The Lindens by Barney Jeffries; Lovely History of a House and Its People

The Lindens by Barney Jeffries; Lovely History of a House and Its People 

By Julie Sara Porter 

Bookworm Reviews 

Spoilers: Barney Jeffries’ The Lindens is similar to Edward Rutherfurd’s Epic Historical Fiction novels like Sarum, London, and New York. Like Rutherfurd, Jeffries covers a large cast of characters for an extensive period of time in a specific location. This book covers approximately 150 years of a house in Marshmead, England called The Lindens.

The Lindens was built in 1885 by rising businessman Arnold Cann for his family. The various characters that live there are an eclectic group of people over the years who have their own rich and captivating stories to tell. There's Tessa Hobson, a highly intelligent milkmaid with an advantageous marriage, Henry Cook, a WWII evacuee who acquires a love of birds, Irene Cotter who is contemplating leaving her abusive marriage, Arthur and Eleanor Aldridge, a hippie couple who weigh their next steps after their successful children's book series comes to an end, The Blakes, a multigenerational family that has an eventful Christmas season with plenty of emotional baggage, Veronika Lambert, a Slovakian immigrant who is faced with xenophobic neighbors, and Marsha Wood, whose investigation into The Lindens and its residents brings all of the various characters together.

Like any good Historical Fiction novel about a particular space, Jeffries personifies The Lindens so that the house becomes a character in its own right, in fact the central character. Its solid brick exterior, gabled windows, and bay windows suggest a stable protectorate for those who live there. The four bedrooms, indoor bathroom, two smaller servant rooms, drawing room, cellar, lawn, walled garden, stables, coach house, and orchard reveal The Lindens as a home of tremendous wealth but restraint in showing it off. The various touches that are added over the years such as the row of lime trees, the pond, built-in swimming pool, fountain gardens, and additions give the home different traits and characteristics that are found within each family and over the generations. 

In general The Lindens is a house that can very quickly become a home. It is beautiful, stately, charming, steady, ornate, proud, imposing, warm, and inviting. It holds the various memories, voices, personalities, behaviors, triumphs, tragedies, loves, and losses of the people who lived there.

Besides capturing The Lindens’ many facets and changes, Jeffries also captures the various characters’ individualities and complexities. A truly insurmountable and impressive feat considering the large cast that covers hundreds of years of English history. There are many well written characters from different backgrounds, goals, personality traits, experiences, and memories that surround the book. Jeffries created a memorable ensemble.

Tessa Hobson starts the book out strong. She is a dairy maid from a lower class family, but instantly shows her vast intelligence that is beyond what most people think of her. She captures the eye of The Lindens’ heir, Roger Cann, as he reads Romantic poetry out loud. Tessa is amused that it appears he is reading out loud to the cows. This gesture becomes a running gag between the couple as they joke that they met when “Roger read Keats to the cows.” This moment of literary connection leads to others as Tessa reveals her own literary interests from Thomas Hardy, to the Romantics are as vast as Roger’s.

Tessa however isn’t just verbally intelligent, she reveals herself to be brilliant in numbers by keeping track of her family finances and tallying the gallons of milk that are collected and distributed. She also has an entrepreneurial mind as she has plans to modernize the Cann’s dairy farm and far reaching goals to see those plans through. It’s no surprise that Roger’s father, Arnold recruits Tessa as the farm’s manager and bucks tradition by putting a woman in charge of a growing business that ends up a success.

The importance of knowledge and learning is spread throughout the centuries as the characters receive opportunities to learn new things, express that knowledge in different ways, and pass that knowledge to others. One of those characters is Henry Cook, a boy from London taken in as an evacuee by Tessa in her old age. Henry gains a love of nature as he explores the gardens, the trees, the orchards, and especially the birds. Tessa and Henry bond through their bird watching trips where he learns to identify the various bird species that surround The Lindens.

This love of nature continues throughout Henry’s life as he becomes a respected ornithologist who writes a series of books about birds in England. In old age, he revisits the Lindens with his family and cries tears of joy as he locates the current avian inhabitants of the estate, no doubt descendants of the birds that he knew when he was a boy. He also passes this knowledge and love of nature to the young people that accompany him like his grandson, Laurence Wood, Laurence’s wife, Aleesha, and Aleesha’s sister, Marsha.

Besides knowledge, The Lindens becomes a therapeutic location that helps its residents and visitors explore their creativity and individuality. Arthur and Eleanor Aldridge wrote and illustrated The Brixton Bunnies, a series of satirical children’s books that also appeal to adults. They received plenty of inspiration, fame, wealth, and made their voices and opinions heard through these books. But they landed in a rut and felt the series ran its course. Buying the Lindens gives Arthur some much needed inspiration for his next project: a series of serio-comic stories and novels about life in the country. 

However, creativity and the results of that creativity can be all-consuming. The Aldridges were once united in working on The Brixton Bunnies as a duo, but since moving to The Lindens, their lives veer away from each other. Eleanor is enamored with this country home and continues to illustrate adaptations of children’s classics. Despite writing about the country, Arthur is interested in expanding his writing interests and his horizons. He wants to travel, see new places, and meet new people, including other women. Not surprisingly, these differences become insurmountable and the couple realize that their marriage has to come to an end which results in trauma for their son, Felix. He goes through a series of problems in his life including addiction, depression, constant relocation, and frequent job dissatisfaction before he returns to The Lindens to find a peace of mind and his own creativity and voice. 

The Lindens is a location of coming and going and is different things to different people. For Irene Cotter and her son, Eric, the house is a beautiful prison that stands as a symbol of their captivity by an abusive husband and father. The only way that they can achieve any freedom is to leave it. For Veronika Lambert, The Lindens is a symbol of freedom as she flees her troubled home country to a place of security and comfort. 

The Lindens is also a place of nostalgia among and is a place to come back to and relive a carefree innocent childhood. One of the best chapters that illustrate this is when the family of Julia and Glen Blake are reunited for the winter holidays. The parents and their three children come to terms with their adult struggles and conflicts while retaining those youthful memories, competitions, arguments, and family ties. The oldest daughter, Alex, has a high powered white collar career but is consumed with loneliness, envy, and alcoholism. Their only son, Robin and his wife, Kelly are at odds because of their different parenting styles towards their infant twins. Meanwhile Ruthie, the youngest, is concerned whether her family will accept her girlfriend, Marsha.

It’s worth noting that the majority of people who receive the house are not direct immediate descendants or heirs. It isn't primarily a home that is passed from parent to child. Nephews inherit from aunts and uncles. In-laws receive it instead of blood relatives. Mostly, families purchase the home from previous tenants. Most of the characters are not related by blood, nor do they arrive or leave the Lindens with the comfort of a wide ancestry which tell them that this space is and will always be theirs by birth. Instead they are united by their connections to the house and to each other. 

The various characters are drawn together by an investigation conducted by Marsha. Her curiosity about this place and its inhabitants opens a wide circle among them. Some purchase The Lindens from others. Some marry or become romantically involved with members of the other families. Visitors return to this beautiful house that once held their pasts. Even those who are long deceased are shouted out by current inhabitants visiting their graves or recognizing their contributions to the house. 

It’s a wide circle that is centered around this one space that meant so many things to so many people. The people that dwelled within, the characteristics and traits that were included, the memories and connections that are formed, the history, its current life, and the future generations are what turns this house into a home.

How We Were Before by Jonathan Kravetz; Anatomy of a Murder, Origins, and Aftereffects

 How We Were Before by Jonathan Kravetz; Anatomy of a Murder, Origins, and Aftereffects 

By Julie Sara Porter 

Bookworm Reviews 

Spoilers: In my review of Dennis Lehane’s Mystic River, I referred to it as a “whatdunnit,” as compared to a “whodunnit.” Instead of figuring out who committed a murder, the emphasis is on the murder and its aftereffects. We may already know who did the murder. Instead the real question is “something violent happened so what are you going to do about it?” 

Jonathan Kravetz’s anthologized novel, How We Were Before is another great example of a “whatdunnit.” It is a Crime Novel with a murder at the beginning and deals with how it impacted multiple characters. 

Elderly couple, Pete and Tara  Blythe, are murdered by Billy Lawson who is arrested, tried, and found guilty. The aftereffects are felt by multiple characters in different chapters. 

The present situations involving the characters alternate with flashbacks that focus on the pair’s lives from their meeting to their deaths at Billy’s hands. 

The narrative challenges the Reader with its complex and intricate storytelling and characterization. It is a testament to Kravetz’s writing skills that he gathers such a large cast and makes each character rich and complete. In each chapter, he recalls the murder and its effect in ways that are fresh and unique every time instead of becoming tedious and repetitive. To accomplish this, he pulls some interesting narrative techniques to engage the Reader in the character’s conflicts stemming from the murder and within their own lives. 

A perfect example of the complexities in this book can be found within the chapters that involve Police Chief Tim Pearson. His dereliction of duty and inactivity towards Billy Lawson’s escalating behavior ended up becoming key factors in the eventual murder. He is later revealed to have had a more personal involvement in the Blythe’s lives and later did and said the wrong thing to the wrong person.The fallout is seen through the eyes of his young son, Louis as Pearson engages in alcoholism and abuse to cope with his own failings and remorse. Louis’ home life becomes more tempestuous to the point that he steals a gun for protection. It takes several chapters and other characters’ points of view before Pearson’s story ends in a violent but inevitable conclusion. 

The aftermath of the murder and public trial are effectively felt by those most prominently affected by it: The Blythe’s daughters, Shelby and Samantha and Billy’s mother, Peggy. Shelby tries to overcome her aching loneliness and grief by finding romantic partners and trying to escape into romantic fantasies. She also begins writing to Billy to understand her own feelings towards him and maybe potentially find a path to forgiveness. Samantha’s journey is much more aggressive and upfront. She tries to maintain a public facade while her marriage is crumbling. She and her husband Carlton are filled with buried rage and simmering resentment that threatens to explode into more violence. 

Peggy Lawson’s story is no less tragic. As the mother of the perpetrator, she has to not only contend with knowing about and fearing her son’s behavior but also being painted as the villain in the story. She withdraws into alcoholism and seclusion only to find that seclusion broken in the worst way by someone who takes advantage of her fragile state. 

The book alternates the present with the past by showing important moments in Pete and Tara’s lives. We see their idyllic meeting and early courtship. We see their troubled marriage and complicated relationship with their daughters and of course we see their inevitable demise. Kravetz writes them as complicated multilayered people filled with many flaws and virtues whose loss becomes even more felt the more that the Reader gets to know them. 

Similarly we also peer into Billy’s character. The book does not absolve him of the murders and he certainly deserves punishment but he is also written as multilayered and thought provoking as the rest of the cast. He is seen as a very troubled young man with very few advantages and an addiction that he can’t control. The moments where he shows his vulnerabilities and self-awareness reveal him as someone who knows what he did and accepts that he will spend the rest of his life paying for it. 

This book doesn’t just feature the people who are immediately involved in either the Blythe’s or Billy’s lives. There are many characters who have a peripheral involvement in the murder but still have their lives greatly affected and altered by it. Vice Principal Zachary Rivers desperately tries to save the life of Barry, one of Billy’s high school friends. Ballet instructor Wendy Watson’s relationships with her students, particularly Shelby Blythe, propel her into a troubled romance. Janey, a homeless woman, develops an unhealthy obsession with Samantha Blythe. Adam Liu, Louis Pearson’s best friend has a front row seat to the implosion of his friend’s family. Matt Foster and Emilia Stone, two reporters covering the murder and trial, get up close and personal to some of the participants and so on.

How We Were Before shows that two lives weren’t the only ones destroyed that night. The murder carried a ripple effect that impacted the lives of many others and will continue to do so for a long time to come.