New English fashion?

Press, 5 March 1988, Page 23

New English fashion?

/ am England. By Patricia Wright. The Bodley Head, 1987. 398 pp. $34.95. (Reviewed by Margaret Quigley)

The new fashion in novels about the English countryside seems to be to depict the history of a certain area in a series of loosely connected episodes marking important changes in the history of the country. Edward Rutherford’s very popular “Sarum” published last year traced the history of Salisbury in this way, and now Patricia (Wright (winner of the Historical Novel Prize in memory of Gorgette Heyer) has used the same technique to capture the ambience of a small village in the Sussex Weald. Linked in a slightly forced way by the device of a narrator remembering the different eras, the five separate episodes of the book all centre on Edenham, a settlement on a ridge of land in the Weald. The “witness” is an old man, living in the ancient millhouse there and recalling its history in laborious words which "cool, efficient Sandra shuttles on a computer screen.”

He begins in the first century A.D. when Brae the smith of the hill people forged an arrow with his sign, and in the second episode moves on to the

late ninth century when the Saxons began to penetrate the forest, driving out both the ancient forest people and

the hill settlers. Part three deals with the effect of the Norman conquest on the small village, and part four is set in the midfifteenth century by which time life on the ridge represented a compromise between Saxon and Norman. All these four long short stories are interesting enough and all are linked not only by the place, but by names and crafts. It is, however, only in the longer fifth section, set in Tudor times, that the writer achieves her best work and the reader’s emotions are involved in the fate of Francis Wyse, Ironmaster. The only indication that the author may be planning a sequel comes from the fact that the history stops short at the Tudors — perhaps the reception of this volume will make that decision for her, and it could well be worth while. “I am England" Is a good, though not inspiring read, giving a vivid impression of the area and of the lives of some of its former

inhabitants, and, thankfully, despite the centuries iit covers not falling into the common American trap of excessive length.