Good Reads / Community Library Notes
The Man in the Wooden Hat
Jane Gardam
Review by Priscilla Comen
The Man in the Wooden Hat
Jane Gardam
Review by Priscilla Comen
The Man in the Wooden Hat by Jane Gardam is the second book in her trilogy about Edward Feathers and Betty, and their fifty year marriage. Feather is a successful (wealthy) attorney in London. Betty is an innocent, plain young woman who falls in love with Feathers and agrees to marry him.
But the night before her wedding, she meets Veneering, another lawyer, who seduces her. She has a hot time in bed with him and feels true love has come at last. Yet she promised Feathers she’d never leave him. She runs into Veneering many times during her fifty-year marriage. He reminds her of their night together. She still feels desire, but stays with Feathers. She had wanted ten children but is unable to carry babies full term. She wonders if the one she did conceive was her husband’s or Veneering’s? She loves Veneering’s son Harry, and he wants her for his nanny. He shows up at her house occasionally. She gives him 10,000 pounds without his asking and spends the night at the hospital in his room when he almost loses his leg to amputation.
Feathers travels around Asia and the Hague where Betty goes to museums while Feathers administers a case. He is often away, leaving her alone in her garden. They buy momentous of their trips and decorate their English cottage beautifully. Author Gardam describes this in detail. Their lives become real to the reader and we laugh and cry with them.
Veneering sends Betty a string of real pearls with a diamond clasp. It falls to the ground when she is planting tulips, and she buries it. Does Feathers know about her and Veneering? This is a delightful book and Gardam has twice been awarded the Whitbread Prize for best novel of the year, and many other prizes. Find this on the new fiction shelf of your community library. Book one and three may be there too.
But the night before her wedding, she meets Veneering, another lawyer, who seduces her. She has a hot time in bed with him and feels true love has come at last. Yet she promised Feathers she’d never leave him. She runs into Veneering many times during her fifty-year marriage. He reminds her of their night together. She still feels desire, but stays with Feathers. She had wanted ten children but is unable to carry babies full term. She wonders if the one she did conceive was her husband’s or Veneering’s? She loves Veneering’s son Harry, and he wants her for his nanny. He shows up at her house occasionally. She gives him 10,000 pounds without his asking and spends the night at the hospital in his room when he almost loses his leg to amputation.
Feathers travels around Asia and the Hague where Betty goes to museums while Feathers administers a case. He is often away, leaving her alone in her garden. They buy momentous of their trips and decorate their English cottage beautifully. Author Gardam describes this in detail. Their lives become real to the reader and we laugh and cry with them.
Veneering sends Betty a string of real pearls with a diamond clasp. It falls to the ground when she is planting tulips, and she buries it. Does Feathers know about her and Veneering? This is a delightful book and Gardam has twice been awarded the Whitbread Prize for best novel of the year, and many other prizes. Find this on the new fiction shelf of your community library. Book one and three may be there too.