Set mainly in England, Dear Evelyn is about a man Harry Miles and his two greatest loves--Evelyn (Hill) Miles and poetry.
"More than anything, he was a husband." (p. 242)
From an Independent Bookstore in
2018
Rogers Writers' Trust of Canada Prize winner
305 pages
Born shortly after the First World War, Harry is the second son of Albert and Adeline Miles.
Adeline tells baby Harry: "'You're a good listener. You'll be good to your wife. You'll know what she wants.'" (p. 16)
Harry credits winning a scholarship to a prestigious school to changing his life.
In Mr. Whitehorse's classroom, thirteen-year-old Harry is introduced to a life-long passion and constant companion--poetry.
Six years later, when Harry is nineteen, he meets Evelyn Hill in the library. She drops the novel she's reading Rebecca and he stoops to pick it up.
"'Evelyn! The sound of the word, the feeling of it in his mouth was almost a kiss.'" (p. 47)
Harry and Evelyn fall in love and remain together through the horrors of war, through the pleasures and challenges of raising a family, through... Until...
I was charmed by Harry and Evelyn's old-fashioned courtship. But I believe Dear Evelyn would have benefitted if more attention had been paid to transitions. For example, Harry and Evelyn are newlyweds and then suddenly become a family of three. No mention is made of Evelyn's pregnancy or the child's birth. Blink and the baby was there. Salt Spring Island resident, author Kathy Page is gifted at depicting characters at different stages in their life. And... And the end... Wow! I know it will remain with me for a while.
'I, a slow reader, will never get to all the words I long to read, but I will relish the onces before me' -from an article--Slow Readers, Let's Leave Shame Behind--by Cristi Donasa
On this blog in February...
Sharing my author journey...
In the Acknowledgements, Kathy Page writes: "I am particularly grateful to my father for
his letters to my mother during the Second World War and its aftermath, and to my mother for keeping them... [S]ome of these letters of my father's, used with his permission, form an important part of the narrative. They appear sometimes verbatim and at other times edited, recombined and in other ways altered. In some places, I intersperse original letters with entirely fictional letters written n a similar style. My father is, then, the posthumous co-author of some parts of this book."
I found these words validating because I am attempting to do something similar in a manuscript I'm currently working on.
