books | Beneath the Visiting Moon by Romilly Cavan

Beneath the Visiting Moon is about wealthy people preoccupied with everyday pathos because they must somehow pass the summer. The narrative starts with the summer and comes to a close when the summer does; the prose feels like summer too, slow and hazy. You feel at the end as though not much has happened, yet you also want to revisit the summer, memorialise it.

The rich people pathos wasn't annoying chiefly because it was focused on the children, and on our protagonist, who is on the cusp of adulthood but still very much a child trying to make sense of life. It helps that the characterisations are deft and rather fond. It also helps that Romilly Cavan seems to have had a blast writing it:

You're not eating anything, dear," Mrs. Oxford reminded Sarah.
"She's feeling Russian," Christopher said.
"Dear me!" The old lady looked genuinely distressed.
"Not communistic," he added hurriedly. "Old Russian. Tolstoy."
"In that case she might like to take her tea with lemon," Mrs. Oxford said with a clear intention of humour.
"Have you seen Mr. Harbrittle lately?" Sarah changed the tiresome subject.
"I hear he is much involved in his middle chapters," the hostess said, somehow making it sound more anatomical than literary.

I like Romilly Cavan's writing better than Elizabeth Bowen and F. Scott Fitzgerald, who write about similar things.