Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this review copy.

I should love this book, I generally enjoy quiet stories about in the English countryside, but I keep trying to get into this book and it's just not gripping me, so I'm afraid I have to DNF.

A vivid and beautiful tale of Rye, just before the unimaginable happens. It's a gorgeous love story, wrapped up in prose that carries you along. Utterly charming and totally compelling.

I found much to appreciate in this story of a young woman who finds her first teaching job in a Sussex town not long before the great war; but there were too many echoes of other books and authors and the characters and their relationships didn’t quite come to life, so I felt that I was watching a staged drama and not looking through a window into the past.

The Summer Before the War is a winsome and poignant historical novel by Helen Simonson.

After the death of her beloved father, aspiring spinster Beatrice Nash is grateful to find a position as the Latin instructor in the village of Rye, East Sussex. It is the summer of 1914 and not everyone believes a young single woman is capable of teaching Latin, but with the support of society matron Agatha Kent, and her visiting nephews, surgeon-in-training Hugh and carefree poet Daniel, and Beatrice hopes to make Rye her home.

A quintessential turn-of-the-century village, Rye is a tight knit community, home to a cross section of English society, where everyone knows their place. Simonson wonderfully depicts the petty feuds, scandals and luncheon parties that occupy the town’s aristocracy, the traveling gypsies that camp on the outskirts of the village each summer, the largely uninterested, and unwashed, boys of Beatrice’s class, and the townsfolk and servants going about their everyday business.

But it’s 1914 and impending war heralds change for Rye and it’s inhabitants. Simonson skilfully contrasts the innocence of that summer with the changes to come. War is an abstract concept for most of the villagers, and almost all are convinced that it will be over in weeks, if not days. Even the arrival of refugees from Belgium, billeted amongst the eager wealthy families who want to be seen to be doing their duty, fails to communicate the gravity of the situation, as the mayor’s wife’s ill judged parade stunt proves. It’s only as rationing begins, as the men of the village leave and fail to return, or return broken, that reality begins to puncture the seaside idyll.

The themes of The Summer Before the War focus on the the Edwardian structure of gender and class, exploring Beatrice’s desire for independence, and a bright young gypsy boy’s wish for further education, amongst other circumstances, both directly and obliquely. Simonson also explores notions of duty, to oneself, to family, to others, and to the country in a time of war. And there is love, a slow-burning romance that takes two characters by surprise.

The pace is languid, reflecting the long days of summer, quickening as Simonson takes us to war. At nearly 600 pages some seem to find the story drags, but I was invested in the characters, and enjoying the subtle wit and rhythm of the language, so I didn’t really notice.

Engaging and endearing The Summer Before the War is a novel to enjoy at a leisurely pace on a warm spring afternoon.

Absolutely loved this one. This is completely different from Major Pettigrew's Last Stand but I loved that about it.

What starts off as a charming, rather old-fashioned tale of life in middle-class Rye in the summer before the war, evolves into something much darker as war is declared and undercurrents in this apparently peaceful and traditional community bubble to the surface. On one level it’s an amusing social comedy of manners, a gentle and often amusing exploration of gender and class, but any lightness soon dissipates. I found the novel an immersive and compelling read. The author handles everyday life in the town with insight and wit, and some of the dialogue is very funny indeed. She also handles the war episodes with acute observation and empathy and the not too predictable ending is heart-breaking indeed. The book opens with the arrival of a new female Latin teacher, something quite revolutionary in itself for the time, and Beatrice becomes the pivot around which the plot revolves. Overall this is a fine piece of writing, engaging, perceptive – and with an excellent little vignette of Henry James.

This got forgotten about in my kindle and then I came back across it and thought I really ought to read it. But I think I'm burned out on WW1 and immediately-pre-WW1 stories at the moment and I just couldn't get into this. Hey ho - I'm sure it's excellent, but it's just not for me at this point in time.