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rosh's review
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.25
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racial slurs
maria_reads's review
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.0
cathyrodgers's review
hopeful
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
jessreadthis's review
4.0
"Keep away," she said to the sultry tinge in the fair sky. "For we want some fine days, everyone says so. "
I found my experience with this novel to be rather different than I expected. I've enjoyed Panter-Downes' short stories immensely. Yet, in starting this one, I wasn't completely sold on it. About half way through, everything just fell into place and I began to love it. I fell in love with the plot, the main character who I was initially ambivalent to, and the theme. An incredibly well written novel.
I found my experience with this novel to be rather different than I expected. I've enjoyed Panter-Downes' short stories immensely. Yet, in starting this one, I wasn't completely sold on it. About half way through, everything just fell into place and I began to love it. I fell in love with the plot, the main character who I was initially ambivalent to, and the theme. An incredibly well written novel.
kazen's review
2.0
If you'd like to know my full thoughts check out the discussion I did with Shawn the Book Maniac about One Fine Day:
https://youtu.be/2eIXvdhQ7pk
In short - it's not a "me" book. While there are some lovely images the lack of plot meant I had trouble pulling myself back to the page. I guess I'll stick with Panter-Downes' nonfiction from here on out!
https://youtu.be/2eIXvdhQ7pk
In short - it's not a "me" book. While there are some lovely images the lack of plot meant I had trouble pulling myself back to the page. I guess I'll stick with Panter-Downes' nonfiction from here on out!
ruthiella's review
5.0
The phrase seems overused, but this is the type of book to savor while reading. It is less than 200 pages and nothing much happens, but everything is related in impeccable detail; every small moment implies a larger story. Published in 1947, it is about the transition of a certain upper middle class family from war time Britain to peace time Britain. The main focus is Laura, a wife and mother, who is at heart a dreamer, but has to cope with being a housewife, something she is ill suited to. Before the war, servants did it for her; during the war, the stress and tumult of life distracted her, in the present of the book, she finds herself struggling to meet the expectations of others. As I wrote, the main focus is on Laura, but everyone is adjusting to the new way of life in post WWII Britain, for better or worse. The writing is at times melancholy, at times wistful, at other times joyful. It reminded me a bit of the lovely [b:The Fortnight in September|2728102|The Fortnight in September|R.C. Sherriff|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327433965s/2728102.jpg|2753734] in its tone and of Mrs. Dalloway in its compact, character driven narrative. I read this book as part of the Back to the Classics 2015 challenge hosted at Books and Chocolate in the “Classic Novella” category.
absolutive's review
reflective
slow-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
This was a lovely book, a gentler more conventional version of Virginia Woolf's flitting back and forth between the minds of characters, but focused on one woman and one day, like Mrs. Dalloway, though radiating out to suffuse the thoughts of many more characters, as in To The Lighthouse. The book also shows the decline of the upper middle classes in England and the reorganisation of society in the aftermath of the Second World War. As in her stories, published in two volumes by Persephone Books, Mollie Panter-Downes shows empathy for all sorts of different people.
girlwithherheadinabook's review
5.0
For my full review: http://girlwithherheadinabook.co.uk/2017/03/review-one-fine-day-mollie-panter-downes.html
What a beautiful novel this was - a peculiar dreamy quality made it feel like more of an 'impression' than a story, as though Panter-Downes was conveying the experience of post-war life rather than anything specific to the particular characters she draws out so effortlessly. We follow Laura Marshall as she goes about her day, safe and secure after the conflict but discovering herself to be living a life entirely different to the one that she had before. The sun is bright, the air shimmering with heat, the tarmac soft on the road and the crops ripe for harvesting in the fields - all that they have fought for all of these years has been returned to them. Panter-Downes paints England at its most idyllic - there are no clouds in the sky, the storm clouds are all internal as the Marshalls contemplate what has changed and who they will be in this new landscape.
One Fine Day manages to maintain a placid tone despite simultaneously dealing with the trauma of war. The Marshalls are back together in their big country house with husband Stephen recently returned from the war. He is startled to find his daughter Victoria a grown up girl of ten and still more discomforted to find his wife in charge of the cooking and cleaning with all the servants gone. Stephen looks back with longing to a time when the garden was not a jungle, when he could look out on it with pride and comment casually to visitors that his 'man was good on roses', but the gardener was killed in France. He thinks of the food that their old cook used to serve and remembers guiltily that she died in an air raid. Life pre-war was simpler, tidier - Victoria came to them spick and span in Nanny's charge while now they must look to their child themselves. The 'anonymous caps and aprons who lived out of sight and pulled the strings' are gone - either killed in the conflict or moved on to work in factories and the workings of the home are exposed.
The feeling of One Fine Day is of a nation who are exhausted, mentally and emotionally. Stephen is tired, coming home from work and then having to spend his evenings trying to get some kind of order back in the garden, his daughter barely remembers him and his wife has suddenly become middle-aged. Laura is uncertain in her resumed role as wife, concerned by the prospect of disappointing her husband, her daughter, dreading her mother's judgment. Mrs Heriot laments that after the trouble she took in bringing Laura up that her daughter should find herself doing housework is a tragedy, wishing that she had married the other man, who still manages to keep his servants. Both Stephen and Mrs Herriot are intensely nostalgic, they have expectations for Victoria's up-bringing, that she should have the 'Heriot trimmings', learn the piano, have accomplishments, but Laura is quietly becoming aware that the era of being decorative is over and that it is 'perfectly clear that [Victoria] would have to work seriously for her living'.
Reading this as a twenty-first-century woman gave me real pause - Mollie Panter-Downes is capturing a moment of real social change. What is the use of having the 'agile foot' and 'nimble finger' that Mrs Herriot so prized? How many of us have held on to these skills in this day and age? Laura marvels at the child conceived out of a wedlock by a village girl by a Polish officer, thinking it a strange thing that this working-class child should have such exotic genetic heritage after generations and generation of his family have lived in the village. Moments later, the boy's uncle declines Mrs Marshall's kind offer to come and work in her garden since he will be leaving to get a job elsewhere soon - travel during the services has opened his eyes to the world beyond the village. Laura knows, as Stephen is unable yet to accept, that the caps and aprons will not be coming back, no matter how many notices he has her put in the paper.
I was reminded of Gone with the Wind in an odd way, of how helpless Ashley Wilkes and his peers were once transplanted to a world without slaves to manage their lives - the oppression on which the system was based is different but the strange way in which the 'overlords' have relied on others is the same. The irritation that Mrs Herriot feels that the working class no longer wish to work in service is mirrored by the kindly contempt felt by the working class Mrs Prout, who does still come in to the Marshalls to clean for a few mornings a week and who watches bemused as poor Mrs Marshall lets the milk boil over while tending to a bird that has fallen out of its nest, or her inability to stop the dog from running off. But by contrast, Laura is beginning to acknowledge that perhaps, after all they have been through, keeping up appearances is not as vital as they had all believed. She considers how little she minded the gentle chaos of repeated house guests during the war, when they were a cluster of women with husbands far away, all making do and helping each other.
As Laura travels round the countryside, trying to track down her errant dog, she witnesses a series of events caused by war. She meets a war widow who is making a remarriage to a man who is not in any way the equal to her first husband. The jagged shock as the woman looks back at Laura and dares her to comment is fiercely felt - there is nothing to be said. She visits the home of the local squire, about to be sold to the nation, while the local 'rascal' makes a profit in the soaring building trade, the accepted social order tipped on its head. Laura travels up the hill and remembers coming here on a picnic with a pregnant friend, whose husband was killed without ever meeting their child. The emotional moment as Laura rejoices that she is free, after five years of terror, that she still has the things that matter most - it is a beautiful moment of patriotic delight and relief, something that I feel could only have been captured so perfectly by a survivor. The world had changed, the culture of deference was gone, but how can one do anything other than be recklessly glad to have come out on the other side?
One Fine Day is a powerful piece of work, managing despite its short length to catch the reader off guard. Panter-Downes seems to have caught that particular moment in amber, as the world tried to decide how to move forward, what to do better and what to give up entirely. I was reminded of the film A Diary for Timothy which I studied at university, which is an account of the first six months in the life of a baby during 1945, but what I remember most is the way that the narrator, with words scripted by E.M. Forster seems to reflect on the world which is on offer to this child and how we can make it better. There are obvious parallels to be made between Laura Marshall and other parallel 1940s literary ladies, perhaps the one who springs most immediately to mind is Diary of a Provincial Lady but there is less slapstick and more naturalism to Laura. We sense her spirit, how her quiet demeanour masks determination - just as she decided against the suitor approved by her mother, she is deciding how she will lead her life. One Fine Day is a keenly observant novel, tracking not just the Marshall family but also the village and by extension England as a whole as the nation rebuilds and recovers from harrowing warfare. Despite the darkness that it recalls, this is a warm and uplifting book which champions survival and fresh beginnings and makes one feel a sense of pride in those generations who truly lived this experience.
What a beautiful novel this was - a peculiar dreamy quality made it feel like more of an 'impression' than a story, as though Panter-Downes was conveying the experience of post-war life rather than anything specific to the particular characters she draws out so effortlessly. We follow Laura Marshall as she goes about her day, safe and secure after the conflict but discovering herself to be living a life entirely different to the one that she had before. The sun is bright, the air shimmering with heat, the tarmac soft on the road and the crops ripe for harvesting in the fields - all that they have fought for all of these years has been returned to them. Panter-Downes paints England at its most idyllic - there are no clouds in the sky, the storm clouds are all internal as the Marshalls contemplate what has changed and who they will be in this new landscape.
One Fine Day manages to maintain a placid tone despite simultaneously dealing with the trauma of war. The Marshalls are back together in their big country house with husband Stephen recently returned from the war. He is startled to find his daughter Victoria a grown up girl of ten and still more discomforted to find his wife in charge of the cooking and cleaning with all the servants gone. Stephen looks back with longing to a time when the garden was not a jungle, when he could look out on it with pride and comment casually to visitors that his 'man was good on roses', but the gardener was killed in France. He thinks of the food that their old cook used to serve and remembers guiltily that she died in an air raid. Life pre-war was simpler, tidier - Victoria came to them spick and span in Nanny's charge while now they must look to their child themselves. The 'anonymous caps and aprons who lived out of sight and pulled the strings' are gone - either killed in the conflict or moved on to work in factories and the workings of the home are exposed.
The feeling of One Fine Day is of a nation who are exhausted, mentally and emotionally. Stephen is tired, coming home from work and then having to spend his evenings trying to get some kind of order back in the garden, his daughter barely remembers him and his wife has suddenly become middle-aged. Laura is uncertain in her resumed role as wife, concerned by the prospect of disappointing her husband, her daughter, dreading her mother's judgment. Mrs Heriot laments that after the trouble she took in bringing Laura up that her daughter should find herself doing housework is a tragedy, wishing that she had married the other man, who still manages to keep his servants. Both Stephen and Mrs Herriot are intensely nostalgic, they have expectations for Victoria's up-bringing, that she should have the 'Heriot trimmings', learn the piano, have accomplishments, but Laura is quietly becoming aware that the era of being decorative is over and that it is 'perfectly clear that [Victoria] would have to work seriously for her living'.
Reading this as a twenty-first-century woman gave me real pause - Mollie Panter-Downes is capturing a moment of real social change. What is the use of having the 'agile foot' and 'nimble finger' that Mrs Herriot so prized? How many of us have held on to these skills in this day and age? Laura marvels at the child conceived out of a wedlock by a village girl by a Polish officer, thinking it a strange thing that this working-class child should have such exotic genetic heritage after generations and generation of his family have lived in the village. Moments later, the boy's uncle declines Mrs Marshall's kind offer to come and work in her garden since he will be leaving to get a job elsewhere soon - travel during the services has opened his eyes to the world beyond the village. Laura knows, as Stephen is unable yet to accept, that the caps and aprons will not be coming back, no matter how many notices he has her put in the paper.
I was reminded of Gone with the Wind in an odd way, of how helpless Ashley Wilkes and his peers were once transplanted to a world without slaves to manage their lives - the oppression on which the system was based is different but the strange way in which the 'overlords' have relied on others is the same. The irritation that Mrs Herriot feels that the working class no longer wish to work in service is mirrored by the kindly contempt felt by the working class Mrs Prout, who does still come in to the Marshalls to clean for a few mornings a week and who watches bemused as poor Mrs Marshall lets the milk boil over while tending to a bird that has fallen out of its nest, or her inability to stop the dog from running off. But by contrast, Laura is beginning to acknowledge that perhaps, after all they have been through, keeping up appearances is not as vital as they had all believed. She considers how little she minded the gentle chaos of repeated house guests during the war, when they were a cluster of women with husbands far away, all making do and helping each other.
As Laura travels round the countryside, trying to track down her errant dog, she witnesses a series of events caused by war. She meets a war widow who is making a remarriage to a man who is not in any way the equal to her first husband. The jagged shock as the woman looks back at Laura and dares her to comment is fiercely felt - there is nothing to be said. She visits the home of the local squire, about to be sold to the nation, while the local 'rascal' makes a profit in the soaring building trade, the accepted social order tipped on its head. Laura travels up the hill and remembers coming here on a picnic with a pregnant friend, whose husband was killed without ever meeting their child. The emotional moment as Laura rejoices that she is free, after five years of terror, that she still has the things that matter most - it is a beautiful moment of patriotic delight and relief, something that I feel could only have been captured so perfectly by a survivor. The world had changed, the culture of deference was gone, but how can one do anything other than be recklessly glad to have come out on the other side?
One Fine Day is a powerful piece of work, managing despite its short length to catch the reader off guard. Panter-Downes seems to have caught that particular moment in amber, as the world tried to decide how to move forward, what to do better and what to give up entirely. I was reminded of the film A Diary for Timothy which I studied at university, which is an account of the first six months in the life of a baby during 1945, but what I remember most is the way that the narrator, with words scripted by E.M. Forster seems to reflect on the world which is on offer to this child and how we can make it better. There are obvious parallels to be made between Laura Marshall and other parallel 1940s literary ladies, perhaps the one who springs most immediately to mind is Diary of a Provincial Lady but there is less slapstick and more naturalism to Laura. We sense her spirit, how her quiet demeanour masks determination - just as she decided against the suitor approved by her mother, she is deciding how she will lead her life. One Fine Day is a keenly observant novel, tracking not just the Marshall family but also the village and by extension England as a whole as the nation rebuilds and recovers from harrowing warfare. Despite the darkness that it recalls, this is a warm and uplifting book which champions survival and fresh beginnings and makes one feel a sense of pride in those generations who truly lived this experience.
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