Review – When I Was Young by Mary Fitzgerald

This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.

Reviewed by Debs Carr

Eleanor Gill is an only child living with her silent, emotionally crippled father, who has been permanently damaged by his years in a Japanese POW camp and her mother, exhausted and miserable, struggling to cope with her rundown farm on a Pennine hillside. They have no money to spare, so when Eleanor is encouraged by her teacher to sign up for a French school exchange trip she doesn’t expect to be able to go. Her father has other ideas and so, thanks to his hidden savings, Eleanor embarks on a journey that introduces her to experiences certain to alter her emotionally forever.

Etienne Martin’s family farm in the picturesque Loire Valley with the river running through it, the vineyard on the hill, and the heat of the French summer is the antithesis of her home life. However, anger, misery and tension are also at the centre of this bitter family. Etienne’s wife, Mathilde and her sullen son Jean Paul, make no attempt to hide their contempt of Eleanor and it’s only when she slowly gets to know Grandmére, the little girl Lisette, and Etienne that Eleanor begins to think that maybe she can cope with her stay in France after all.

The story is set in the summer of 1950 and shows a young, naïve country girl that not only is there much more to life than she could ever have imagined, but that people can be far more vindictive than she’d thought possible. The past catches up to the present as the Martin family face shame they had hoped to keep firmly behind them and Eleanor is caught up in incidents that will need her to draw upon every ounce of emotional resolve she might have.

The tension begins building slowly, speeding up as the layers unfold culminating in the emotional, dramatic climax. The picturesque countryside is woven so perfectly into the story that I could almost taste the grapes. This was an evocative, beautifully depicted tale and I look forward to reading more by this author.

9/10  

MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK