The Matchmaker by Stella Gibbons (Vintage, 2012; originally published by Longmans, Green & Co. in 1949)

 

The Matchmaker is set in the English countryside somewhere between London and Brighton directly after the end of WWII.  The war is, in fact, still very much a part of daily life -- food and clothes are rationed, Italian prisoners remain in local camps, and Ronald -- or is it Reginald? -- our interesting heroine's husband, is still posted in Germany.

Alda is our interesting heroine.  She and her three young daughters have come to live in Pine Cottage, a ramshackle and unpleasant house, since their home in Ironborough was bombed.  Alda is beautiful, confident, sensible, impatient, and bossy.  Her considerable charm has a selfish edge that can be cutting.  She and her daughters are soon joined at Pine Cottage by Alda's childhood friend Jean, who is sweet and pretty and dim and wealthy, having inherited her father's successful business.  She has never been able to finalize any of the romances she naively pursues, so Alda decides she should marry Mr. Waite, a handsome but somewhat ornery local chicken farmer.  Meanwhile at the nearby farm, a romance develops, abetted by Alda, between Fabrio, a handsome Italian POW and Sylvia, a charming but brazen Land Girl from London.

These two romances develop over the course of a year, and many members of the local farming community play a part in the intertwined plots.  Gibbons, by paying somewhat exhaustive attention to weather, light, flora and fauna, paints a very vivid portrait of this rural and seasonal world, and her gentle exploration of character is generous and shrewd.    Alda, whose beauty and vivacity initially enchants the reader, is gradually revealed to be a smug and shallow person, and Fabrio, who is cruelly jilted by Sylvia, is revealed to be the true hero of the book.  A final chapter in which he returns home to Italy and his true love is moving and delightful.

A warm, generous, deceptively complex book.