The Ordeal of Miss Lucy Jones
So this is a true story, verified by contemporary cuttings, which are reproduced from the local press and which, albeit difficult to decipher, comprehensively collaborate the facts.
Lucy Jones is a young girl in Victorian Devon who is falsely accused of improper conduct on the village common with a man, but not the man she loves, who she hopes will return from Australia. Ostracism and the burning of effigies ensue.
The plot, robust as it is, flounders under the weight of an effusive and frequently repetitive welter of description. Yes, the town is stonier, the hills steeper, the fields greener, the woods lovelier, darker and deeper than any you will find anywhere but the storyline, oh, the storyline – well. It doesn’t really get started until we are halfway through, but it is, basically, a good, strong, if fairly predictable yarn, worthy, almost, of Mr Hardy himself. But here any serious comparison ends.
Lucy Jones, herself unkindly and unjustly compromised, emerges (as we always knew she would) as virtually flawless, as she is finally rewarded for her inherent goodness. Her minor shortcomings are accepted, and her relationship with her dog is noted as a positive points winner.
One of the charms of this novel – and there are those who will find many – is the writer’s use, in reported speech, of pronouns pronounced in the distinctive West country/ Devonian way. This accent has, sadly, over the past few decades, almost completely disappeared, overtaken, except rarely and by the elderly, by RP i.e., BBC “Received Pronunciation”. In this novel we have “You’m”, “Us’ll” “They’m” and “Yer ‘tis” etc., all accurately used, by Liz Shakespeare.
For that, and for her meticulous, if overused research, this writer should be commended and will be enjoyed.
