The Fortnight in September

Product Information

They had reached the strange, disturbing little moment that comes in every holiday: the moment when suddenly the tense excitement of the journey collapses and fizzles out, and you are left, vaguely wondering what you are going to do, and how you are going to start. With a touch of panic you wonder whether the holiday, after all, is only a dull anti-climax to the journey. This novel is elegant. The sentences are beautiful in their precision, and often filled with wisdom. The atmosphere goes from a fresh filling of lungs, to a dusty, peeling interior in which a middle-class family has lived good days. The action is to forge onward and create these good days again, despite erosion, or a drifting away. It is a celebration of life, this novel, in all of its ordinariness. The Fortnight In September. The two weeks when the Stevens family left their South London home for their annual holiday, by the sea in Bognor.

An absolute delight from start to finish. Sherriff’s tender observations of the family dynamics, and the simple joy each of them takes in the highlight of their year, prove him to be an unrivaled master of the quotidian. . . . The novel exerts a spell, one that leaves us hanging on these characters’ every word." — The Paris Review Our dance with life is encapsulated here within the framework of an annual family vacation in the early 20th century at the English Seaside. There’s nothing like tradition to measure the passage of time, both reliable in its regularity and separate enough from the daily grind to compare the choices we’ve made with what lies ahead. There’s also the ritual itself in all of its ceremony, and how we improve our preparation and navigation of it each time. This story moves us into those moments when we teeter on that line between the desire for known comforts and for that of something new. Since it is the father, Mr. Stevens, who is central, it is in his middle-aged rhythm with its small shifts that we mostly experience our read. The journeys of the two eldest children come later, breaking the rhythm and sweeping us into more dramatic change. But even those are the ordinary dramas of first times. Mary fell in love. And Mrs Stevens broke with convention to sit down with he landlady, to offer a sympathetic ear when she spoke of her concerns about the future.

Customer reviews

One of the joys of reading The Fortnight in September is how R C Sherriff reveals the inner lives of each member of the family; their private regrets and desires for their lives to be different. After recovering from his wounds, Sherriff worked as an insurance adjuster from 1918 to 1928 at Sun Insurance Company, London. [9]

They had answered an advertisement, and discovered Mr. and Mrs. Huggett to be a strangely assorted couple. Mr. Huggett was stout and jovial. He had been a valet to a man who left him some money, and he had bought Seaview. He was easygoing, slightly patronising, and drank. Mrs. Huggett was thin, and anxious to please to the point of embarrassment. They had a small servant girl called Molly, who, being squat, bow-legged, and red-haired, had remained with them faithfully throughout the years.Goodbye, Mr. Chips – which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay along with his co-writers Claudine West, Eric Maschwitz

Arriving in Bognor, they head to Seaview, the guesthouse where they stay every year. It’s a bit shabbier than it once was - the landlord has died and his wife is struggling as the number of guests dwindles every year. But the family finds bliss in booking a slightly bigger cabana, with a balcony, and in their rediscovery of the familiar places they visit every year. P.S. This was a buddy read with Jennifer and Candi. Their heartfelt, thoughtful comments and the comfort of simultaneously reading this with them only enhanced the experience.

Scrabble Tools

He had the journey organised too. There was luggage to be sent on. Connections to organise. A compartment to secure. And familiar sights – including their own street – to watched out for. So far, so good. I’m with him all the way. But then he just can’t resist adding: “That is why each of my blossomings is a harvest for all mankind.” This is not autobiographical literature that has anything to do with suffering or self-help. Dalí presents himself as being way past needing help. He is delighted to be marooned in his own narcissism. David Peace