The Shut-Away Sisters
Through a series of diaries, letters and poems found in the old home of two aunts she had barely known, Kate Miles uncovers the history of the reclusive spinsters through WWI and the post-war era. In 1999, reeling from her lover’s infidelity, Kate uses the house as a stop-gap refuge. Amongst the aunts’ belongings is a hand-stitched, carefully wrapped wedding dress and new linen sheets folded and tied with ribbon, which a long-time neighbour tells Kate are ‘bottom drawer’ contents. Moving episodically between the diary and the present-day, Golding examines the sisters’ lives – Florrie, age ten in 1915, a diligent and sensitive child who helps her mother with daily tasks, and Edith, seven years Florrie’s senior, who spends the war years brooding for her soldier boyfriend. Alone in her room and refusing any social interaction with the outside world, Edith writes endlessly. Long after the war, and still pining, she engages in secretive behaviour that leads Florrie to conclude that her sister is mentally unbalanced, and thereby is Florrie’s life course set.
Goldring provides a detailed tableau of the simplicity and quietness of life, war and post-war privations, sacrifices and secrets kept. Despite being seven years younger, after their mother succumbs to the Spanish flu, 15-year-old Florrie runs the household with no assistance from Edith, pointing out how differently sisters can view their responsibilities. Florrie’s toils in husbandry and housekeeping are rewarded, but there is heartbreak to come. Although Kate’s contemporary work-life sections are drawn-out at times, her delicate care over what fragments of her aunts’ lives to preserve, and her interactions with long-time neighbours about the reclusive siblings, is heartfelt. There is an ordinary everydayness to the author’s story, which is very moving, and the fate of the many spinsters left behind by the Great War resounds through the book’s poignant title.
