Sing Me Who You Are by Elizabeth Berridge – a 1967 novel recently reprinted in the lovely British Library Women Writers series

Sing Me Who You Are by Elizabeth Berridge

This 1967 novel, recently republished in a lovely edition in the British Library Women Writers series, tackles many issues of a woman’s experience in the 1960s, but also issues that are still of immense importance in the twenty first century. This novel is affected by vivid memories of the Second World War, which arguably left a different legacy from the First World War in terms of expectations, especially for women. Harriet Cooper’s own inheritance is actually a large green single decker bus, which offers the prospect of an independent life, but even a field cannot be shut off from a demanding world. The land on which the bus is parked belongs to another – a difficult cousin, Magda – and there are questions of land ownership and lifestyles. A man who is not present is also a focus, an unusual man whose life choices have implications for so many others. There are secrets, demands, ambitions and discoveries which will change the course of Harriet’s proposed idyllic lifestyle of solitary pursuits apart from two loved and awkward cats. This is a book of enormous atmosphere, accurate and significant dialogue, and uncomfortable truths before it launches into a significant consideration of land use beyond Britain and a world of limited resources. This is a later book than most of the editions in this series and as such it asks new questions and relates different answers. I enjoyed this engaging book and was pleased to have the opportunity to read and review it.

At the beginning of the novel Harriet arrives in her small car with virtually all her worldly goods. Some are inherited from her late mother who she had lived with, all are secured in or on the car. To the vast interest of small boys who witness her arrival she has brought her two precious cats, Bella and Shetat, who are to keep Harriet company in her new home. Her nearest neighbour, Mrs Everett and family, are transfixed by her arrival, foreseeing nothing but trouble. Despite Harriet’s best attempts to indulge in her solitude as a careful unmarried woman determined to live a simple life, the world insists on crowding in as a local journalist Meirion soon turns up. Soon she is forced into an explanation of her presence, of how she knows Magda, her cousin, who is married to Gregg. As Gregg arrives it soon seems that events, people that they have both known will have an impact on them that neither can deny, that no one can truly live in isolation.

This is a book of beautiful descriptions of characters, of regrets for what cannot be undone, those who are lost in so many ways. Its references to the choices that people make, are sometimes forced to make, are significant and painful, as men in particular try to outdo each other in bravado and eagerness to prove their feelings. It is a book of the countryside, of small communities that are on the brink of developments of all kinds. I was particularly engaged by the character of Magda, brittle, unpredictable and influential. I recommend this book as a book full of a sense of its time, in a postwar world where everything seems to be changing but with all the influences of past conflicts to contend with for so many people and places.