His personality was so strong that it might swamp me. I knew that if I married Simon I should have to fight hard for my work and my individuality. I wanted to get away from this cool stranger who was threatening the neat little plan of my life. Nevertheless, the passion she feels for him proves hard to resist… Simon has the potential to disrupt her life, forcing her to compromise on the one she has mapped out for herself – that of a writer with a promising career to look forward to. Right from the very start, Nevis knows that this will be more than just a casual meeting at a party.
Their attraction to one another is powerful, immediate and largely emotional. One weekend, while visiting friends in Burnham Beeches, Nevis meets Simon Quinn, an attractive, forceful young man who works in the city. The novel’s narrator is Nevis Falconer, a promising young author with a successful debut novel to her name. It’s an excellent book, one that brilliantly captures the tension arising from a writer’s desire to pursue her craft during the early years of marriage.
Much of her early work has been out of print for several years but in March, just as the lockdown was kicking in, The British Library reissued one of the early novels, My Husband Simon (1931), as part of their new Women Writers series. The novel was by Mollie Panter-Downes, an English writer who also acted as The New Yorker’s England correspondent/columnist for the duration of the war. A few years ago, I read and loved One Fine Day (1947), a beautifully-written novel about class, social change and the need to find new ways to live in the years following WW2.
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