Review: The Fortnight in September by R.C. Sherriff

I am packing up to head home from my annual summer vacation and I picked up R.C. Sherriff's The Fortnight in September as a final read of the season. It turns out that this gentle look at an ordinary, middle class British family's yearly seaside vacation to the sea was the perfect accompaniment to the end of my own summer, capturing as he does, the anticipation and flurry of getting ready for vacation, the pleasure of the vacation itself, and the melancholy of leaving mixed with the rightness of being once again at home.

Centered on the Stevens family of five, Mr. and Mrs. Stevens, twenty year old Mary, seventeen year old Dick, and ten year old Ernie, this charming novel shows the small pleasures of daily holiday living in a happy, familiar place, bathing in the sea, walking on the boardwalk, playing cricket, flying a kite, and so on. The Stevens go to Bognor Regis every year for two weeks in September. They stay at the same guesthouse and cheerfully follow roughly the same schedule during their time there. There are, of course, small changes each year, like choosing to splurge on renting a bathing hut this year or the increasingly noticeable shabbiness of their chosen guesthouse, but their fondness for the place, loyalty, and pleasant memories of past years keep them coming back, especially this year when there was a question of whether Mary and Dick, both out of school now and working, would join the family again or if they'd go off with their friends. There are no large dramas here, only small ones easily (and for the most part happily) navigated.

The novel is almost entirely character driven with little plot to speak of but it captures the appeal of the familiar, comfortable everyday life in a place the characters love and look forward to all year. The writing is old fashioned (although likely not so when it was published in 1931) and nostalgic feeling, and the story is warm and engaging, following each of the five family members on their own and together, giving the reader more insight into each of their thoughts and hopes both on vacation and in their usual life. It's a slow, quiet novel of annual rituals and small, contained pleasures that makes for an enjoyable reading experience.