Summer Before the War

It is late summer in East Sussex, 1914. Amidst the season’s splendour, fiercely independent Beatrice Nash arrives in the coastal town of Rye to fill a teaching position at the local grammar school. There she is taken under the wing of formidable matriarch Agatha Kent, who, along with her charming nephews, tries her best to welcome Beatrice to a place that remains stubbornly resistant to the idea of female teachers. But just as Beatrice comes alive to the beauty of the Sussex landscape, and the colourful characters that populate Rye, the perfect summer is about to end. For the unimaginable is coming – and soon the limits of progress, and the old ways, will be tested as this small town goes to war.

Radiant ... I found myself turning pages with increasing awe as well as pleasure. The provincial village of Rye, Sussex in the days just before and after the Great War is so vividly drawn it fairly vibrates – but it’s the depth and sensitivity with which Simonson weighs the steep costs and delicate bonds of wartime – and not just for the young men in the trenches, but for every changed life and heart – that reveals the full mastery of her storytelling. Like a Jane Austen or Henry James for our day and age, Simonson is that good, and The Summer Before the War is nothing short of a treasure, At once haunting and effervescent, The Summer Before the War demonstrates the sure hand of a master. Simonson’s characters enchant us, her English countryside beguiles us, and her historical intelligence keeps us at the edge of our seats. This luminous story of a family, a town, and a world in their final moments of innocence is as lingering and lovely as a long summer sunset, In the noisy world of today it is a delight to find a novel that dares to assert itself quietly but with the lovely rhythm of Helen Simonson’s funny, comforting, and intelligent debut, How clever of her to have entered that era so convincingly and gently and to have written about such traumas along with lovely wit and grace…hugely enjoyable, Funny, barbed, delightfully winsome storytelling … It’s about intelligence, heart, dignity and backbone

Helen Simonson was born in Buckinghamshire and spent her teenage years in a small village near Rye in East Sussex. Her debut novel, Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, was an international bestseller, a Richard & Judy Book Club pick, and was translated and published in twenty one countries. A graduate of the London School of Economics, Helen is married, with two grown sons, and currently lives in Brooklyn, New York. This is her second novel.www.helensimonson.com