Old Baggage – Lissa Evans

Set between the wars, Evans book is a gentle tale undercut with memories of tragedies past and tremors of the conflict to come. The battle for women’s suffrage is half won and one of its leading lights, Mattie Simpkins, misses the glory days of action. Instead she takes the fight, and her magic lantern, to increasingly uninterested audiences in town halls and women’s groups. Looking for a new battlefield she invites young women to join her ‘Amazons’ on Hampstead Heath. Drawn against her is her erstwhile colleague, now turned fascist, Jacqueline (Jacko) Fletcher, who marshals her own young troops into a youth battalion. Into this febrile mix comes young Inez who bears a startling resemblance to Mattie’s dead brother Arthur.

Part of the tale, the saddest, involves Mattie’s live-in companion Florrie, a bluff, staunch friend whose longing for Mattie she must keep hidden.

It is an enjoyable story and, while I wouldn’t like to say it is only a woman’s book, there are scarcely any male characters and those present are no more than caricatures. Evan’s writing is easy on the reader with not a hint of the self-regarding trickiness of many modern writers. She nevertheless gets under the skin of her female characters and serves us a warm and rewarding experience.