On 8 May 1945, eleven-year-old Mary Clarke sits with her family to listen to Winston Churchill proclaiming Victory in Europe. She lives in Bournville, midlands home of the Cadbury chocolate factory where many of family work. The snapshot of the day gives a flavour of the times and introduces the family whose life will be followed over the next eight decades.
Not so much followed as periodically visited to join them on a further six days of national celebration or significance: the 1953 coronation of Queen Elizabeth II; the 1966 World Cup final; the investiture in 1969 of the Prince of Wales, his wedding in 1981 to Diana, and her funeral in 1997; ending with the COVID-laden 75th anniversary of that VE Day in 2020.
The theme, of course, is change. Change in society, its material context and more importantly its attitudes. But through all that change the thread of family runs strong even when events and differences stretch relationships to breaking point.
Coe’s prose is easy
on the eye but very effective in getting over the subtleties of relationships
and developing characters whom we see born, grow, age, and die as the
generations pass. Bournville remains the spiritual home to the family and the
book ends there as it started, fittingly and quite movingly, with Mary, now 86,
socially distancing and reduced to communicating with her family via Skype.
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