Review: The Glittering Hour by Iona Grey

 

1925. The war is over and a new generation is coming of age, keen to put the trauma of the previous one behind them. 

Selina Lennox is a Bright Young Thing whose life is dedicated to the pursuit of pleasure; to parties and drinking and staying just the right side of scandal. Lawrence Weston is a struggling artist, desperate to escape the poverty of his upbringing and make something of himself.  When their worlds collide one summer night, neither can resist the thrill of the forbidden, the lure of a love affair that they know cannot possibly last.

But there is a dark side to pleasure and a price to be paid for breaking the rules.  By the end of that summer everything has changed.
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A decade later, nine year old Alice is staying at Blackwood Hall with her distant grandparents, piecing together clues from her mother’s letters to discover the secrets of the past, the truth about the present, and hope for the future. 

REVIEW
The 1920s were a heady mix of champagne and excess. The hemlines got shorter, as did the hair. The world sparkled. The Bright Young Things lived wild and free. But underpinning all of this frivolity was the shadow still cast by the First World War, the memories of the Young Things who never made it. The devastating loss, the families torn apart. It's this juxtaposition that fuels the 'Roaring Twenties' mentality: live life to the fullest while you can - a motto that Selina Lennox swears by in memory of her brother Howard, killed in a shell hole in Passchendaele.

The Glittering Hour is split into two timelines. In 1935 Selina Lennox's nine year old daughter Alice is staying at Blackwood, the family country estate while her parents are away. Ignored by her grandparents with only the servants for company, a series of letters and 'clues' from her mother lead her on a journey into the past. The second narrative follows Selina in the summer of 1925, through London's sparkling party Season and her brief, intense love affair with aspiring photographer Lawrence Weston. It's a heart wrenching tale of love and loss, beautifully written.

From elaborate costume parties to motor car treasure hunts around London, all of the settings are so vividly described that I can still picture them even now. Blackwood is a character in itself, all stuffy rooms and sprawling grounds, and the summer that Selina spends there with Lawrence is presented with such perfect clarity, such attention to detail, that we see it just as she remembers it - preserved forever in time like a series of Lawrence's photographs.

This book has gained a coveted place on the very small list of books that have made me cry. Generally I avoid emotional reads, and I had been forewarned with this one, but I'm so glad that I stuck with it. From the very first page I was transported utterly into Selina's world, and whilst it's no surprise that I preferred the 1920s narrative, those heady, intoxicating days of Selina's youth, the two timelines work perfectly together to convey the whole story - which ultimately belongs to Alice. This is the story of how she came to be, and how she will be - it's her past, her present and her future. And I adored every second of it.