Set in England in the post-World War I era, alternating between the mid-1920s and the mid-1930s, The Glittering Hour tells the story of Selena Lennox Carew, and her ten-year old daughter, Alice. The novel is about profound grief and loss, extraordinary and enduring love, class prejudice, and the reckless, upper class young people who came of age just after the war who lived in the glaring spotlight of the paparazzi. The story has an interesting twist, although an unsurprising one. Overall, an enjoyable escape to another world. ( )

It’s January 1936, and nine-year-old Alice Carew misses her mother terribly. Mama’s away in Burma with Papa, who has mining interests there, and the family’s Wiltshire estate, Blackwood, feels like a prison to Alice. An artistically precocious child with no head for or interest in reading or mathematics, Alice has no allies in the house save her beloved nanny, Polly, who can’t protect her from Grandmama, as starchy and cold an aristocrat as ever graced England’s shores.

The old lady has never liked her grandchild, censors the girl’s letters to her parents, and even denies Alice the colored pencils Mama bought for her. Good grief. Yet despite her grandmother’s and father’s opinion that Alice has a second-rate mind, the girl sees plenty, including their lack of love for her — but not the reason for it. Therein hangs a tale.

However, all this is prologue to Mama’s back story. Selina Carew, née Lennox, was a Bright Young Thing in the Twenties who burned the candle at both ends. With a passion for expensive amusements and a horror of boredom, Selina and her blue-blood friends cut a swath through London at breakneck speed, awash in champagne and jewels, tossing out arch bon mots and trying to decide whether this or that costume party or dance will be too unbearable; really, isn’t there anything better to do? To her family’s horror, the scandal sheets eat this up, from which Selina derives some satisfaction.

Selina’s no airhead (though I reserve judgment on her friends), because if she were, The Glittering Hour would have a flat, spoiled-brat heroine and require a seismic change from her that would strain credulity. Rather, she has deep conflicts from which she’s trying to hide. She represents the upper-class cohort that survived the Great War and who dash from party to party so as to conceal the pain of loss.

But Selina feels it, can’t help it; like so many women of all social classes, she lost a beloved brother at Passchendaele. What’s more, much as it hurts, she refuses to believe that all joy must end, though admittedly, she overdoes it. Worse, none of that may be spoken of.

Selina meets Lawrence Weston, an artist who makes his living painting portraits based on photographs for war-bereaved families, but whose real passion is photography — which few people consider an art form. Little do they know. For extra money, Lawrence takes pictures of the rich and famous making public nuisances of themselves — he knows about Selina Lennox before they meet — but he prefers photographing miners, the men selling matches, whatever social commentary his lens seeks out.

I understand what Grey’s trying to achieve by starting with young Alice, but that approach has its flaws. Though her predicament squeezes my heart, as it’s meant to, that’s not where the richest material lies. I prefer Selina’s inner struggle as a Bright Young Thing and her relationship to Lawrence, which has so many social markers, the pair might even inhale and exhale differently, for all I know.

The class barrier to romance is hardly new, but Grey’s rendering takes on particularity, because she grounds it so thoroughly in active physical detail. It’s not just Lawrence’s shabby clothes or Selina’s accent that set them apart, though those matter and are what onlookers see and hear; it’s how the physical details reveal these two characters’ different worldviews.

On the minus side, the story hinges on two secrets, neither of which is particularly hard to discern, and the narrative has its melodramatic moments, especially toward the end. I wish Grey didn’t resort to telling, rather than showing, emotions in certain key moments— what a shame, for such an astute observer — and the resulting shorthand phrases sometimes go thump. Further, though Grandmama’s portrayal will curdle your blood, she’s that real, Alice’s father seems like a shirt stuffed with papier-mâché.

Even so, The Glittering Hour finds something new to say about the decade after the Great War, and Selina and Lawrence are appealing characters. ( )

Welcome To The Roaring Twenties. As I finish this book a couple of weeks late - yet appropriately just hours before the Roaring Twenties come back - I'm actually thankful I wasn't able to complete it sooner due to various traveling I was doing in the early parts of this month. Because this book is a phenomenal look at the Roaring Twenties, young adult disillusionment in their twenties generally, and the realities we sometimes face in our thirties. But it is also extremely tragic, and without actually giving anything away let's just say be prepared to bawl for the last 100 pages or so of this 400 page book. Truly an excellent work, and very much recommended. ( )

Why is every novel about the 'Bright Young Things' of the 1920s so tediously formulaic? Even injecting a dose of The Secret Garden couldn't save me from the sinking feeling of having read about these characters before. The story was just too drawn out, and the subplots telegraphed far too early, to sustain my early interest.

In a crumbling country pile between the wars, nine year old Alice hides away in the nursery, waiting for letters from her mother, travelling abroad with her father. Alice's only ally is a maid called Polly, who encourages her to write honest letters back to her mother, even offering to send more than the one a week her frosty grandmother will allow her. Alice's mother sends her clues for a treasure hunt, promising to tell her daughter all about her life as a 'bright young thing' ten years earlier, and a very special young man she met over a dead cat one night. Interspersed with the letters, which seemed too flowery and mature for a barely literate nine year old to comprehend, are flashbacks to Alice's mother, Selina, being every inch the cliched cynical flapper in 1925, partying in smudged eye make-up and haring drunkenly round town in motor cars. On one night out, Selina and her friends hit a cat on a street in Bloomsbury, and Selina is devastated. She gets out, nursing the dead animal, and when the approaching police chase the others away, she knocks on the first door she comes to - which is answered by the dashing, talented, self-made, socially conscious artist Lawrence Weston. The rest of the story is easy to predict from that point onwards, really.

I did like the early dialogue, particularly between Selina and her drawling, dissolute friends, but never really understood what made Selina or Lawrence so bloody wonderful, to be honest. She's blonde and buxom, he's her dark-haired bit of rough, who walks around with a bare chest a lot. Nothing outstandingly original. And the supporting characters were also from central casting, from the fascist governess to Lawrence's wealthy bohemian sponsor.

The story should have been emotional, but because the 'twists' were so predictable and the ending impossibly twee, I just couldn't muster the energy, after nearly 500 pages, to force a tear. More of a dull afternoon than the glittering hour. ( )

A beautiful, but sad, romance about being afraid of love due to the loss that comes with it. The Glittering Hour contains its own treasure hunt of adventure and mystery around the lives of Selina, Alice, and Lawrence. It masterfully bounds from character to character, past to present, to keep the reader guessing and immersed in a riveting tale. ( )