THE NOT SO SWINGING SIXTIES
I don’t remember much about the 60s, apart from being shepherded into the school assembly hall with twenty other kids to watch the TV coverage of the 1969 Apollo moon landing. Occasionally the voice of a teacher would rise above the awed silence to remind us that every astronaut leap across that grey, cratered surface was a step into history. Yet the rest of that era is one big blank which means relying on the memories of other people to fill in the gaps. Mods and rockers, outrageously short hemlines, and hippies on the peace and love trail may have been the new “cool”, but it’s easy to forget that not everyone was rocking to the same beat. Appley Green, the fictitious Surrey/Hampshire village of author Miriam Wakerly, is the hardnosed flip side to the “swinging 60s” narrative.
This fourth instalment of the Appley Green stories is built around the friendship of teenagers Molly, Alison and Nicola. Brought together by an incident at school, the trio make a promise to share and keep each other’s secrets, although as they later discover that’s easier said than done. When one of the girls is made pregnant by an older man and gives up the child for adoption, she lays the foundation for another layer of secrets and an adult deception that is difficult to condone. Appley Green may look like a picture postcard village with its rustic charm and greenery, but this little corner of England is heaving with homophobia, genteel snobbery, thwarted hopes and small mindedness.
Wakerly explores those concepts through a cast of sympathetic characters and an uncomplicated style of writing that isn’t above delivering a few curveballs. The wife of the local bigwig gets more than she bargains for when she arranges an adulterous liaison with a handsome village newcomer. Is he a sexual chancer as we’re led to assume, or a man searching for a “happy ever after” that a genetic condition may have put beyond his reach? The real strength of this novel lies in a structure that on the hand is simple but which also teases with its underlying complexities. There are several narrative themes that Wakerly skillfully fuses together to make a very credible whole. The steady, pointed tempo of the early chapters is beautifully maintained as Molly, Alison, and Nicola transition from naïve adolescents into older, seasoned women. Their friendship has been taken to the edge yet somehow it survives. What the future holds is anyone’s guess, but it is bound to be challenging given the powerful markers that Wakerly sets down for a potential sequel.
Secrets in Appley Green is a novel that works because of the sharpness of its observations and the scope of its reach. It has an epic quality that seamlessly moves the drama between England and Europe and from one decade into the next. Appley Green may be the ideal place for retired couples to live out their days or for families to put down roots, but as its experience of the 1960s shows, there can be no protection from the forces of change.
Reviewed by Juliette Foster
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