The Fortnight in September

The Fortnight in September by R. C. Sherriff

Fiction

2021 Scribner (first published in 1931)

Finished on October 1, 2022

Rating: 2/5 (Fair)

Publisher's Blurb:

Meet the Stevens family as they prepare to embark on their annual holiday to the coast of England. Mr. and Mrs. Stevens first made the trip to Bognor Regis on their honeymoon, and the tradition has continued every September since. They follow the same carefully honed schedule--now accompanied by their three children, twenty-year-old Mary, seventeen-year-old Dick, and little brother Ernie.

Arriving in Bognor, they check in at Seaview, the guesthouse where they always stay. It's a bit shabbier than it once was--the landlord died and his wife is struggling as the number of guests dwindles. But the family finds bliss in booking a slightly bigger cabana (with a balcony!) and in their rediscover of familiar, beloved sights. 

Mr. Stevens takes long walks, reflecting on his life, his worries and disappointments, and returns refreshed. Mrs. Stevens treasures an hour spent sitting alone with her medicinal glass of port. Mary has her first taste of romance. And Dick pulls himself out of the malaise he's sunk into since graduation, resolving to work towards a new career. The family savors every moment of their holiday, keenly aware that things may not be the same next year.

Delightfully nostalgic, The Fortnight in September is an extraordinary novel about ordinary people enjoying simple pleasures.

The Fortnight in September embodies the kind of mundane normality the men in the dug-out longed for – domestic life at 22 Corunna Road in Dulwich, the train journey via Clapham Junction to the south coast, the two weeks living in lodgings and going to the beach every day. The family’s only regret is leaving their garden where, we can imagine, because it is September the dahlias are at their fiery best: as they flash past in the train they get a glimpse of their back garden, where ‘a shaft of sunlight fell through the side passage and lit up the clump of white asters by the apple tree.’ This was what the First World War soldiers longed for; this, he imagined, was what he was fighting for and would return to (as in fact Sherriff did).

He had had the idea for his novel at Bognor Regis: watching the crowds go by, and wondering what their lives were like at home, he ‘began to feel the itch to take one of those families at random and build up an imaginary story of their annual holiday by the sea...I wanted to write about simple, uncomplicated people doing normal things.’

The Fortnight in September was my final selection for the 20 Books in Summer reading challenge. I thought it was a perfect choice given that I started reading it in September while on our road trip. Unfortunately, the combination of a lackluster story and the distraction of exploring Glacier National Park made for a disappointing read. The writing (particularly the dialogue) is  often simplistic, which the author admits to in his autobiography (a portion of which is included at the end of the novel). 

I told myself all along that I was writing for my eyes alone, without the least intention of showing it to a publisher. If I'd had any thoughts of that I shouldn't have enjoyed writing it so much. But when it was finished I couldn't help wanting to show it to somebody to find out what they thought of it. When I read it through it seemed as if it was written in children's language, but off the beam for children. If was no good offering it as a children's book, but I couldn't think what sort of grown-up people would swallow it.

I didn't care for any of the characters and felt that Mr. Stevens was vain and self-centered. I would have liked to have learned more about Mrs. Stevens whose personality we are only given a vague impression. As others have remarked, this is a quiet book with not much in the way of action, and I must admit that I was bored, only reading to the very end on the chance that something momentous occurs.