The Iron Facade by Catherine Cookson

Oh Gosh...I so love this tiny novel in an old copy which fits so nicely in my handbag. Book condition is 6/10. The novel is now available for sale at RM5.  PM me at Kedai Buku Saduri FB page if you would like to be the next owner. If you like what I write here about this wonderfully written romantic, I'm quite sure that you'll enjoy it immensely, just like I did.

  

It's been so long since I last read a sweet love novel ; what more one written by someone born more than 70 years before me. Indeed, I've always been a fan of peoples in the early 1990s. I imagine that time as a  wonderful time, so much love, vast lands free of concrete, fresh air everywhere, thinking minds yet the least conflicts. The reality is probably 98% less than how I fancy it, then again, I don't care. It's the way I wish it to be at least.

Cookson wrote the iron facade so simply yet with much complication. The main character Prudence Dudley is a woman of beauty, brains and a successful career as a novelist. She survived unhappy childhood with plenty of complicated, probably conflicting feelings for her parents who have been unfaithful to each other. Her marriage to Ian, a man she thought will bring her happiness and her sad life sunshine, failed too, just like the marriage of her parents.

In the company of her always protective Aunt Maggie, she flees to a rented cottage in the far off Lake District where she met David McVeigh. He happens to be the owner of the soothing albeit old cottage at the  Lowtherbeck estate that Pru and Aunt Maggie rent for 3 months. So much drama took place in the few months of their stay in the estate. Most of the novel narrates all the intricacies and tension endured of the many interesting characters; Roy Mc Veigh (later discovered that he and Davie doesn't share the same father and mother, Jannie, a girl who suffers retarded growth following a boat accident which has taken the lives of two people everyone thought were her parents, Flora Cleverly, the housekeeper who is actually Roy's mother and Fannie's grandmother. I love how their stories intertwined and conflicted.

What I love best is how the love scene of Pru and Davie is only described and dramatized in the last two pages in the novel. Their love is so devoid of any kind of carnal desires and physical attraction, Instead, their embrace is fueled by emotional bond so vivid and beyond blissful. I love it so much.