“I like what’s uncertain - what’s imperfect. I like what - what breaks out behind the features and is suddenly there and gone again.”
The Weather in the Streets by, Rosamond Lehmann is a novel about an adulterous relationship between Olivia Curtis and the married Rollo Spencer. Olivia and Rollo, childhood acquaintances, cross paths in adulthood and quickly pursue a relationship. Rosamond eloquently portrays the reality of leading a double life and the damage that adultery inflicts on the parties involved.
The Weather in the Streets surprised me - I was hoping to enjoy it, as I hope to enjoy every book I pick up, but I really enjoyed this novel. It as a quick read for me, but that doesn’t mean that it was simple. Lehmann’s writing is poetic, descriptive, evocative. She will often meander from 3rd person to 1st person in the same paragraph and it’s so elegantly done, that I didn’t even realize what she was doing. The narrative is mainly from Olivia’s perspective, but glimpses into other character’s thoughts are included.
As one could assume from the title, weather plays a significant role in the narrative. Lehmann is constantly describing the weather and uses this as a device to foreshadow immediate events to come.
“The rain had stopped, the day was dark, grey, cold and gusty - one or two tattered blue holes blown into the sky for a moment, then over-blown again.”
“Two days later came the telegram - meet him in Oxford, the Mitre, one o’clock. It was Friday, hot and sunny.”
Throughout the book, the weather descriptions can be analyzed further beyond just foreshadowing a “good” or “bad” event. None of the descriptions are the same and if I wanted to, I could go back and link each subsequent event to an exact detail. This tactic could easily become cliche with a less skilled writer, but Lehmann pulls this off so beautifully, that it adds more depth to the narrative.
I was also surprised to detect an existential undertone throughout the book. Many of the characters ask questions about the self, how the self is perceived by others, and the tension between the self and happiness. This adds to the concept in this novel that outward self is often at war with the internal self. Olivia and Rollo are operating under a facade to keep their relationship secret, but their decision to be dishonest wears on them internally.
- The Self: “Tell me, Livia, do you ever feel as if you weren’t real?” “Often.” “It’s a beastly feeling. Everybody has a solid real life except oneself.”
- The Self & Others: “How do you know what you’ve done? It’s all in the mind of the beholder - We don’t know what we look like. We’re not just ourselves - we’re just a tiny nut of self, and the rest is a complicated mass of unknown quantities - according to who’s looking at us.”
- The Self & Happiness: “What do people mean about being happy, there’s so much talk about it, as if it was the one aim and motive - far from it; doesn’t affect anything, as far as I can see, it isn’t the desire for happiness that moves people to do what they do…”
However, Lehmann doesn’t just focus on Olivia and Rollo regarding people and the double lives they lead. She covers the facade of wealth, class, and perceived respectability. She also glosses over the concept of ethics and morality in relation to one’s profession. The most unlikely person often does unexpected things behind closed doors that would shock society.
Lehmann does not glamorize adultery in any way. It’s very evident from the beginning that both Rollo and Olivia are at war with themselves for the decisions they’ve made, regardless of how much they try to justify their behavior. Lehmann is realistic about adultery and regardless of how unsavory of a topic it is, it’s a reality.
“There was this inward double living under amourphous impacts of dark and light mixed: that was when we were together … not being together was a vacuum. It was an unborn place in the shadow of the time before and the time to come. It was remembering and looking forward, drawn out painfully both ways, taut like a bit of elastic … Wearing…”
Lehmann writes about Olivia and Rollo’s relationship in such a way that I never lost sympathy for any of the characters involved, even if I didn’t necessarily agree with their decisions. Lehmann handles very sensitive topics so gracefully and really nailed both the fragility and beauty of relationships.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed The Weather in the Streets. I didn’t want to put it down and before I was even halfway through the book, I was looking up her other novels. I hope to eventually read the rest of her work because her writing is stunning, her characters are complex and interesting and she’s willing to writing eloquently about topics that are “taboo”. After reading this novel, I don’t care what she’s written about, I’ll read it because her writing is that good.
Rating: 4/5.
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