No Fond Return of Love

​I’ve been endeavouring to try and read older books in between recent releases and this Virago reprint of a 1961 classic drew my attention.
 
Dulcie Mainwaring has been dropped by her fiancé Maurice and decides on attending a conference of editors and indexers as a way to distract her thoughts. There, she meets the abrasive indexer, Viola Dace, who seems to have some kind of romantic connection to the middle-aged, handsome (and married) editor, Aylwin Forbes.
 
Dulcie is intrigued by the alleged relationship and embarks on a private investigation into the lives of Aylwin, his estranged wife, Marjorie, and troubled clergyman brother, Neville. This borderline obsessiveness is further complicated by Viola having to move in with Dulcie who is also accommodating her attractive teenage niece Laurel, who draws the eye of the much older Aylwin.
 
Various other characters are woven into the story that grows increasingly complex with both Dulcie and Viola embarking on skulduggery and contrived encounters with do-gooders, erratic family members, fussy housekeepers or “dailies”, a male florist and a kilt-wearing Brazilian. Perhaps it’s odd that two women who aren’t particularly nice to one another should end up living together, but this is an aboveboard platonic relationship of convenience.
 
In reviewing this novel through modern eyes, the machinations of Dulcie might well fall into the category of stalking, even if there is no menace in her actions. She doesn’t interfere; it’s more that her vicarious pleasure in these other lives helps her get over her own unsatisfactory romance. Some readers might see Aylwin’s interest in Laurel as prurient or distasteful, even if there is no overt physicality and it remains quite innocent.
 
As to its structure, the novel has a ridiculous number of accidental meetings and immediate friendships that border on the absurd. The abrupt and dizzying switches in points of view, often several within paragraphs and chapters, are also disconcerting to anyone who prefers clearly marked delineation between the thought processes or actions of individuals.
 
This novel does offer a reflection of how people behaved in a gentler, more mannered, age that was destined to disappear within half-a-dozen years of this book’s publication and with the revolutionary Swinging Sixties. As a result, it is rather dated, and uninitiated readers may struggle to identify with Dulcie’s concerns and actions, or simply find it a bore.

Three stars

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Virago (and for other titles by Barbara Pym)

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