Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift

Mothering Sunday, celebrated in the UK and Ireland since the 16th century, was traditionally a day when children, mainly daughters, who had gone to work as domestic servants were given a day off to visit their mother and family.

Mothering Sunday is also the title of a slim gem of a novel (almost novella) by Graham Swift. It tells the story of Jane Fairchild, an orphan (with a name traditionally given to orphans) who works as a maid in the home of a couple who, just like so many friends and neighbors have lost their sons to World War I. The book centers on an illicit affair and the tragic end to one particular day, Mothering Sunday, March 30th, 1924 and layers revelations and memories over time while allowing us to carefully discover a woman who starts out as a domestic servant and goes on to become a famous author. 

Mothering Sunday is a romance, a story of class and education, and a picture of an England reeling from the Great War and a culture that is rapidly changing and disappearing.

"Once upon a time she'd arrived, the new maid, Jane Fairchild, at Beechwood just after a great gust of devastation. The family, like many others, had been whittled down, along with the household budget and the servants.”

Mothering Sunday has a magical quality; it is quiet, yet disruptive in so many ways, and the manner in which Swift reveals his characters to the reader makes them stay with you. You feel you know them, that you understand what has formed them and you long to know what happens to even the most peripheral person.

Finally, and perhaps most poignantly, Mothering Sunday is an ode to books, to words, and to finding your voice.

I read the book in a day, in the sun, feeling like someone had slowed the world down for a few hours allowing for a bit of time travel and reflection. 

Happy Reading!

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