Book Review: Casting Off by Elizabeth Jane Howard

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Or three weddings and a funeral! After the phenomenal misery of Confusion, this came as a bit of a relief. For some of the characters, anyway! Without giving anything away, one of my favourite characters meets someone who is just lovely and they have a lovely wedding and you can just FEEL the years and years of happiness and contentedness ahead of them, one of those long marriages that people one day in the year 2000 or so will go: wow, they really knew how to stay married in the old days! Well, I like to think that because God knows we could do with a bit of joy. There is another wedding which is so unstated and barely discussed that even the woman’s children don’t know their mother is getting married that day. But again – lovely that two lonely older people found each other. The third marriage is implied. You know it’s going to happen anyway because at the end of each book is the first chapter of the next book – so I already know they’ve been married for ten years and have kids. I seem to remember that the radio version (having pretty much dropped most of the contents of the 3rd and 4th volumes) ended at this point. And the Cazalet story does feel finished at the end of this book. Ms Howard wraps everything up and you feel you are done. But then, when knitting, casting off is NOT the end. You still have to sew up all the pieces! The funeral, by the way, is not unexpected or particularly sad, but it does change the lives of some of the characters in a big way. Poor Rachel is finally afforded some self-awareness and happiness. Characters that really stood out for me in this novel are Polly, who finds herself; the Duchy, who imparts some wisdom and support in unexpected ways; and Archie, who has always been a strange, peripheral character but truly finds his feet here – and joy. If this review gives you the idea it’s all very soapy – it isn’t! None of the Cazalet Chronicles fall into soapiness. The depth and power of these novels is astonishing: Ms Howard has a profound understanding of life at that time and the changes wrought by the war. These novels are described as “charming” – I think of them much more as an unflinching social commentary of that era. Wonderful stuff.



View all my reviews