In her 20s and still finding her way to a comfortable style, Georgette Heyer wrote four books set in the 20th century that she later asked her publishers to repress. They were allowed to go out of print and have never been republished except now by print-on-demand.
One of the reasons she didn't want these books available to the public is their semi-autobiographical quality and the most intensely personal of these books is Helen, published in 1928. It is the story of a girl orphaned at birth who is brought up by her father. The bond between them is intense but both are unusually self-contained and do not tolerate the expression of strong feeling. They do not engage either in small talk or the normal hypocracy that smooths life for most of us. The girl and her father are very happy at their country estate, riding their beloved horses, and with loving friends and neighbors and much intellectual conversation. Lots of books.
The first half of this book is superb, five stars by almost any criteria, with insight into the characters and a steadily clicking plot as Helen learns from an unusually clever governess as she reaches her teenage years. Then comes the Great War when Helen loses her beloved horses, then her father - he enlists and is sent to a headquarters job in France. He is "perfectly safe" behind the lines, but of course no one is perfectly safe in war and this is a parting that is difficult for Helen to accept. She signs up with a neighbor to nurse wounded soldiers in London.
Helen had a handful of suitors in the pre-war years but she was uniniterested in professions of love and proposals of marriage. She was friends with a few of them, young men whom she loved but was not in love with, and it was another wrench when they went off to war. My favorite of these suitors was killed in the war as were other characters who were close to Helen and her father.
After the war Helen is caught up in the roaring 20s, makeup, short skirts, drinking (legal in England), partying until dawn. She hung out with, but did not become part of, the Bohemian set, witty people who were examining every aspect of traditional life as they tried to recover from the war.
It is this post-war part of the story that is, if not actually weak, certainly not as strong as the first part of the novel. Helen begins to fall for a man who has had many affairs and who considers himself not immoral but amoral, but Helen's character is so well-formed it is difficult for the reader to believe she is serious about him. The last few pages on the other hand, in which there is a catastrophy that shakes Helen to the core, is very well-written and I found it realistic and very bittersweet.
Helen is hard to find and expensive but I believe it's important. Because it is so very auto-biographical it strongly suggests Georgette Heyer's character and explains her relationship with her beloved father.
2012 No 69