BOOK OF THE DAY: ANNA CAREYreviews The Bride's FarewellBy Meg Rosoff Penguin 186pp, £10.99
ON THE day of her wedding, a young woman called Pell Ridley runs away from the small village in the west of England where she has lived all her life. She leaves her family and her sensible, staid fiance and heads out with her horse, Jack, and her mute half-brother Bean, who insists on coming along.
On her travels she meets a variety of people who play an important role in her family’s past and, ultimately, its future. She is helped by a family of gypsies whose charismatic matriarch seems to know a lot about Pell’s background. But wherever she goes, Pell’s attempts to start a new life and create a happy family seem doomed to failure.
Set in an unspecified part of the 19th century, Meg Rosoff's new novel is a departure from her previous work, which will captivate some fans and leave others underwhelmed. Rosoff has never written another book as good as her sublime debut novel, How I Live Now, although neither have many authors.
The quality of Rosoff's debut, however, has meant that all her subsequent novels have been ever-so-slightly disappointing, making her a victim of her own success. By normal standards The Bride's Farewellis a fine novel; it's compact and powerful and exquisitely written, throwing out a few genuinely gorgeous images, such as the open countryside where "stories spooled out in soft exhalations from every house or hut under the night sky". It's just not as good as the author's previous work.
And its appeal is more narrow; this is a novel that as with her previous books, is very much for adults as well as teenagers.
A glance at the author’s website reveals that her background reading when writing the novel included several novels by Thomas Hardy, and his influence is evident throughout. Boastful, deluded patriarchs; characters struggling in vain against a cruel fate; the beautiful, brutal world of the southwest of England that is the novel’s backdrop – it’s all very Wessex.
In fact, the whole thing is so grimly Hardy-esque that the reader half expects Pell to come home from yet another day of gruelling disappointment to discover her sisters lying next to a note reading “Done because we are too menny” a la Jude the Obscure.
If you like Hardy, this is great, because Rosoff manages to create something new out of her influences. But if you don’t like Hardy’s novels, you might find it all a bit wearing while still admiring the author’s skill.
The same goes for the equine elements of the book. Rosoff herself is a keen horsewoman, but those who are less interested in horses may be slightly bored by the emphasis on Pell's relationship with the beasts. Rosoff has created wonderful animal characters before – the delightful imaginary greyhound in Just in Caseis up there with the Empress of Blandings – but it's hard to care quite so much about the anonymous horses Pell encounters.
Pell herself is an intriguing but slightly opaque heroine. She ploughs on despite her many misfortunes, but the reader doesn't always get a real sense of what motivates her. Apart from her family and horses, what does she care about? Her relationship with a mysterious poacher feels strangely bloodless, especially in comparison with Pell's protective love of her younger siblings. And yet it's a testament to Rosoff's power as a writer that despite all this, The Bride's Farewellis a book that lingers in the mind after even the slightly frustrated reader has turned the last page.
Anna Carey is a freelance journalist