Old Baggage

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For those who haven’t read the novel, Old Baggage isset in 1928– the year that all women in the UK received the same voting rights as men – and followsMatilda Simkin, a passionate and dedicated suffragette who no longer knows what to fight for. They continued: ‘The book made us laugh, it made us cry and it kept us up reading till three in the morning. We can’t wait to start to develop it for long-form television.’

Old Baggage is a funny and bittersweet portrait of a woman who has never, never given up the fight.

It seemed pretty convincing to me. I liked the fact Evans didn't try to hard to include historical details, but it felt right for the time and place. I know Hampstead and the health, and I don't think it's probably changed that much over the years. Few novelists write as well about the daily grind of wartime life as Lissa Evans. Two previous books, Their Finest Hour and Crooked Heart, perfectly captured the frustrations and the humour of those at home, trudging through the Second World War. Evans is funny, too, with Noel’s burgeoning relationship with a young girl next door a highlight: “He re-read the Christmas card he’d received from Genevieve Lumb, which she had signed with five Xs. He remained a little troubled by the message, which mentioned that she was spending Christmas ‘with my cousins Andrew, Lloyd and Alistair. Alistair had just won the South of England under-16s long-jump trophy, although, as you know, I don’t care much about sports’.”

The book group choice this month is Old Baggage by Lissa Evans. It's the story of a suffragette in middle age, and it was one of my favourite reads of last year. Funny and moving it is a quite short and easy read. You can find out more here. Because while Mattie may be an old baggage, there are also a couple of nasty pieces of baggage who are deliberately, or not so deliberately, undermining her efforts. And her sense of self is what suffers along the way. But Mattie has never given up the fight, and ten years later she is still on the lecture circuit, attempting to enlist a new generation of women into the cause. She’s failing, and her lectures are increasingly poorly attended. At first, this seemed to be a simple story about someone whose glory days were long behind them – and that same person’s inability to cope with that fact. But it’s not nearly that simple. Once upon a time, Mattie was one of the celebrated (and frequently derided) suffragists that marched, agitated and were jailed to goad the powers-that-were to grant women in Britain the right to vote. (It wasn’t any better in the U.S.)

Lissa Evans has written books for both adults and children, including Their Finest Hour and a Half, longlisted for the Orange Prize, Small Change for Stuart, shortlisted for many awards including the Carnegie Medal and the Costa Book Awards and Crooked Heart, longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction. Review: The Dead Take the A Train by Richard Kadrey and Cassandra Khaw – Escape Reality, Read Fiction! on Review: A Season of Monstrous Conceptions by Lina Rather As always, the delight of reading Evans comes from the way in which the mundane and the magical collide: a Christmas dinner is saved from disaster by a game of sardines; a bombed-out landscape becomes a country of half-hidden treasures. It is 1928. Matilda Simpkin, rooting through a cupboard, comes across a small wooden club – an old possession of hers, unseen for more than a decade. Perfectly timed for the centenary of the women’s vote in 2018, Old Baggage takes a unique approach to the lives of the women who fought so hard to win us the vote. And we have 50 copies to give away as part of our July book club.

I think it was mostly convincing, but don't know much about the time period. History focuses on the World Wars, roaring twenties and the Great Depression, but 1928 seemed an uneventful year compared to those before and after, I’ve just realized that the title of this book is a bit of a pun. The main character, Mattie Simpkin, is referred to as an “old baggage”, meaning a cantankerous old woman. But the point of this story is that she is also carrying a lot of “old baggage”, as in emotional baggage. And that the old baggage actually isn’t carrying her old baggage terribly well, leading to the crisis point in the story. V for Victory is a sequel to Crooked Heart (taken with her last novel, Old Baggage, which told the story of former suffragette Mattie, the three books form a loose trilogy). It’s 1944 and the Blitz is in full swing. Vera “Vee” Sedge is running a boarding house, while trying to ensure that her smart and streetwise charge Noel, now nearly 15, receives the education a boy of his “quality” deserves. Like Mili and Sarasa I didn’t really notice. I did feel while I read it that there was something familiar about the style particularly in the middle sections, and then I realised – school and Guiding stories. There weren’t any men in them either. In fact the schools and colleges founded in the late C19 often and very deliberately had no men around at all, except perhaps the gardener or janitor. I still find the idea of men at Girton odd – none in my day except the man who fixed the bicycles. The men in this novel are very much on the periphery. Did you find that refreshing or would you have liked at least one to play a more major role?The ending was certainly surprising, but satisfying that Mattie and Florrie reconciled and Mattie was able to help Ida out both economically and with her child. I am reading Crooked Heart now, for which this book is a prequel, so I already know what Mattie does next. As the story begins, it’s 1928. Mattie is in her late 50s, and while she may not think of herself as old, it’s clear that others around her do. (I found this poignant and ironic at the same time as I’m older than Mattie but don’t see myself that way at all. It’s true that “old” starts at least 15 years past one’s own age) I liked Mattie as a book character, but might find her somewhat exasperating in real life. I certainly wouldn't want to share a house with her. It was understandable that she wanted to help out her niece, but seemed out of character for her to cheat and the low point of the story.

Old Baggage is a funny and bittersweet portrait of a woman who has never given up the fight and the young women who are just discovering it.

The right was granted, under rather stringent conditions, in 1918 in the exhausted aftermath of World War I. At which point the movement towards women’s equality collapsed. (If this sounds familiar, let’s just say the pattern repeats). Mattie is also fond of sprinkling her speech with quotations from authors, historians and philosophers. There’s one that’s used in the book, and is extremely appropriate to the story, even if there seems to be some debate on who originated it.