The Lark Ascending
Alice Fields, assistant in a dreary Leeds draper’s shop, grieves for the loss of her brother, killed in World War I. A richly dressed stranger comes in, ostensibly looking for a hat, but deliberately leaving behind an expensive fur stole. The customer speaks in “tones… so upper-class, they hurt. She pronounced the last word as hets”. Zigmond has a keen ear for language and an accurate eye for period detail, such as the description of the advertisements on the tram Alice takes to return the stole, and the conductor flipping the seats over in preparation for the return journey.
Her encounter with the mysterious woman shapes Alice’s life thereafter, from her meeting with the well-spoken vagrant who has no tram fare, to her stage-managed, lonely marriage, her involvement in a sanctuary for the shell-shocked and the help she gives to a mining community during the General Strike. This is also a poignant love story, describing the harm lovers do to each other when they fail to communicate.
The Lark Ascending is thoroughly researched and its characters – such as Alice’s self-righteous and pitiless mother, Michael the idealistic but sometimes volatile conscientious objector, and Eleanor, who rejects her privileged upbringing for writing and activism – are deftly drawn, thanks to Zigmond’s gift for vivid, engaging dialogue.
The story is neatly plotted, with all the threads pulled satisfyingly together in the closing pages. My only quibble is some idiosyncratic italicisation, as in “Roundhay Park”, but this novel evokes convincingly the bleak aftermath of a world-changing conflict in the people, the streets and factories of Leeds, at the pit head and in the hopeful and idealistic community of Pear Tree farm.
