The Light Years and Marking Time: volumes 1 and 2 of the Cazalet Chronicles by Elizabeth Jane Howard

I’ve read these before – but from the library. And in the spirit of re-reading several series of books (another Covid iso-project) I’ve managed to purchase five of the seven and am waiting on the last two to come over the seas from wherever it is they come from. How I am enjoying these books! They’re not all that old - 1990s I think - but they are set just before and during WWII as the extended Cazalet family retreats to their parents’ English country estate. I find the stories compelling: gossipy, soap operatic, domestically detailed and set in a period that I find fascinating. I love the way subjects that would have been taboo then – abortion, homosexuality, attitudes to sex, affairs, feminism, the class system, incest, pacifism – are all part of the scope of these books. It’s almost forensic! In the first one, it’s before the war and we’re getting to know the characters and their murky secrets; by the second one we’re in the early years of the war with all its privations and losses. The characters have developed and we have firmly established favourites. There’s nothing more to say about the plot than and then this happened, and then that … it’s all about the people. I wonder whether these books are ‘guilty secret’ reading because they’re not great literature – but they certainly allow you to escape from the mundane reality of Covid19!