Books with title The Return of the Soldier

The novel begins as the narrator, Jenny, describes her cousin by marriage Kitty Baldry pining in the abandoned nursery where her dead first son would have been raised. Occupied with the domestic management of the Baldry estate just outside London, the two are almost completely removed from the horrors of World War I. The only exception is that Kitty's husband, Chris Baldry, is a British soldier fighting in France. While Kitty laments in the nursery, Margaret Grey arrives at the estate wishing to bear news to the two women. When Jenny and Kitty meet her, they are surprised to find a drab middle-aged woman. And even more to their shock, Margaret tells them that the War Office sent her, not Kitty and Jenny, notification of Chris's injury and return home. Kitty dismisses Margaret from the estate trying to deny that she could have been the recipient of such information. Soon after, another cousin of Jenny notifies the two women that he in fact has visited Chris and he is obsessing over Margaret, whom he had had a summer fling with fifteen years before. Soon after, Chris returns shell-shocked to the estate thinking he is still twenty years old, but finding himself in a strange world which had aged fifteen years beyond his memory. Trying to understand what is real for Chris, Jenny asks Chris to explain what he is feeling to be true. Chris tells her the story of a romantic summer on Monkey Island, where Chris at the age of twenty fell in love with Margaret, the daughter of the innkeeper on the island. The summer ends with a rash departure by Chris caused by a fit of jealousy. After Chris tells this story, Jenny travels to nearby Wealdstone to bring Margaret back to Chris and help him understand the difference between his remembered past and reality. She arrives at Margaret's dilapidated row-house to find her disheveled and taking care of her husband. After some conversation, Jenny convinces Margaret to return with her to the estate in order to help Chris. Upon Margaret's return, Chris recognizes her and becomes excited. Before returning to her home, Margaret explains that fifteen years have passed since their Monkey Island summer and that Chris is now married to Kitty. Chris acknowledges this passage of time intellectually but cannot retrieve his memories and still pines for Margaret. Margaret continues to visit, and Kitty and Jenny despair about Chris's loss of memory. Jenny and Kitty decide to consult Dr Gilbert Anderson, a psychoanalyst. Dr. Anderson arrives during one of Margaret's visits and questions the women, and with the help of Margaret decides on a course of treatment: Margaret must confront Chris with proof of his dead child. Margaret retrieves toys and some of the child's clothing, and confronts Chris with the truth. Finally, Chris regains his memory, Margaret departs and Kitty rejoices in the Chris's return to a state fit to be a soldier.

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The Return of the Soldier CHAPTER I "Ah, don't begin to fuss!" wailed Kitty. "If a woman began to worry in these days because her husband hadn't written to her for a fortnight! Besides, if he'd been anywhere interesting, anywhere where the fighting was really hot, he'd have found some way of telling me instead of just leaving it as 'Somewhere in France.' He'll be all right." We were sitting in the nursery. I had not meant to enter it again, now that the child was dead; but I had come suddenly on Kitty as she slipped the key into the lock, and I had lingered to look in at the high room, so full of whiteness and clear colors, so unendurably gay and familiar, which is kept in all respects as though there were still a child in the house. It was the first lavish day of spring, and the sunlight was pouring through the tall, arched windows and the flowered curtains so brightly that in the old days a fat fist would certainly have been raised to point out the new, translucent glories of the rosebud. Sunlight was lying in great pools on the blue cork floor and the soft rugs, patterned with strange beasts, and threw dancing beams, which should have been gravely watched for hours, on the white paint and the blue distempered walls. It fell on the rocking-horse, which had been Chris's idea of an appropriate present for his year-old son, and showed what a fine fellow he was and how tremendously dappled; it picked out Mary and her little lamb on the chintz ottoman. And along the mantelpiece, under the loved print of the snarling tiger, in attitudes that were at once angular and relaxed, as though they were ready for play at their master's pleasure, but found it hard to keep from drowsing in this warm weather, sat the Teddy Bear and the chimpanzee and the woolly whit

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Also known for other successful novels such as Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia, Rebecca West uses the same level of realism and insight in her 1916 novel, Return of the Soldier. This book explores the many facets of how the Great War influenced regular people in the London area, and how three women were impacted by the dramatic injury of a soldier whom they all knew in one way or another.When Chris went to war, his wife Jenny and sister Kitty attempted to keep everything just like it was on the estate, while looking down on individuals who were perceived as being of a less significant class value, such as Mrs. William Grey, who one day brought them news about Chris having lost his memory while fighting in the war. How did she know about his injury before his own wife and family found out?Droll and quite intriguing from a psychological perspective, the story focuses on the results of Chris' amnesia, and its impact on three important women in his life: one that he is genuinely in love with, his sister, and his current wife. The latter two are characters ingeniously depicted by West to reflect the snobbery that some upper class families were often known for.The author manages to masterfully guide readers through the stages of Jenny and Kitty's reactions to Chris' return and his debilitating condition. But we find they are far more shocked and outraged when they learn that, in his amnesia, he only has recollections of the woman he loved fifteen years earlier.Delightfully entertaining and presenting a series of believable, likeable characters that will not allow for a single dull moment throughout the novel, Return of the Soldier has it all: dramatic developments, intriguing love interests and an outcome that may surprise even readers who follow the plot most closely.