A Price for Everything (by Mary Sheepshanks)

(Amazon UK link)

In the past eighteen months I have started re-reading, in a mostly organised fashion, the books by some of my favourite authors. I decided it was time to re-read my books by Mary Sheepshanks (confusingly also known as Mary Nickson). It had been quite a long time since I read any of them, so I decided to start with ‘A Price for Everything’, which I first read in 2006.

I had totally forgotten what this book was about, and the characters in it. So that was a good start - it felt like a new book, but I knew I was going to like it. It’s basically about a home - a family mansion which, as happened so often towards the end of the 20th century, is becoming far too expensive to maintain. Archie, Lord Dunton, is the owner. It passed to him after the death of his grandmother just six months before the story starts.

Archie is a realist. He wants to make the farmland pay for itself, but has proposed moving his family to a much smaller home on the estate, one which they could improve and live in without too much extra expense. But his wife Sonia adores the house, and is determined to stay. This has caused considerable friction in their marriage.

Archie and Sonia have four children. Polly is a teenager, Tom must be about twelve and is at boarding school most of the time. Then there are two younger ones: Birdie must be about six or seven, and Cassie is probably three or four. These two young children are possibly the most believable people in the book. Cassie has a strong sense of her own importance, a bossy nature, and an expectation that people will do whatever she wants. Birdie is much more sensitive, mostly willing to go along with her sister’s wishes, and very aware of tension or lack of harmony in the home. So much so that she has nightmares, and upset stomachs. I liked Birdie very much.

They also have several friends - mostly upper or upper-middle class folk like themselves, and there are various picnics, tennis parties and gatherings for lunches or dinners. I didn’t find any of the friends particularly memorable or distinguishable; they were mostly somewhat two-dimensional, playing their parts in the background. Other than the voluptuous Rosie, married to someone who mostly ignores her. Sonia is pretty sure that Archie is having an affair with her…

Archie’s mother is important in the story, although I never entirely believed in her. She’s opinionated and vain, although fond of her family in a general kind of way. She travels the world, often dragging her 16-year-old daughter Martha with her, and she likes men. When we meet her, she’s embroiled with a dubious monk, who is part of a bizarre sect.

It’s a light-hearted story, on the whole; I don’t suppose it’s all supposed to be taken seriously, as there are highly caricatured people and some mildly amusing interchanges here and there. There’s an over-pious and enthusiastic vicar who tends to be a bit of a figure of fun in the parish, although church-going and church involvement are seen as important. His very middle-class family also manages, in a slightly pointed way, to demonstrate some of the differences between the values and practices of traditional British classes.

But the underlying theme is a serious one - of finding what we value, and (as the title implies) deciding how important our families and homes are. It also gently examines what price we might be willing to pay to maintain them. Of course the situations in the book are only relevant to a tiny number of people; but the principles are still relevant, and possibly all the more palatable for being seen in families far removed from the majority.

The writing is good, with just the right amount of description and introspection for my tastes. It didn’t particularly grip me; despite having entirely forgotten the content of the book, I assumed the home would eventually be saved, but had no idea whether Archie and Sonia’s marriage would be. The final chapters of the book are perhaps a tad dramatic and cliched, forcing Sonia to make a difficult decision; everything then sorts itself out - bar some nostalgia and regrets - rather quickly.

Overall I enjoyed the book a lot, and am glad I re-read it. 'A Price for Everything' is long out of print in paperback, but can now be bought in Kindle form. 

Review copyright 2019 Sue's Book Reviews