Mothering Sunday - Graham Swift

I first heard of this book from an NPR story (you can read NPR's review here) while I was driving during my morning commute. I think the part of the review that caught my ear was "one of those deceptively spare tales . . . that punch well above their weight." I am a huge fan of short fiction and I appreciate those stories that can do more in 25 pages than some novels do in 500. Short fiction, I've come to understand, is not "easier" to write because the page requirement is less; it's actually far more difficult. A writer must do more in less time, evoke feelings and emotions in the reader that often take hundreds of pages, but do it in 20, 15, or 10. A writer that can do that should be commended. And Graham Swift is a writer that can do that. 

Mothering Sunday takes place on March 30th, 1924. A holiday in which service staff across the English countryside are given the day off to spend with their mothers. Jane Fairchild, maid to the Niven family, however, does not have a mother. Abandoned as a child, she has no family to visit on Mothering Sunday. At first she intends to spend the day with a book from the Niven library - a character trait that is teased out and expanded upon over the course of the book. 

Her plans are changed however, when she gets a call from Paul Sheringham, the only surviving son of a neighboring gentry family with whom Jane has been having an affair for some years. Paul is engaged to be married to Emma Hobday within a couple of weeks, and Jane knows this is likely to be their last tryst. 

Over the course of Mothering Sunday's sparse pages, Jane's character is lovingly teased out as we see the world through her eyes. We know only what she knows. We feel only what she feels. It's a remarkably limited, but also necessary point of view. As Jane wanders Paul's home after he has left her in his bed, we see the changing society reflected back through Jane's thoughts. The war is over - a generation of young men have been buried in France or Belgium, never to return home. And the life of those in service and those they serve, is changing (have you seen Downton Abbey?). 

The story slowly reveals Jane's future as an accomplished novelist in her own right - a path she was set upon maybe even before the events of that Mothering Sunday, but certainly a path that was clearer once the dust had cleared from the day.

At times evocative and luxurious, reading Mothering Sunday felt like a sprint and a marathon all at once.

4.5/5 Stars.