Flower of May Part III

Andre follows his family to Europe and flirts with Fanny. She is drawn to him but she's not sure if he is really a serious prospect, and she is not aware of her sister's affair with him, which has happened only a short while after her wedding. Then during the holiday, news comes to Fanny that her mother is seriously ill and she goes home in a hurry. When she gets to the family estate, she finds that Julia is close to dying. The nun who is looking after her tells her that her mother is worrying in her weakened state about her elder daughter.. Fanny stays with her mother until her death which causes terrible pain to her father and to Julia's elderly father. As they begin to recover, Eleanor, Julia's sister, talks to her niece about the future. She had wanted to be a nun but gave up the idea because her father needed someone to take care of him and run their small estate. Now she suggests that she makes over the estate to Fanny, and that will provide her with a small income so that she and Lucille can go to University and study for a career. Fanny is happy to accept this offer, as she knows that she could not marry Andre when he treated her sister so callously, seducing her almost on her honeymoon and she is intelligent and does not want to bury herself in marriage and house keeping. Lucille too is pleased as she feels there is no point in quarrelling with her family over a career when she has no training to do anything better than work in a shop or be a governess.. Eleanor tells Fanny that when her father dies, she will give up her job of looking after the estate and leave it to a manager, and Fanny will get the proceeds... and Eleanor can go to Brussels and while its a bit late for her to be a nun, she can live in the convent and lead a religious life, which is what she always wanted. Fanny and Lucille plan their future, getting into university and studying and preparing for a more challenging career than housekeeping or the like.. and Andre returns to the Continent. Louise and her husband try to get their marriage on track... and Fanny's father tries to recover from his wife's death.

Flower of May Part II

Fanny has Lucille to visit in Dublin, before they go on their continental trip. Louise, her sister is away on honeymoon. The young couple have gone in a car, which breaks down, as motor cars were very new then and prone to problems. Andre, Lucille's brother, has a job as a car salesman and he rescues the honeymooning couple when the car lets them down. He is attracted to Fanny and she is intrigued by him. Fanny goes off with Lucille and Julia, her mother decides to go back to her country home, where her elderly father lives with his spinster daughter. It is a small estate, as Catholics had for a long time been unable to buy property.. but it keeps the family in reasonable comfort and gives them status. Julia loves the country and does not like living in Dublin, but she puts up with it for her husband's sake. She is in increasingly poor health and longs to go back to her home. Before she goes away from Dublin, she sees a young couple in the city and gets an intuition that they are lovers, then realises that it is her own daughter, who is newly married. She goes to the country, and her health weakens. She is worried about her daughter. Fanny and Lucille enjoy their travels around Europe with Lucille's younger brother and her society obsessed mother. The family are kind to Fanny and she is happy to be seeing the world. She has been having religious doubts in recent years, but she is still interested in the Catholic culture of Europe.

Kate O'Brien The Flower of May

This is one of Kate O'Brien's later novels. It is set in Ireland not long before the First World war. Fanny Morrow is just 18 and attending her older sister's wedding. Her sister is a rather vain pretty girl... Fanny is told by her parents that she cant go back to school in Belgium, where she has been receiving her education. The parents dont tell her that they have financial problems and that Julia, her mother is in poor health and needs a companion. She is very upset about having to leave school as she loves learning and has been very happy in the Belgian convent. Her best friend Lucille is still at school, but she too has problems. Lucille's family are very rich and her mother wants her to go into society and make a good marriage. Lucille wishes that she could go to university and get a job, but without familial support this seems impossible. However, she invites Fanny to come on a trip to Europe with her visiting Italy.. and her parents allow her to go.

Ann Granger 1939 -2025

I've just heard of the death of Ann Granger, who has written several different series of novels, mostly detective ones. She died in September 2025. She was born in Portsmouth and went to university at the University of London where she did a degree in languages. She started to work as a clerk in the Foreign office and travelled abroad a good deal. She worked in the visa sections of various embassies and married John Hulme, who also worked in the Foreign office. She started to write romances, then she and her husband came back to England with their 2 children. She began to write full time and decided that she would like to try her hand at detective stories. She started writing a series about a clerk in the Foreign office, Meredith, who has returned to the UK and who gets involved in detective work with Alan Markby, a police officer. The two become a couple and marry after several years. When she had written several Meredith and Markby novels, she changed to a new detective, Fran Varady, who is a young girl living in London, who is homeless because her father and grandmother died, leaving her with no money or home. She lives in squats and has a few friends including a young Asian man, Ganesh and his uncle. She does small detective jobs and works in casual jobs such as helping in Ganesh's family shop, and as a waitress in a pizza restaurant. She gets a flat from a charity, and has a little home of her own and her big ambition is to become an actress but she is usually kept busy at trying to earn a living. Ann wrote 7 Varady novels, and then in the 2000's she began a new series. Ben Ross is a police officer, in Victorian London, and he meets a young woman during an investigation who is companion to a wealthy older lady. Lizzie Martin knew him when she was a little girl living in Derbyshire and her father, a doctor, paid for Ben to have an education, so he could get a better job. She and Ben fall in love and marry, and Lizzie helps him with his work. They are not well off but have a small house and a maid, and enjoy working together. During this time, Ann wrote another series set in present day England, about 2 young police officers who work together. Her last Victorian novel with Ben and Lizzie Ross was "the Old Rogue of Limehouse" about a pawnbroker. Im sorry to hear that Ann has died, and there wont be any more of her Varady and Ben Ross novels.

Ante Room Part III

Miss Cunningham, the nurse keeps on being friendly with Reggie. Agnes however is now torn between her feelings for Vincent and her love for her sister. He tells Agnes that he loves her..and they are both tormented by their love for each other. Divorce in a Victorian Catholic family is out of the question, and even if it were not a Catholic family, as her brother in law, Vincent could not marry Agnes. Miss Cunningham hints to Reggie that she would take care of him, if his mother dies and that his mother is ill and in pain and she is struggling to stay alive for his sake, which is not fair to her. Danny, her husband is hurt as he can see that Teresa loves Reggie much more than she ever loved him. Then Reggie and Miss Cunningham announce that they are getting married. Agnes is rather shocked, but her doctor admirer tells her that Miss Cunningham,as a nurse is well aware of Reggie's condition and that she is willing to look after him and have a sexless marriage.. and he will be content with her, if his mother dies. He points out to Agnes that although she does not much like Miss Cunningham, she is not a bad person and she's a good nurse. She is not well off and its understandable that she should be ready to make a marriage with him, with its various limitations so that she will have a comfortable home.. Agnes can see that he's right and that Reggie will be cared for and his mother will be able to die in peace knowing that her son will be all right. She talks to Vincent and they admit their love for each other. But since their religion forbids divorce and Agnes loves Marie Rose, there is no way they can be together. Teresa tells the doctors that she does not want an operation, she knows that her son is going to be looked after by his new wife, and she's happy to die. Vincent is relieved that things have settled down and he goes out into the garden, with his gun and shoots himself, ending his unhappy life and marriage and leaving Agnes free to recover from her love for him.

The Ante Room Part II

Agnes is lovely and intelligent and has devoted herself to looking after her mother and the house. Her feelings for Vincent, her brother in law, she keeps secret. She loves her sister Marie Rose, and is surprised when Marie Rose suddenly arrives at the house, without her husband. She has come to see her mother and support her, while she is seeing the doctors. Marie Rose is rather silly and flighty but she is good natured and loves Agnes very much. She tells her sister that she and VIncent are not getting on and she left him behind because she does not want to have him around her. Agnes knows that Marie Rose is silly, rather snobbish and not very clever, but she still loves her and is upset to hear that her marriage is not working out. Reggie is very frightened that his mother is going to die, and he refuses to believe it. He depends on her very much to give his life some purpose and to show him affection. He is surprised when the nurse who is looking after his mother begins to show him a little kindness, trying to calm him down about the probablity that Teresa will die soon. She is from a modest background and like governesses, she knows that the families she works for dont see her as a lady and look down on her. Agnes and Marie Rose are not all that nice to her... and begin to wonder why she is being friendly with Reggie. The famous doctor arrives to examine Teresa... and then to Marie Rose's amazement her husband suddenly turns up at the Mulqueen house. She does not want to share her room with him and cries on Agnes' shoulder.

Ante Room Part I

This is another of Kate O'Brien's novels, which is related to her first novel "Without my Cloak". Teresa Mulqueen is the daughter of John Considine, and she did not make a grand marriage unlike her sisters. Her husband was given a job in the family firm, but he was never very intelligent or good at the job. Teresa had several children, and her favourite, her eldest son, Reggie, has been rakish and contracted a sexually transmitted disease which is slowly killing him. Teresa has cancer and she's very ill. A famous surgeon from England is coming to see her, to advise on whether another operation would help her or if she could stand it. She wants to try and live a bit longer, to look after Reggie but she is getting weaker. The Mulqueen house is being run by Agnes, her daughter who is single and very beautiful. Agnes is admired by the local doctor but she has been in love for some time with Vincent, the husband of her younger sister Marie Rose.