Days of Light
The days of light are April Easter holidays over decades, beginning in 1938. Ivy, the daughter of Cressingdon, an idyllic country house in Sussex, is nineteen when the story begins. She is on the cusp of adulthood, but the models of her bohemian parents daunt her. Her mother, Marina, and companion, Angus, are renowned painters; her father, Gilbert, who lives elsewhere with a string of other women, is a noted scholar. Ivy considers herself a dilettante in comparison, dabbling in painting and writing and dance, with no idea what will come next but hoping for something grand. She possesses a sensitivity to the beauties of the natural world and the rich imagination of a poet, but for the most part, her perceptions play out in her head.
All the family gathers at Easter for a traditional lunch, though Marina is proud that they, and Cressingdon itself, are secular. Ivy’s cherished older brother Joseph is home from Oxford, looking forward to presenting his sweetheart Frances to the family. The dramatic climax of that Easter leads to a second April day in 1938: the aftereffects of the crisis on everyone at the lunch, which continue one way and another until the end of the story. We see Ivy going about her life on April days of 1944, 1956, 1965, and 1999. Throughout, she reflects on the complexities she has faced and her changes of heart.
Springtime rebirth loosely holds these six days together through Ivy’s musings. The first line is “When Ivy looked back, this is what she remembered,” creating a dreamlike feel from the beginning. Megan Hunter’s beautifully descriptive style gives the novel a lyrical quality and weaves a spell around this unusual family and Ivy’s luminous life. Highly recommended.
