Novella a Day in May 2025: No.18

/ madamebibilophile

Across the Common – Elizabeth Berridge (1964) 186 pages

Back in 2023, I started off Novella a Day in May with Elizabeth Berridge’s The Story of Stanley Brent. I ended the post by saying I had Across the Common in the TBR and maybe I’d get to it later in the month 😀 Just two short years later…

Across the Common is told from the point of view of Louisa as she returns to her suburban childhood home, after leaving her artist husband Max.

“My grandfather had built the house in the eighties. It was tall and big and excelled in useless crenellations; in the front an immense stretch of holly hedge gave the house its name.”

Her two aunts, Seraphina and Rosa, still live in this Gothic pile and they are soon to be joined by Aunt Cissie:

“Since the war, which had robbed her of her second husband and her only son, something had shifted in her. A new, unbalanced cynicism revealed itself by a sarcastic twist of the mouth, a semiquaver of a shrug.”

Quite a contrast to Aunt Seraphina:

“it was all in her sigh: her lost opportunities for adventure, for love, for self-expression. She was more of a child than I had ever been, and I loved her again for her wild and illogical longings, her aching desire for drama.”

They live in an insular world. Cissie had left, so her worldliness means she wants a television on her return, but otherwise the aunts are preserved in a world long gone. The Hollies has always existed as a refuge for the women in the family, such as Louisa’s grandmother:

“She had merely withdrawn into the world of The Hollies, where unpleasant things like passion and unworthy emotions and reality were kept out by the high walls, lapped by the half tamed acres of the common.”

Louisa initially returned to her aunts for their familiarity and the need she feels to unravel who she is, based on experiences in her past which led to her leaving:

“I only wanted to remember it in order to remember something else, like turning the cut-glass top of a decanter bottle in the sun, to catch the sudden prismatic dazzle. This something lay with the aunts; it was an unease that spoiled relationships, a strange Braithwaite ambiance that lay like fallout over the family.”

However, she begins to realise that her past may be more complex than she realised, and there are secrets within the family to understand. The Gothic atmosphere is heightened when a solicitor passes on a sinister warning in a letter from her long-deceased father:

“Don’t, for your own sake, be misled by the cultivated exteriors of your aunts. They can smother, they can crush, they can exterminate.”

There’s also the fact that Louisa’s aunts are among the few people her husband struggles to tolerate:

“It was the Braithwaites, my mother’s family, who came outside Max’s indulgence. They filled him with a kind of detached horror. He was ruthless about them. Is ruthless. For he blames them for everything awry in me.”

Yet they are never caricatures of eccentric older women, but carefully drawn and fully realised. All three aunts were fabulous creations.

Berridge builds an atmosphere that feels both stifling and menacing, without being overtly threatening or devoid of love. There is humour here too, and I particularly enjoyed Aunt Seraphina’s habit of pilfering plant cuttings from Regent’s Park.

The Big Family Mystery is believable, providing enough plot to draw the story along, with Louisa’s growing understanding of her family history and herself being well-paced.

I have another Berridge in the TBR so hopefully it won’t take me two more years to get to it! She is so accomplished and her idiosyncratic characterisation is a joy.

“The Braithwaite way of life was a kind of anarchy that could scarcely be contained within one house.”

22 thoughts on “Novella a Day in May 2025: No.18”

  1. I’m all admiration at your keeping up the pace (and — I’m enjoying the reviews!) I’ve actually read this one, about the time that you were reading Stanley Brent. Your review very much reflects my own experience of the novel: very atmospheric (a plus for me); sharply observed; some humor (like you, I loved pilfering old Aunt Seraphina) and (just) enough of a plot to move the story along, albeit a bit slowly. Despite a little mini-boom on the blogs, Berridge seems to have somewhat fallen through the cracks and I really wonder why. I don’t think she’s a great writer, by any means, but she’s definitely worth reading; she’s entertaining without being junk, if you know what I mean. I wonder if, perhaps, there was a marketing/category problem with her work? My own copy of Across the Common is a very old mass market paperback, with a rather lurid cover, and a blurb from a defunct publisher indicating it was part of its “gilt-edge Gothic series,” whatever that was! Common is, IMO definitely not a Gothic; it reminds me more of a Barbara Pym type novel of everyday life/relationships. Like you, I’ve always meant to read another Berridge novel or two; in addition to Stanley Brent, I have one called Touch and Go. Neither is published by Abacus, a publisher I’ll have to check out.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • I do enjoy the challenge although every time I wonder what I’ve taken on! I feel like I’m flagging a bit at the moment but I’m sure I’ll pick up again.

      I agree she does seem to be under the radar somewhat. But as well as Michael Walmer issuing Stanley Brent, the British Library Women Writers series has reissued Sing Me Who You Are and Persephone have published Tell It to a Stranger, her short stories, so maybe these will gradually lead to more attention!

      My Abacus copies are quite old, but I’m fond of them as I think Reg Cartwright art work suits her. I think they only published three by her (Sing Me Who You Are and Rose Under Glass are the other two) but I could be wrong about that.

      Gothic is the wrong category – I can see why the publishers might push that aspect, but anyone reading this for a full-blown Gothic novel would be disappointed.

      I hope you enjoy Touch and Go when you get to it 🙂

      Like

      Reply

  5. You’re on a roll this weekend – this one sounds interesting too! Having a gothic pile in the family for women to retreat to in times of need sounds like a wonderful idea. I wonder if we could get the government to adopt it as policy… 😉

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  8. I didn’t love this one as much as I’d hoped – I wish she were a bit more eccentric in her style, as well as her characters – but maybe I should reread.

    You’re doing much better than me at keeping up to speed with reviews! I’m bundling mine together shamelessly…

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • Sorry this one didn’t quite work for you, although I do see your point that she could have pushed it further. Or sometimes it’s just not the right time for a particular read.

      I’m definitely flagging a bit Simon! There may well be some bundling if I don’t pick up a bit 😁

      Like

      Reply

  9. I hadn’t come across Berridge before, I’ll add her to my list of authors to discover because this sounds great, just the idea of a pile of aunts living in gothic suburbia and ready to take in family females is wonderful!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  10. Lovely review, Madame Bibi. I enjoyed the humour in this one, too. Out of interest, are you reading and writing about these novels as you go along? If so, that’s hugely impressive! My average run rate is around 6 novels a month, so circa. 30 is well beyond my reach!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • Thanks Jacqui, good to hear you enjoyed this too!

      I always give myself a head start, then carry on through the month. I’m currently flagging somewhat but hanging in there! Simon reads and reviews his Book a Day in May as he goes, which is hugely impressive!

      Like

      Reply

  11. That description of the shrug is perfect. And, hey, two years isn’t that long against the backdrop of the scale of your book collection. I would celebrate that (and the upcoming two-year-wait for the next hee hee)!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.