Reading Guides
Days of Grace is a novel that works by counterpoint. Even-numbered chapters are told in the voice of young Nora Lynch, an evacuee from London's poor East End who is sent to live in the relative safety of the English countryside during the Second World War. Odd-numbered chapters take place in twenty-first-century London, narrated by Nora, who is now a widowed, lonely woman dying of cancer. Over the course of their narratives, which often proceed like a psychological thriller, the gap between these two seemingly disparate voices is bridged.
In the opening chapter, twelve-year-old Nora finds herself entering a whole new world, both externally and internally. In the home of her surrogate family, the Rivers, she encounters wealth and stature up close for the first time. Suddenly things as intimately personal as her dress, her table manners and her accent become out of place. Moreover, on the day of her journey she experiences her first menstruation, further disorienting her. Finally, when seeing Grace, the Rivers's daughter of the same age, she feels the first inchoate stirrings of desire. All of these emotions and physical transformations manifest as an aching in her abdomen, which becomes a recurring motif throughout the novel.
The ache in the widowed Nora's stomach is cancer. She is an elderly woman, addicted to painkillers, who has been apparently living alone for some time. Her world of one begins to unravel once she makes eye contact with a pregnant young woman, living in a squalid apartment across the road, ironically named Victory. Curiosity and something more profound forces Nora to look in on the woman, whom she finds at the very moment of labor. The infant, a girl Nora suggests to name Grace, survives and Nora subsequently invites the two of them to stay with her. It's a decision that will awaken long-dormant feelings and conjure the ghosts from her past.
Days of Grace creates and maintains an air of suspense throughout. The secrets of one narrator are often revealed with the help of the other. For instance, in chapter 17, the elderly Nora, worried about the safety of her new guests, spends the day looking for a hiding place for her gun. Why she has a gun and its importance in her past are hinted at immediately in the next chapter, in which the young Nora, then living in London during the Blitz, is given a gun by Grace's nefarious boyfriend, Bernard, to look after his black market goods. The crucial part the gun plays in Nora's life won't be revealed until the penultimate chapter. The gun, as with the knot in Nora's stomach, takes on symbolic meaning in the novel. In chapter 10, Nora, witnessing the innocent dalliance between Grace and a neighboring young boy, seizes the boy's shotgun and fires at a scarecrow in a jealous rage. In a novel about unrequited lesbian love, the Freudian symbolism of the incident is unmistakable.
The "unspeakable" love Nora feels for Grace is the central link between the two narrators. It is the one secret that explains all the other secrets in Nora's life. For many complicated reasons, Nora conceals her true feelings from Grace. In her mind, later in life, this is responsible for a number of tragic outcomes, the death of Grace above all. But keeping secrets has also made Nora expert at detecting them in others. The Rivers house, for example, is a place of tension and undeclared grief. While Grace seems oblivious or unconcerned, Nora slowly gathers evidence until everything about the dark past of the Rivers's marriage is revealed to her by Reverend Rivers in a shocking scene, which generates yet another shameful secret. The Riverses are plagued in part by the couple's refusal to confront a terrible episode in their past and by the festering secrets they keep from each other. Nora's skills of detection are still working when, late in life, she gleans the facts surrounding Rose's pregnancy and of her mother's rejection of the baby. Her dying wish is for Rose to reveal her true feelings to her would-be boyfriend and to her estranged mother. These hard-won lessons about life and love, lessons she never grasped at the Rivers or while living with Grace, are finally learned at the novel's end, in time for her to convey their critical importance to a woman of another, newer generation.
Catherine Hall was born in the Lake District in 1973. Now based in London, she worked in documentary film production before becoming a freelance writer and editor for a range of organizations specializing in human rights and development.
A CONVERSATION WITH CATHERINE HALL
Q. The story of London evacuees during the Second World War is one most American readers may not be familiar with. Could you briefly describe these events?
In the summer of 1939, Britain was preparing for war and London, as its capital, expected to bear the brunt of the bombing. The government urged parents to register their children for an official evacuation scheme, arguing they would be safer and healthier in the countryside.
Operation Pied Piper began on September 1, 1939. In the next four days more than three million people, mostly children of school age but some younger, were sent out of Britain's major cities by train to the countryside. They had luggage labels tied around their necks giving their names and a stamped addressed envelope to send to their parents to tell them where they were. When they arrived they were chosen by host families and taken to live with them.
War was formally announced two days later but the next six months, known as the Phoney War, was surprisingly quiet, and many evacuees returned home. A second wave of evacuation took place in June 1940, when people were moved from the south and east coasts of England because a sea invasion was expected, and further evacuation took place after the 1940 Blitz, when London was bombed for fifty-seven consecutive nights. Returning to the city was not officially approved until June 1945. By then some children had been away from home for almost six years.
The impact of evacuation was enormous, both on the evacuees themselves and on their host families, not to mention the parents who were left behind. Many host families were not prepared for the influx of children from a very different, often very poor background and most evacuees had never been out of London. Some evacuees came to see the war as the best years of their lives, enjoying the freedom of the countryside. Others suffered terrible homesickness, feelings of abandonment and, sometimes, mental or physical abuse at the hands of their hosts. Some of them found it impossible to get over the trauma of separation from their parents, never again managing to form close relationships. Their lives might have been saved, but the psychological damage was enormous.
Q. With its streetwalkers and black marketeers, your portrait of London during the Blitz runs counter to the commonly held picture of a patriotic citizenry banding together in mutual self-sacrifice. Did you deliberately set out to disrupt this comfortable vision of the past?
I don't know how deliberate it was! But I'm generally wary of anything that presents a comfortable vision of a situation-there's usually something else going on behind the scenes. I always remember a poster that a friend had in college with the African proverb "Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter." History has always depended on who's telling the story. So I wanted to delve behind the official history and collective nostalgia that has emerged.
During the Second World War, the British government was extremely good at constructing an image of a people working together for the good of the nation. It was also very good at issuing propaganda leaflets and posters instructing the population to do this, some of which I mention in the book, and some of which are still remembered today, like Careless Talk Costs Lives and Dig for Victory, which have entered the collective consciousness. All governments do this in times of conflict to hold their countries together and strengthen the war effort. But wars are a dirty business and surviving in hard times often means doing things you might not do in ordinary circumstances. When I worked for an international peace-building organization I saw firsthand how, although war can lead to noble acts of courage and self-sacrifice, it also brings out the worst of human nature, such as greed, venality and the willingness to exploit others in order to profit. I wanted to show all of that in the book.
Q. There is a noticeable whiff of nostalgia for independent bookshops and the culture they once supported. This is also found in recent works of American fiction. Could you share your feelings about the demise of this once-beloved institution?
I feel very strongly about it. Independent bookshops have been important to me since I saved up my pocket money as a child to spend in them. Part of it is the thrill of not knowing quite what you're going to find on the shelves, but it's also because, although a bookshop is a shop, it's not simply a profit-making enterprise. There's something else behind it that comes from a belief in the importance of books.
When I step into an independent bookshop, I feel as if I was in the company of kindred spirits. Perhaps that sounds a little overromantic, but it's true! Aged eighteen, I spent awhile at Shakespeare and Company, the higgledy-piggledy bookshop on the side of the River Seine in Paris, owned by George Whitman, an American, who's now in his nineties. You can stay there in exchange for working in the shop for a couple of hours each day. It was all about books, ideas and the people who passed through, some of them staying for a couple of weeks, others for a couple of months. This seemed to me the epitome of what a bookshop should be like.
It's a world away from the bright lights of the big chains that exist to make money. Small bookshops have found it hard to compete with the discounts they're able to offer. In the UK, it's been very difficult since the 1995 collapse of the Net Book Agreement between publishers and booksellers, which set the price at which books were sold to the public. Since then, many have closed and I find that terribly sad. Of course, as a writer, I should be wary of biting the hand that feeds me-those big chains have sold many copies of my book, and I'm grateful-but I'm still saddened at the way they're gobbling up the small independents that I grew up with. The world is becoming a very slick, professional, homogeneous place. I'll always be a fan of the small, the individual and the slightly amateur.
Q. I don't think abortion is as charged a subject for English readers as for Americans but I wonder if you hesitated at all when deciding to include a graphic description of an illegal abortion? Has it stirred up any controversy for you in Britain? Readers on both sides of the debate could take something from your narration. Do you have any opinions about that?
I think you're right-abortion isn't as charged a subject for English readers and so my description of it hasn't stirred up any controversy in the UK. I didn't hesitate when deciding to include the abortion scene because it seemed to fit naturally into the story.
I suppose Days of Grace could be read as a cautionary tale about the perils of abortion gone wrong. But I think it serves better to illustrate one of the book's most important themes-that if you drive things underground, if you make them secret and shameful, they won't go away. They'll continue to go on, but with greater risk and far more harmful consequences. Abortion in the UK was mostly illegal until 1967, and many women died because of the lack of access to proper medical care.
The whole issue of reproduction involves such passionate feelings and emotions. On rereading Days of Grace recently, I realized how strongly it had been informed by my desire to have a child. It was something I hadn't consciously been aware of, so I was surprised to see how much there was in it about children and babies. When, about a year after the book's UK publication, I had a miscarriage, I found it very difficult to understand how anyone could ever choose to get rid of a child, and I found myself questioning my lifelong belief in a woman's right to choose. During my short-lived pregnancy I had felt such a strong bond with my baby, and it was devastating to lose it. But now, I guess I understand even better what a terrible choice it is to have an abortion, and that it's very few women who undertake it lightly. I feel very strongly that it should be available freely and safely to anyone who needs it.
Q. I found Nora's love of Shakespeare interesting in that many of his plays treat unrequited love comically. Did you intend for this to be a comment on Nora's tragic, perhaps excessively, tragic feelings about her prospects for love? In other words, reading Shakespeare should have taught her not to take her situation too seriously.
Well, the plays that treat unrequited love in a comical way usually end up with some kind of resolution, with the lovers united at the end, as in A Midsummer's Night's Dream or As You Like It. But Nora knows that isn't going to happen because Grace is a woman. As she says: "I read all of Shakespeare's plays. From his lovers' speeches, I learned that I wasn't alone. The words were there. But they weren't words that girls said about girls" (page 110). There are lots of cross-dressing heroines in Shakespeare's comedies, with girls pretending to be boys, and with some of the comedy coming from the spectacle of boys' appearing to declare their love for other boys, for example Rosalind dressed as Ganymede chasing Orlando in As You Like It. But it's only when they reveal their true sex that resolution can take place and, ultimately, these unions restore the heterosexual status quo. There's little comfort in that for Nora.
There's plenty of unrequited love that isn't comical, too. I've always found Caliban's love for Miranda monstrous yet moving, and Malvolio in Twelfth Night is a character for whom I have a lot of sympathy. These characters don't end up with the object of their desire, and these are the ones with whom Nora identifies. "And I felt something more, something like King Lear's madness on the Heath, something violent and wild. I was afraid that one day I would be lost, not able to keep myself from touching her. I felt like a monster, like Caliban in love with Miranda, and I knew that no good could ever come of it" (page 110).
Q. As far as we know, Nora never finds true love with another woman. Were you tempted to give Nora another attempt at sexual discovery? Why did you condemn her to a life without erotic love?
I was never tempted to give Nora another attempt at sexual discovery. It just didn't seem to fit with who she has become. I wanted to explore how the shock of unexpected separation, first from her mother, then from Grace, had an impact that would last a lifetime. I also wanted to look at the debilitating effects of shame, how it limits people, stops them from doing what could make them happy and prevents them from reaching their potential. I think Nora's shame at loving Grace (and then at having a hand in her death) stunts her psychologically and emotionally and so she isn't capable of another erotic attachment.
It's interesting that you ask, though. In the original version of the book, Nora lives alone all her life until she takes Rose into her home. But when I was first trying to find a publisher, an editor said she might consider it if I made various changes. She wanted to see that Nora could show some sort of adult capacity for love and asked if she could have been married. To my mind, that wouldn't work because she's a lesbian, but when I thought about it further, I decided that she might have married someone, for security and companionship, as she knew she didn't have a chance of erotic fulfillment, so I married her to Bernard, with whom she experiences a different sort of love. But I made sure that he wasn't capable of having sex. I spared Nora the indignity of that! The editor didn't take the book in the end, but at least I showed my willingness.
Q. Critics in the UK have compared the novel to works by Sarah Waters and Daphne du Maurier. How do you feel about such comparisons? Are there other authors who have exerted greater influence on you?
I'm very flattered as I admire both writers enormously. I first read Daphne du Maurier's novels as a teenager and was captivated by the sense of place and the darkness that hovered just below the surface, not to mention the vaguely lesbian sensibility of her books and indeed of her life. Sarah Waters has completely changed the course of lesbian literature by bringing it into the mainstream with her historical novels and is a master storyteller. But I'm not sure that I really measure up to either of them. Sarah Waters's brilliant Night Watch meant that any novel about lesbian love in wartime London is likely to attract comparison, so deeply flattering as it is, I think it's about theme rather than style or skill. As for Daphne du Maurier, I mention her novel Rebecca in the book, partly as a hint to readers, holding a mirror to the sapphic undercurrents of Mrs Danvers's obsession with the dead Rebecca, and partly because it's a book that would have appealed to someone with Nora's slightly dramatic sensibilities. I suspect that's what inspired the critics to mention her in relation to me.
I have many other influences. I'm especially drawn to modernist writers and their experiments with form and style. Of them, it's Jean Rhys who has inspired and influenced me most, with her novels set in 1920s Paris and London-deceptively simple writing about undistinguished women. Doris Lessing has always moved me with her psychological realism and it's something I've sought to emulate. Jeanette Winterson and Angela Carter changed the way I thought about words and how they could be used to create different realities, although their style is very different to mine. Paul Scott's Staying On is a beautiful portrayal of marriage and old age and one of my inspirations for writing a novel about an elderly woman.
Q. Are you working on a novel now?
Yes. I've just finished the first draft. It's set in the summer heat-wave of 1976 and is the story of what happens when a Cambridge mathematician arrives at a remote village in the English Lake District, takes on a job as a farm laborer and develops a close relationship with the farmer's ten-year-old daughter.
- Discuss the use of the two narrators, young and old Nora. How effective is this device for constructing the narrative? Do they become one character for you by the end of the novel?
- Class is a time-honored theme in English fiction and Days of Grace is no exception. How is this explored in the relationship between Nora and Grace? How are class dynamics changed over the novel's two time frames? Are they changed?
- The lesson Nora learns, ultimately, is that one should not conceal love for another person, regardless of the risk. This is something she begs Rose, her last friend, to understand. With this in mind, how would things have been different if Nora had confessed her feeling to Grace?
- At the very end of the novel, Nora finds herself "weightless" and free of the secrets of her past. She achieves a sense of peace, perhaps even redemption. Does she, in your opinion, redeem herself for the mistakes of the past?
- The novel contains several leitmotifs, rich with symbolism; for example, the gun, the rose, the aching stomach. How do these contribute to the general themes of the novel?
- Nora possesses a fiercely Catholic imagination. Discuss how the Church influences her understanding of her life and the greater world around her. Discuss also the Christian symbolism employed in the novel; that is, Grace as a character's name and as a divine gift.
- Discuss the use of the London Blitz as a setting for the novel. How does it contribute to the novel's themes? Were you surprised at all by the descriptions of London at this time?
- Is Nora, a lesbian at the wrong time, condemned to lead an unhappy life? Is she the victim of historical circumstances? How much is she to blame for her life?
- Describe Nora and David's relationship. He is viewed at first as yet another rival for her companion's affections, but their relationship evolves in a short space of time.
- As in America, the war years provided British women with a modicum of independence. (Notice that Nora works for a munitions factory.) That said, there are many difficulties for a single woman, gay or straight, during this time. Discuss these difficulties as depicted in the novel.
