The Woods in Winter by Stella Gibbons - #1970Club

So, this week is the week of the 1970 club which is being hosted by Simon at Stuck in a Book and Karen at Kaggsy's Bookish Ramblings.

The idea is to read any book that was published in 1970. (The challenge runs twice a year and a different year is chosen each time.) I usually try to read one book for the event and this year it was The Woods in Winter by Stella Gibbons.

 

It's the 1930s and Ivy Gower cleans house for socialite, Helen Green, for a living and is fairly stoical about her life, although, rather than live in London, she would far rather live in the country. When she gets a letter telling her of an inheritance from her great uncle, she has to take it to Helen to make sense of it because she thinks it might be a scam. But no, Ivy is now the owner of a cottage way out in the Buckinghamshire countryside and wastes no time in quitting her job and moving. Before she goes though she rescues (steals) a badly treated dog from her neighbourhood and foists it onto Helen while she organises her move. 

The cottage, miles up a lonely track, is barely habitable with a hole in its thatched roof and wildlife (mice, pigeons, cockroaches) running amok indoors. Undeterred, Ivy is in her element, she can sleep by the fire with the dog and she certainly doesn't need people to make her life complete. But the locals find her, despite her being so isloated and as anti-social as they come. And Ivy gets a reputation because of her empathy with animals, that of being a bit witchy with gypsy blood, as one of her close ancestors was, in fact, a gypsy. And then her life takes a turn as a 12 year old boy, Mike, turns up on her doorstep and like all her other rescue animals, she takes him in too.

So, this is my first Stella Gibbons it turns out... I thought I'd read one other but when I checked, it was by someone else entirely. Anyway, The Woods in Winter was published in 1970 and has a 1970 element to it towards the end. But the book is about the changing world of the 1930s and the breaking down of class barriers after World War One.

Ivy is the star of the book but others feature too. The Carteret sisters from a well-off family run a tea shop in the village but only want a certain type of clientele and are doing it for a lark. Angela Mordaunt, living with her high maintenance, snooty mother, who secretly wishes she could marry and move out but thinks she's too old and unmarriageable. Helen Green, in love with a bit of a bounder and keeping it a secret from her friends, the Carterets. And the boy, Mike, not terribly communicative but a genius artist in the making. And there're other bit-part players who all come together to make this a fascinating ensemble cast story. 

The sense of place, the cottage on the edge of fields with woods climbing the hills all around, was utterly gorgeous. But already things are changing with talk of developers and that creates a bit of a melancholy feel to the book, it's definitely a 'days gone by' novel. For me, Ivy's story ended rather abruptly. The ending isn't unhappy exactly but I suppose I wanted a bit more from it. I also found Gibbons' depiction of people in general to be a bit too unsympathetic, but that could just be me. In general I enjoyed the book a lot, it's quirky and atmospheric, funny, has a superb sense of place, and definitely appeals to that sense of 'leaving civilisation behind' that a lot of us have... you can keep the mice and the cockroaches though!