The Summer Before The War was our selection for a book about a teacher, with the lead character, Beatrice Nash, moving to a small town in East Sussex, England to accept a post as the Latin teacher just before World War II breaks out.
It soon becomes obvious that Beatrice won't actually do that much teaching, at least not of students in a classroom, in this book but it was still a book that gave us a fair amount to discuss. It is a book that really helps the reader see both the time and place setting. Many of us are big fans of historical fiction and many of us enjoyed the slow pace of this book as it developed its characters. We by and large found the final chapters a bit jarring, though, as they are really different from the rest of the book. When asked which was each of our favorite characters from the book, most liked either Beatrice or Agatha (the woman responsible for bringing Beatrice to the village) for their wit, self-awareness, and longing to change the way of women.
While we all agreed the book could have been 100 pages shorter, we weren't sure we were willing to give up the lovely descriptions or the meat of the story. Because Simonson does load the book up with heavier topics - immigration, war, sexual assault, class. The major theme, though, is the way women were forced to live their lives in that time and place. We talked about how so many of the women had learned out to use the men to get what they wanted without them actually having any power. We talked about the plight of a young immigrant who was pregnant because of rape and how it didn't matter to people why she was pregnant, only that she was. We talked about how Beatrice would not have been given the position without intervention, despite the fact that she was clearly the best candidate.
It's a book that strolls alone as peacefully as the village in which it's set and it's long, which makes it a more difficult choice for some readers. But book clubs will find plenty to talk about here.
