The Summer Before the War, by Helen Simonson

The chicha calm before the Great War. Civil society is the last to understand that this state of imposed normality is part of the latency of a war about to manifest itself. Even more so when the war of wars awaited them, that first conflict that confronted all the great world powers of the time. The ignorance of what was coming invited life to continue happening as if nothing, but with the aspect of a special theatricality for the external observer who reads this magical story by Helen Simonson.

Because as readers, looking at that story is to intuit strange sensations of the first and last love, in a single act, or the idea of ​​a last walk seen as the simplest routine.

We moved to the charming city of Rye, in a peaceful area of ​​southern England, facing the French coasts where some of the largest conflicts of the days to come to this story would unfold, such as the Battle of the Somme.

And that is where we spent the last days of the summer of 1914, before the announcement of the war that would break out on July 28 and that little by little would sprinkle that feeling of unreality to every corner of old Europe.

The protagonist of the story, Beatrice Nash represents the liberated woman, surrounded by her books and loaded with ideas to transform any place she passes through. essentially antagonistic to war.

In any other time before, the meeting between Beatrice and Hugh Grange, the medical student, would have been savored as a passionate romantic encounter with those overtones of eternity typical of the days of prosperity. But we all know that no, that perhaps the best thing for them is that they had not met in order to escape the impending war.

Beatrice and Hugh enjoy a few days of acquaintance and first-guessing. They feel two young and free beings, even more in contrast to a small society that seems to offer certain misgivings to that modernity that both carry.

The end of summer is always a traumatic moment in the days of wine and roses in which the light and the holiday seem the foundation for a lifetime, with the intelligence of a youth that already senses that there will not be other better days.

But saying goodbye is not the same as feeling a goodbye pushed by the dire circumstances of those days when Europe was dyed gray for the first time.

You can now buy the novel The Summer Before the War, Helen Simonson's new book, with a discount for accesses from this blog, here: