Joanna Quinn
Penguin Random House
Otago Daily Times, September 29th 2022
Joanna Quinn’s exceptional debut is a beautifully-realised portrait of an upper-class British family during the dissolution of the landed gentry between the world wars.
The central narrator is Cristabel, the only child of Jasper Seagrave, master of Chilcombe House. Still grieving for his wife, who died during Cristabel’s birth, Jasper refuses to acknowledge her existence, and after his own untimely death, her stepmother Rosalind’s remarriage to her uncle Willoughby denies her the right to the family estate. The closest thing she has to a parent is the teenage maid who teaches her to read and shares her bed when she cries at night. Despite – or perhaps because – of being constantly reminded of her irrelevancy, Cristabel grows up fiercely independent and protective of her siblings: half-sister Flossie and cousin Digby, her brother in all but name.
Although Cristabel’s is the primary perspective, the narrative moves from character to character and incorporates letters, diary entries and reviews of the Seagrave’s productions. The plot, too, follows an unpredictable trajectory full of unfinished threads and passing visitors that appear and disappear at will. It follows the children through their childhood and into the adult world, focusing (as memory does) on specific times: the glorious summers of the 1930s when the children stage elaborate plays in the home-built theatre from which the novel draws its title, and the bleak years of WWII, when the last trappings of wealth and privilege are stripped from the estate and the now-grown trio find the freedom they have always craved; Flossie as a landgirl, Cristabel and Digby behind the lines in occupied France.
What particularly impressed me about Quinn’s writing is her rich evocation of time and setting. This is a world where children are ignored, relegated like servants to Chilcombe’s attics from which they sneak to watch the adults’ drunken parties or roam the countryside, trailed by governesses and tutors charged (unsuccessfully) with civilising them. Cristabel constantly challenges the rules that tell her what she, as a girl, cannot do. Flossie avoids society because she is – as her mother constantly reminds her – too fat and plain to be attractive, while Digby desires nothing more than a life on the stage. The adults are equally trapped by social expectations. Jasper may have inherited his father’s estate but knows he lacks the skill and temperament to inspire loyalty from his tenants. Rosalind expects her marriage to be like the romantic novels she loves, not a union of convenience intended to produce a son and heir. And Willoughby, who detests the responsibility of his inheritance, yearns for the adulation he received as an officer in the Great War. But where the children find an outlet for their frustrations in imagination, their parents seek relief – la plus ca change – in alcohol, affairs and conspicuous consumption.
The Whalebone Theatre is no romantic rendering of a glorious past and has no fairytale endings. It left me filled with quiet satisfaction at being immersed in a world that felt, at some deep level, true.
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