British short story writer Julia Gregson was a new one on me. I traded a Kate Morton novel for East Of The Sun with an English ex-pat I met whilst holidaying in Spain this year. A wonderfully elegant elderly lady who was probably born about a decade after the novel was set so I can see why it would have appealed to her. I enjoy historical fiction but I’m not usually one for chic-lit type novels so I had a hard time finding anything of interest in the first half. The upmarket text and well-to-do characters gave this story some kind of superiority complex that I normally wouldn’t bother trying to work out but I was feeling competitive. The story sees three young women embark on a trip to India aboard the Kaisar-I-Hind. It’s 1928 and the Indian subcontinent is under the rule of the British Empire. Viva, the chaperone, is heading back to Simla to uncover some unanswered questions about her past; Rose is marrying Jack, a cavalry officer she barely knows and her bridesmaid Tor is hoping to find a suitable husband of her own. There’s also another charge, Guy Glover, whom I’d nearly forgotten about because I don’t really get what his role in the novel is. Anyway he’s dodgy and causes more than a few problems for Viva. Each female character grows, not only as women but as human beings.
Although the novel is tedious and quite labour intensive at times, Gregson does have a nice writing style with striking descriptions of the Indian landscape, it’s people, food, colours and smells, sunsets like apricots and peaches, it’s all very eloquent. Everything both kicks off and resolves itself in the last quarter, getting there is the challenge. I warmed to every character in the end except Viva, I just couldn’t buy into her at all and her hasty transformation after Simla seemed a little contrived.
I’m not sure if it’s for the characters sake or for mine but I’m glad things worked out in the end.