I’ve had several reading bloggers recommend the books of author D.E. Stevenson, an author I’d never heard of until I began reading blog reviews. So, when I was at the library the other day and happened upon a shelf of books by Ms. Stevenson, I decided to try one out. (Note: this is how publicity-via-blog works with me. A title or an author sits in the back of my mind until I decide one day to check it out of the library or buy it at the bookstore. This process may take a while.)

Anyway, Vittoria Cottage was first published in 1949, and it’s set in about that time period, post-WW II, in rural/village England. The setting and characters remind me a lot of Angela Thirkell’s (Semicolon mini-reviews of Private Enterprise and County Chonicle by Thirkell). In this particular book, Caroline Dering, a widow, lives in the village of Ashbridge in a cottage she inherited from her husband’s family. As the story progresses, various romantic entanglements come and go for Caroline’s children, James, Leda, and Bobbi, and for Caroline herself. The novel revolves around the characters rather than plot. The plot is fairly predictable, but the characters’ actions, feelings, and reactions are not so much so.

The fun part is that I know people just like those in the book. Leda is the chronic grumbler who thinks she will pleased and happy if this or that relationship works out or if she can just attend this or that event or travel or stay home or something. But everyone around her knows that nothing will really make her happy or make her stop complaining; it’s become a habit. Caroline is the peace-making mother who knows deep down inside that she doesn’t have the right words to make everything right for her grown children, but she wants so much to see them happy that she keeps on trying anyway. And although I identify with Caroline’s time of life (I, too, have adult children whom I would like to see make good decisions), I am more like Caroline’s sister, Harriet, an actress who says what she thinks and d–n the consequences. And everybody else in the family had better be ready to hear the truth as Harriet sees it!

Nevertheless, Vittoria Cottage is a gentle story. Even Harriet never becomes too painfully forthright. The family in the story love one another in spite of all their faults, and the ending is a model of sacrificial love between two sisters. Vitoria Cottage takes the reader back to a time in which daily life was hard in some ways, what with rationing and post-war regulations and a general shortage of almost everything, but in which life was also simpler and more, well, agreeable and gentle and village-like. It’s a time we can never return to really, but it’s nice to visit in a book.

If you read D.E. Stevenson and enjoy her books, you may want to visit the following blogs that project the same sense of community and simple living in a bygone era:

Coffee, Tea Books and Me by Brenda: A sojourner who desires to walk in the path God leads each day… who loves her family, books, coffee in the morning, tea in the afternoon. (I think Brenda is one of the people who recommended Ms. Stevenson’s books.)

As I See It Now by Debra: I am the annoying happy homemaker type (and proud of it) who enjoys writing about her adventures with a husband and two cats in the empty nest phase of life.