Rhododendron Pie by Margery Sharp, for Dean Street December

This was a great choice for Dean Street December! Ann Laventie is the youngest of three in an eccentric family in Sussex, beginning with a distinguished father with an independent income from his wife; a mother who was injured in a riding accident and cannot walk; sister Elizabeth, a witty essayist; and Dick, an artist. They are all attractive and intelligent, but Ann’s role seems primarily to admire the others as she does not believe she has any particular skill except observing and appreciating.

The Laventies are self-sufficient: lively guests come to stay but they are just as happy to entertain one another. In contrast, the local doctor’s family, the Gayfords, are perceived unruly and over-eager. They come to birthday parties and invite the Laventies to go on picnics - ‘I suppose we shall have to go?’ Dick had complained, as a child.

The title comes from Ann’s tenth birthday party. Elizabeth had once expressed disappointment that her birthday pie contained cherries instead of flowers, so her indulgent father had commissioned birthday concoctions for the children containing flowers from that day on. But that year when Ann’s pie is full of rhododendron blossoms instead of apples, she is dissatisfied but cannot articulate her feelings to her family. However, that is the first sign that she will not be happy as a merely decorative, albeit brilliant, member of society. She yearns for the more practical, even if her family does not.

Photo by Bill Brandt, 1945

As an adult, Ann has her wake-up moment against her family’s pretensions when she shares a table with some elderly gentlemen at a Lyons café and, listening to their conversation, wonders what they would think of her family:

. . . she was afraid they wouldn’t think much of it. ‘These young ones, they don’t know what things are . . .’

‘But I do!’ thought Ann with sudden confidence. “They’re quite small and ordinary and enormously important, like garden gates.’ She became aware that she was thinking nonsense, but the confidence remained.

Rhododendron Pie is a very entertaining family story with well-drawn characters. Ann is not perfect: she drifts along without pushing back against her supercilious family members and takes her invalid mother for granted (I did too until the mother advised Ann to wear her very best green suit to the village fete) and she barely notices the determined friendship of John Gayford because she has developed a crush on an affected guest from the British film world, Gilbert Croy.

Here is my other favorite quote:

This boredom was indeed the most unpleasant feature of her present mood. For the last month she had imagined herself in love (Ann now recognized it quite clearly for the imagination it was, feeling very old and experienced as she did so) and the pleasant fancy had at least occupied her mind. It had given her something to think about, and though there was theoretically nothing to prevent her going on thinking about Gilbert and his work just as much as before, it was no use denying that the subject had lost much of its charm.

The contrast between the Laventies and the Gayfords makes the story very amusing; it does not take the reader long to prefer the casual but affectionate upheaval at the doctor’s house to the smug superiority of the Laventies. When Ann visits her sister and brother in London, she realizes they are not as happy and fulfilled as they had always seemed to her. As she grows in confidence, despite feeling a bit as if she is betraying her upbringing, she realizes she has to be assertive to choose her own path. However, it is someone unexpected who helps her get there and perhaps that was the best part.

Margery Sharp (1905-1991) was a best-selling British writer, playwright and screenwriter of adult and children's fiction. I hadn’t read any of her books so I thought this, her debut novel, would be a good place to start, and I highly recommend it.   Thanks to Dean Street Press and Furrowed Middlebrow for republishing it!  When my copy took longer to arrive than expected, I checked the library, requested a copy from my local consortium, and was surprised to receive a first edition from Concord, MA with a hopeful "Handle with care, fragile paper & binding" warning.  It is indeed fragile and, now that I have benefited, I may warn them that it should not circulate.

Title: Rhododendron Pie
Author: Margery Sharp
Publication: Dean Street Press, paperback, 2021 (originally published in 1930)
Genre: Fiction
Source: Library