos and tension.

Cheek has thereby created a two for one dynamic in this case, the first and second wives in conflict over the one husband. This is resolved in what seems to be a highly improbable manner especially since it is not clear if all parties are aware of the resolution.

I could take or leave this part of the book especially since some of it has far more detail than I needed to know. Of far more interest to me was another major theme of the book, an in depth exploration of English country life. First Cheek establishes how physically difficult that life was especially for women. It reminded me of Robert Caro's first volume of his biography of Lyndon Johnson where he describes the difficult time women of the Texas hill country had doing basic washing and ironing in a world without electricity. One of Johnson's first political achievements was convincing the Federal government to electrify the hill country even though it didn't meet their population density standards.

Having established this Cheek goes on to look at two different approaches to those trying to move back to that life. One is that of Dave the Bread and his wife, Wanda who basically try to cheat local residents with fraudulent goods made to look like original country products - for example bread bought commercially and promoted as being home baked. The other, in a lot more detail, is Angela's attempt to go back to that simpler form of country living. As she proceed step by step, Cheek raises and answers interesting questions about the basic integrity of doing this.

When I first started reading this book, I thought it was going to be a slapstick novel something like the Chevy Chase movie, "Funny Farm." A situation where unsuspecting people move into the country only to find a eccentric characters who help deflate, if not, defeat their dream. However, this was not at all the case in "Mrs. Fyttons Country Life," the intersection of Angela's efforts and those kind of scenarios with her neighbors are limited and don't usually bring the two things into conflict. This allows the story to build towards it conclusion which, if not satisfying in terms of the human relations (especially the 2/1 dynamic), is very satisfying in terms of exploration of English country life. Now its back to "Daniel Deronda" and no more light reading until it is done.