Our dance with life is encapsulated here within the framework of an annual family vacation in the early 20th century at the English Seaside. There’s nothing like tradition to measure the passage of time, both reliable in its regularity and separate enough from the daily grind to compare the choices we’ve made with what lies ahead. There’s also the ritual itself in all of its ceremony, and how we improve our preparation and navigation of it each time. This story moves us into those moments when we teeter on that line between the desire for known comforts and for that of something new. Since it is the father, Mr. Stevens, who is central, it is in his middle-aged rhythm with its small shifts that we mostly experience our read. The journeys of the two eldest children come later, breaking the rhythm and sweeping us into more dramatic change. But even those are the ordinary dramas of first times.

Sommige recensenten spraken over kneuterigheid en ik begrijp dat wel, maar ik vond er niets kneuterig aan. Dat was gewoon zo. Gewone mensen hadden niet meer, kenden geen grote luxe en er was nog veel sociale controle zodat de mening van anderen wel vaak een rol speelde, zoals bij Ernest Stevens ook het geval was. Sherriff wrote his first play to help Kingston Rowing Club raise money to buy a new boat. [13] His seventh play, Journey's End, was written in 1928 and published in 1929 and was based on his experiences in the war. [3] It was given a single Sunday performance, on 9 December 1928, by the Incorporated Stage Society at the Apollo Theatre, directed by James Whale and with the 21-year-old Laurence Olivier in the lead role. [14] In the audience was Maurice Browne who produced it at the Savoy Theatre where it was performed for two years from 1929. [15] The play was hugely successful and there was wide press coverage which reveals how audience responses provoked by this play shaped understanding of the First World War in the interwar years. [16] Novelist [ edit ] We are being recommended to read long books, or comfort reads, or books about restrictions and the plague, or books that offer escapism. But we may not want this. What everyone seems to agree on is that readers are reading more, and readers have more time for more reading. But I don’t want to work through a list of long books I’ve been meaning to read forever; I don’t want books to cheer me up; or to match any low mood; or books that pander to a reduced ability to concentrate.At the end of the book, an author’s note providing insight into his writing process came as a surprise topping to this reading experience. It felt like the vacation in the novel was also a metaphor for the process of creating this story. The man on his holidays becomes the man he might have been, the man he could have been, had things worked out a little differently. All men are equal on their holidays: all are free to dream their castles without thought of expense, or skill of architect. Dreams based upon such delicate fabric must be nursed with reverence and held away from the crude light of tomorrow week. En het is net die bijna lethargische, maar heerlijk geformuleerde traagheid die je - hoe je ook tegenstribbelt - uiteindelijk tòch het boek in zuigt. The road to Journey's End...A Hitch in the Proceedings and other early plays by R C Sherriff". Exploring Surrey's Past. 21 November 2014.

Journey's End - the 2007 Broadway revival won the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Revival of a Play

R.C. Sherriff

For the first 22 years of my marriage—we never missed a year of going to the same destination—Calistoga.. Again Mrs. Stevens peered out. If only the rain would stop! The whole holiday would be damped if they were cheated out of this first evening—sweet because it was stolen: because it was not, officially, a part of the holiday at all. But the journey was worst of all; for although the burden should have grown lighter as the children grew up—she had never conquered her dread of Clapham Junction, where they always had to change. Well, this was delightful! The beautiful cover is what made me stop and read the summary of this book. I didn't realize when I requested it that itnwas a re-release from 1931, but once I did I felt that almost added an extra charm to it. Kind of like the feeling I get when I watch Downton Abbey. Things are very much different, but then some things are still exactly the same. Human beings worry about what we are wearing, what we are going to have for dinner, about our jobs and our families...so I thought why not? Let's see what life was like for the Stevens family as they prepare for their two week vacation (annual holiday) to Bognor in September.

The foreword to this book is an excerpt from R.C. Sherriff's autobiography, wherein he discusses how he wrote The Fortnight in September. He had had a marvelous success as a playwright with Journey's End: Play, but then he had an idea which he could only turn into a novel: the simple story of a family on their annual seaside ho To readers who prefer stories containing action and adventure as well as a few dramas, that summary of R C Sherriff’s novel will probably sound as exciting as reading a railway timetable.Consider the theme of anticipation in the novel. How does it influence the Stevenses’ enjoyment of their holiday? Discuss the following passage that comes shortly after their arrival at Seaview: “With a touch of panic you wonder whether the holiday, after all, is only a dull anti-climax to the journey” (p. 100). Have you experienced a similar emotion upon reaching at a highly anticipated moment? She had never conquered her fear. It frightened her most when it was dead calm. Something within her shuddered at the great smooth, slimy surface, stretching into a nothingness that made her giddy. I thought we were never going to reach our destination, but of course we got there in the end. Bognor! It’s a tender portrait that gives the novel a slight touch of melancholy. Yet it isn’t a sad story; this is a family who enjoy each other’s company and take pleasure in small rituals. By the end of the book we do get a sense that their fortnight in Bognor has brought about subtle changes in their attitudes and their lives but nothing of such significance that it will prevent them returning to Bognor next year. An absolute delight from start to finish. Sherriff’s tender observations of the family dynamics, and the simple joy each of them takes in the highlight of their year, prove him to be an unrivaled master of the quotidian. . . . The novel exerts a spell, one that leaves us hanging on these characters’ every word." — The Paris Review

Mrs. Stevens almost gives up her annual bottle of port citing its expense, but Mr. Stevens insists she buy it, and she relieves her conscience by considering how it was recommended by her doctor as medicinal. Later in the novel, we learn that the hour she spends drinking it alone each night is the one part of the holiday she truly enjoys. Why do you think she feels obligated to justify this small pleasure? How have traditional roles for wives and mothers shaped her sense of duty to prioritize her family’s happiness over her own? To what extent do these gendered pressures exist today? The Fortnight in September opens on the evening before the family departs, at their house in the South London suburb of Dulwich, where Mrs. Stevens, who has lived there all twenty years of her married life, awaits the return of her husband and two eldest children for supper. To begin the story here, on this night of family celebration—second only, in their eyes, to the excited anticipation of Christmas Eve—is a small stroke of genius. For the Stevenses, this evening, pregnant with expectation, sometimes feels like “the best of all the holiday, although it was spent at home and the sea was still sixty miles away.”Stevens and his children loved the sea in all its moods: they loved it when it lay quietly at its ebb, murmuring in its sleep—and when it awoke, and came rippling over the sands: at its full on a peaceful evening, lazily slapping at the shingle. But best of all they loved it as it was today—roaring wildly round the groins, booming and sighing in the cavernous places beneath the pier, crashing against the seawall and showering them with spray. Every one of its thousand calls had a different note—every sound was wild with freedom." But the house had been well done up and was scrupulously clean. The Stevenses had returned the following year, and they had returned ever since, for twenty Septembers, wet and fine, hot and cold. Search Reading Matters Search for: Archives Archives Categories Categories Tags #TBR21 1001 Books to read before you die American literature ANZ lit Australian crime Australian literature Australian women writers AWW2016 AWW2019 AWW2021 BAME writer Book lists British literature Canadian literature CanLit Charlotte Wood cold crime crime crime fiction Dublin French literature Giller Prize Irish literature Italian literature Japanese literature journalism London marriage memoir narrative non-fiction New York non-fiction novella OzLit psychological thriller Reading Australia 2016 religion satire Shadow Giller short stories Six degrees of separation Southern Cross crime TBR40 translated fiction travel Triple Choice Tuesday true crime William Trevor women in translation World War Two Follow Reading Matters on WordPress.com Follow on Facebook