SUMMER VISITS

by Margery Sharp ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 21, 1977

As always, a sunny, lightly mannered diversion for a quiet afternoon. Cotton Hall, from 1860 on, is the East Anglian setting for Braithwaite family reunions, with desultory croquet games and children's tribal customs in the first years and equally genteel but less regular get-togethers thereafter. The adult children of widowed patriarch John Henry endure his crotchety snipings until his dalliance with young Hilda the housekeeper leads to a second marriage, a favored son, and disinheritance. Their children and John Henry's second set (a son and daughter in the Torn Jones obscured parentage tradition) grow up, marry, and settle down (or not), sporadically stopping in at the old manse--for a showy christening, a royal occasion, a private need. Sharp cautiously charts their separate paths, crossing trails and resuming acquaintances with the gentlest of reminders, as Cotton Hall takes in gentlewoman boarders, turns vegetarian, welcomes WW I wounded, ousts a predatory schemer, and hosts--quite unsuccessfully--urban slum children in 1939. The first and second generaton have a bit more vitality than their progeny but Sharp keeps the pace steady even as the family line winds down, and her following will cotton to this newest brood of town and country cousins.

Pub Date: Feb. 21, 1977

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1977

Categories: FICTION