"A novel that cheers the heart. She writes with a wry sense of the comedy and tragedy of life ..."
Lissa Evans’ Small Bomb at Dimperley is a novel that cheers the heart. She writes with a wry sense of the comedy and tragedy of life, and with a sympathy for her characters, no matter how flawed they prove themselves to be.
I had loved her previous three novels, set between 1918 & 1945: Old Baggage, Crooked Heart and V for Victory. Written with a joyful sense of humour and an awareness of the absurd in life, it is clear that Evans is familiar with these decades. Her earlier historical novel, Their Finest Hour and a Half, is about a young female copy-writer drafted into the Ministry of Information to add a woman’s perspective, and was later made into a film.
This recent novel, Small Bomb at Dimperley, begins in 1945 and deals with a society used to war, to hardship and to bravely making the best (or the most) of it. Now that the Peace has been announced, people are faced by a different world. Do they look to the past, or the future?
The main focus, the fictional Dimperley House, is an almost symbolic place from the past: an Elizabethan manor house in the Buckinghamshire countryside. Past generations had adorned the exterior with architectural whims and stacked the inside with curiosities, including an unseen ghost in a passageway.
Dimperley withstood bombing by passing aircraft, the roughness of army requisitioning and practical neglect as a war-time mother-and-baby home. The house has survived the war, but how, under a new Labour government, will it survive the peace?
Evans fills her novel – and Dimperley - with a rich collection of characters. The imperious Dowager Lady Irene Vere-Thisset has remained in occupation, along with her brother Uncle Alaric, a reclusive archivist and Cedric, her brain-damaged middle son. Also resident is Lady Barbara, the Dowager’s bullied daughter-in-law, along with a few devoted and less devoted servants, an old horse in the stables and the Dowager’s yappy dogs. Adding to the air of irritation are Kitty and Priss, Barbara’s rebellious teenage daughters, appalled by Dimperly’s deprivations after the plenty of childhood years spent in California.
And then it happens: a telegram brings news from the Far East. Handsome Felix, the adored son and heir, was missing but is now definitely dead. Consequently, Valentine, the youngest son, who has served the war years as a lowly army Corporal, is summoned home to become, unwillingly, lord of the manor. He has to face what Felix’s death has brought: a large and long-avoided inheritance tax demand and a storm of financial troubles.
How will the awkward, injured Valentine, known at school as ‘Thicko’ Thisset, manage to deal with all the debts and responsibilities and paperwork? How can he make the money needed to deal with the crisis? Who should he marry for money – and should he? And of course, there are the complications of Felix’s personal legacy.
Dimperley is, at heart, an almost traditionally romantic novel: by chance, dull Uncle Alaric has employed a capable young woman, Mrs Zena Baxter, to assist him in writing his history of the house. For Zena, and her determined two-year-old daughter Allison, Dimperley is a magical place. Zena, who grew up in grim circumstances, is determined to help the house and grounds survive. The novel is as much Zena’s story as it is of the Vere-Thisset family; gently reminding the reader that history belongs to us all. Eventually, when all the alarms and subterfuges are over, the expected ending comes as a satisfying pleasure.
The plot within Small Bomb at Dimperley stretches way beyond the manor gates, offering the reader a wide cast of characters: moneyed middle-classes, salesmen, shopkeepers and delivery drivers; women at home and church fetes, men in pubs and clubs, all the remains of the old class-bound society all struggling to seize a place in this new era.
I felt, as the story grew, that the author was gently honouring the many ordinary people who endured the war years on the home front: those who were ordered about, sometimes with ignorance, and forced to accept all manner of official regulations without being recognised in return. Now, in 1945, as the nation’s public life moves on, their quiet sufferings are ignored and invisible.
But not here, within Lissa Evan’s lovely book. I do recommend this novel: a perfect mix of nostalgia, poignancy, written with humour and for today’s audience. Although the ‘quiet’ might depend on how easily you laugh aloud.
Here is one of the many smaller moments, as Barbara takes the injured Valentine out in the car.
The whole road surface as far as the East Lodge was in a dreadful state and Valentine jammed his good hand against the roof to keep level, as they lurched between the potholes. His sister-in-law steered with immense concentration, her knuckles white, her gaze rigid.
‘When did you learn to drive?’
‘When the chauffeur left. It was just before Dunkirk, I think, and he told everyone he was joining the marines, and then it turned out he was driving a tea van around an airbase in Cheadle.’
Additional News. Doubleday have just published Lissa Evans’ ‘Picnic on Craggy Island: The Surreal Joys of Producing Father Ted’, a slim hardback based on her diary notes and memories as a producer on that famous comedy tv series. It would be interesting to read this alongside episodes of the Father Ted TV series still available on Youtube or other platforms. Lissa Evans’s novels for children include Wed Wabbit and Wished.
Small Bomb at Dimperley is published by Doubleday
Lissa Evans' Old Baggage is reviewed here by Pippa Goodhart
More of Penny's choices:
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
The Secrets of Wishtide by Kate Saunders
Seven Miles of Steel Thistles by Katherine Langrish
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