A long-time favorite. The pair of books comprising "The Avenue" is the story of a British community, focusing on four of its families. THE DREAMING SUBURB runs from the end of WWI until Britain began to fight WWII. Delderfield had a wonderful ability to create humanity and endow them with engaging lives: Jim Carver and his seven children with their very different but freewheeling personalities. The crushed Frith family, living in terror of Mrs. Frith until their dramatic escapes. Edith Clegg, mothering her mentally damaged sister and their lodgers. Esme Fraser and his charming, helpless mother, who had been widowed by WWI. The interactions between the people of these families are a pleasure to reread over and over.
A great story this. It deals with what is essentially one long street and the people who lived there between 1919 and 1940. This is one overriding narrative - esentially the passage of time and how things changed between the wars but each character has their own little story and each is allowed to develop. Each chapter deals with a different inhabitant of the street, although some are dealt with to a greater degree than others but these are now 2 dimensional characters. Where Delderfield's skill lies I feel is that all of his characters are ordinary people, the type of people that you would have seen in any street in Britain and the time and how they were affected by their times.
