Heat Lightning - Helen Hull

All the moments since she had come to Flemington had been working toward that decision, hadn't they? Not a conclusion arrived at coldly, by balancing advantages; a necessity which was left after the agitation of the week had broken up her dull and apathetic surface. It was queer to feel more alive because of death and fear and hatred; perhaps intense feeling was a kind of electric disturbance in which old sluggishness and stupidity were consumed. Heat lightning, revealing flashes in a murky summer night.

Amy Norton returns to her childhood home in a small town in Michigan. She lives in New York with her husband, Geoffrey, & two children but she's at a crossroads in her life & her marriage & she runs away, back to her family. The week that she spends in her parents' house takes her away from her problems but also plunges her into the life she's left behind. Her father, Alfred, runs the family business, a factory that is struggling to survive in these days of the Great Depression. Amy's grandmother, Madam Westover, lives next door, presiding over the family, controlling & pulling the strings of her extended family. She has a few surprises to spring on them but is she as in control as she thinks? Amy's uncle, Dewitt, is in financial trouble & expects Alfred to help out yet again, straining their relationship. Aunt Lora, long since divorced from her philandering husband, irritates her children, discontented Harriet, lazy Tom & Laurence, happily married to Emma & totally absorbed in their family life. Amy's brother, Theodore & his French wife, Felice, are the most contented of all, more contented than sister Mary, who has just given birth to her fourth daughter & discontentedly grumbles about being left out of family life while her devoted but spineless husband, Henry, attempts to find a job. At the centre of the story is Amy's calm, nurturing mother, Catherine.

Amy discovers that her family is the same as when she was a girl but also different. Her grandmother is older but still indomitable, refusing to let age & the relentless summer heat stop her going about her usual routines. However, Dewitt's demands for money & Tom's reliance on his grandmother or any other member of the family bailing him out of trouble, are taking their toll. Amy is drawn in to everyone's problems from Tom's dalliance with her parent's maid, Lulu, to Mary's whining about Henry's bad luck in job hunting & her father's worries about the business (Mary reminded me so much of Mary Musgrove in Persuasion). Amy sees them all with an outsider's eye, all the time wrestling with her own problems, her fears that Geoffrey is having an affair or has left her altogether. She discovers a new respect & love for her parents who have a  beautifully supportive & loving relationship, the most satisfactory relationship in the novel. I love the scene when Amy & her mother talk about what's important in life,

"What is important?" Amy kept her arm around her mother's shoulders; in her mother's tone, in the acceleration of her speech, she felt a desire to communicate fully and quickly, as a fending off of approaching departure.
"To me, now, just two things. Your values alter so, as you grow older. You let go of lots of things you struggle at first to get.... Well -" she sighed, and swung open a secret door - "one is acting so I don't feel ashamed of myself, so I feel comfortable with myself. Sometimes I'm driven into saying or doing things I know I'm going to be ashamed of. The other - that's people. Loving them. Loving them enough, now, so you feel alive. Not a general vague love for everybody. That's nonsense. But for your special ones." The color lay bright on her cheekbones, her eyebrows lifted into the little triangle of concentration above her delicate nose. "I can't explain any better."
Amy was silent; words with rude breath might blur the surface of the treasure her mother exhibited so diffidently. With a shrug Catherine moved away from Amy's arm, swinging fast shut the secret door.

This is such a wonderful novel. I don't know how Persephone keep discovering books that are so essentially Persephone books. The latest Persephone Quarterly compares Heat Lightning to Dorothy Whipple's novels & I would have to agree. Both authors write books that are unputdownable. This is a completely absorbing family saga. The cast of characters is large but they're so well-developed & distinct that the helpful list of characters at the front of the book isn't needed for very long. The atmosphere of small town life with all its gossipy lack of privacy is portrayed so exactly. You would think there would be no secrets left in this community but there are several surprises for the Westovers that leave them rethinking their relationships & their place in the world. The oppressive heat weighs everyone down, even a rainstorm can't lighten the atmosphere for long. Amy's week in Michigan reveals her family to her in a new light & she realises that her problems are no different & no more important than those of the rest of her family.

On a purely aesthetic note, Heat Lightning is such a beautifully presented book. I think we've all become a little blasé about the beauty of Persephone Books & we don't always stop & notice their uniqueness in an age of cheap paperbacks & digital editions which may be convenient but don't feed the booklover's soul in quite the same way. I especially love the Persephones that reproduce the typeface of the original edition as this does. The endpapers (you can see them reproduced on the bookmark above) from a roller-printed silk fabric of 1929 have a feeling of heat haze about them. So, Heat Lightning is an absorbing novel in a beautiful package & I can't recommend it too highly.

The American Senator - Anthony Trollope

I love Trollope & I have great plans to read all his novels - I just don't know how long it's going to take! At least now I have all his novels on my e-reader, so many of the lesser known ones are out of print. However, I do love my OUP editions & I've just read another one from the tbr shelves - The American Senator.

This is the story of a few families in the country town of Dillsborough. Contrary to the titles, none of the book takes place in America. As Trollope himself says at the end of the book, it should really have been called "The Chronicle of a Winter at Dillsborough". The Senator of the title is Elias Gotobed, who is visiting England as the guest of John Morton, a diplomat who has spent very little time in his home town for many years. Morton & Gotobed met in Washington, where Morton has also become engaged to Arabella Trefoil, an attractive but impecunious young woman who has arrived at the age where she really should marry. Arabella & her mother are in an uneasy alliance. They don't get on well at all but Lady Augustus knows that Arabella must marry money so they find themselves locked together doing the social rounds, squabbling incessantly. John Morton has now inherited Bragton Hall & returns to Dillsborough with his fiancée, her mother & the Senator in tow.

In Dillsborough, there's much speculation about the new Squire of Bragton Hall. There has been a long-ago breach between two branches of the Morton family & John's cousin, Reginald, decides to try to heal the breach when the new Squire arrives at the Hall. Reginald's aunt, Lady Ushant, is also keen to restore family ties but John's formidable grandmother will not budge, even when tragedy threatens. Local solicitor, Mr Masters, finds himself entangled in the Morton's affairs as his daughter, Mary, once lived at the Hall as companion to Lady Ushant. Mr Morton's second wife is not unkind to Mary but she is determined to see her well married & off her hands so she can concentrate on her own daughters. She pushes Mary to marry local landowner, Larry Twentyman, who loves Mary devotedly. Mary likes Larry but she is secretly in love with Reginald Morton & so refuses to become engaged.

Meanwhile, Arabella Trefoil is hedging her bets & refusing to commit herself finally to marriage with John Morton in case someone richer comes along. Hunting plays a large part in this novel - it was one of Trollope's passions - & at a meet, Arabella meets Lord Rufford, one of the most eligible & wily bachelors in the county. When the Morton party is invited to Rufford Hall, Arabella begins stalking her prey. She deftly manages to entice Lord Rufford while keeping Morton in reserve, just in case her plans fail. But has she met her match in Lord Rufford who has famously eluded every trap laid for him in the past?

Senator Gotobed, meanwhile, is observing English society & he's not impressed by what he sees. His function in the novel is to expose all the ills of society. The inequalities between the farmer & the lord who can send his hunt over another man's land without recompense or permission. The irregularities of the electoral system. The fine distinctions between families & their social position based on mistakes made by their ancestors years before. I admit, I found the Senator tedious & wished he would go back to America so I could get back to the far more fascinating adventures of the Mortons, Arabella, Mary & the Ruffords.

Mary's story is conventional & it wasn't too hard to see who she would marry. Arabella, on the other hand, is one of the most exciting heroines (or anti-heroines) I've come across in Trollope's novels. Trollope obviously disapproved of her. He wrote, "I wished to express the depth of my scorn for women who run down husbands, - an offence that I do fear is gaining ground in this country." However, even the author's disapproval can't prevent Arabella being the most vital character in the book. I genuinely wasn't sure until the end who she would marry. Arabella is like a more canny Lily Bart, intelligent enough to play the cards she has to win the prize she has set her sights on. Whether she will have her way with Lord Rufford kept me on tenterhooks throughout.

The American Senator is not one of Trollope's better-known novels but I loved it. The character of Arabella lifts it above the conventional country house novel with a romance plot. It's also quite short for Trollope, only 550pp, which isn't as daunting as some of his other novels. I've read 17 of Trollope's novels now - only 30 to go!