For Day 18
of my Book Advent Calendar and the letter “S”, I’ve chosen a gentle read
suffused with humour.
Day
18: Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by
Helen Simonson
4
Stars
This is a
romantic comedy set in an English village.
The protagonist is Major Ernest Pettigrew, a retired British army
officer and teacher who left the profession “when the school allowed movies in
the bibliographies of literary essays.”
He is rigidly proper and sees himself as a defender of civility,
responsibility and tradition. One
reviewer calls him “a walking thesaurus of irritation: We see him annoyed, dyspeptic, displeased,
disapproving, disappointed, dismayed, horrified, outraged, angry, appalled,
exasperated, resentful, wincing and flinching.”
He makes wonderfully sarcastic jabs at the emptiness of modern values.
He meets
Jasmina Ali, a Pakistani shop owner, and the two develop a gentle, reticent
affection which seems to surprise both widower and widow. Their romance disrupts their well-settled
lives as well as the narrow-minded community with its rigid, tweedy women and
restrictive social clubs. The major
learns a great deal about the life of a person of colour living in a rural
English village.
The
characters are all clearly delineated.
Roger, the Major’s son, is a hilariously obnoxious, totally
self-interested financier. Lord Dagenham
is the local nobility who raises ducks which he shoots during his annual duck
hunt. Frank Ferguson is the vulgar
American who wants to start a housing development which will ruin the charm of
the village.
This is a
romance but one that touches on issues of race relations, urbanization, and a
clash of culture and religion. There is
a sensitive portrayal of Mrs. Ali’s conflict:
she is torn between her family, especially her controlling
brother-in-law, and the freedom of the broader, liberal society, but one which
is not very accepting.
This book is reminiscent of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann
Shaffer and Annie Barrows, a book I would also recommend.
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