The Mistress of Shenstone

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Three o'clock on a dank afternoon, early in November. The wintry sunshine, in fitful gleams, pierced the greyness of the leaden sky. While The Mistress of Shenstone was a nice Edwardian romance, requiring one to suspend disbelief to appreciate some of the plot devices (e.g., Myra falling asleep on the beach while the tide is coming in). My real disappointment was in the way Barclay had her characters speak of Garth Dalmain. Most of them knew the man well prior to the accident that blinded him, yet he was always referred to by his affliction (Jane Dalmain’s blind husband), or in the past tense (Garth Dalmain was a genius). He only comes across as a full character in small slivers of Jane’s POV.