I am sitting in the kitchen sink. That is, my feet are in it; the rest of me is on the draining-board, which I have padded with our dog’s blanket and the tea-cozy.
The opening lines of the novel immediately situate one of the most engaging aspects of the book: its quirky narrator. Seeing as how the novel was published in 1949, that quirkiness is all the more unexpected. Young female first person narrators who had a quirky style about them just were not as common as they are today. In fact, what makes Cassandra Mortmain so original and interesting as a narrator would today not be quirky at all by virtue of the plethora of irony and edginess. Perhaps Cassandra cannot rightfully be regarded as “edgy” in the sense it took on in the early part of the 21st century, but for her time, Ms. Mortmain was actually pretty sharp.
The village is tiny: just the church, the vicarage, the little school, the inn, one shop (which is also the post office) and a huddle of cottages; though the Vicar gets quite a congregation from the surrounding hamlets and farms. It is a very pretty village and has the unlikely name of Godsend…
This is a coming-of-age story—a bildungsroman—about a seventeen-year-old girl who has decided to chronicle through journal form the details of the Mortmains as they settle into a castle which sounds pretty cool, but which in fact has seen much better days. Cassandra has an older sister who is considered the beauty of the two, but at her advanced age has become bitter: poor 21-year-old, the old maid who has set her bonnet for Simon Cotton in order to ensure that the family’s fortunes do not continue on its downward spiral.
For an instant, the shadow of his head was thrown on the wall and, owing to the pointed head, it was exactly like the Devil.
Rose saw it just as I did and gave a gasp.
Foreshadowing? Is Simon Cotton—upon whom Rose has placed the burden of financial security for not just herself, but her younger sister and parents as well—really a devil in disguise? (It is his pointed head which forms the shape so described.) Or does the narrative perhaps trek in a different direction entirely, one in which the Satanic imagery is misguided or, perhaps, merely a matter of perception? Point of view in a novel is everything; the story being told is only as reliable as the person telling it. Is Cassandra reliable on the subject of Simon?
A mist is rolling over the fields. Why is summer mist romantic and autumn mist just sad?
Not exactly the concluding words of the novel, but close. Very close. After these, less than fifty words remain until the end. The soft note of melancholy and the subtle hint of an ending that promises to be more ambiguous than many readers might like lies within that mist. That the story does not tie up everything quite so nice and tightly as most novels of the day—and especially most novels trafficking in this milieu—forms a strong connection to the opening line quoted above. Cassandra does not open her story by informing the reader what it is going to be about or even setting the scene in a traditional manner. The opening is imagery and it is ambivalent; the story that follows could quite easily have taken the reader down an entirely different path the opening would still be just as appropriate. Which is exactly how the story ends. It could be the ending to a story that is much different, and which guided the reader through a coming-of-age perhaps darker and perhaps less romantic, but definitely less idiosyncratic.
