Vera – Review

Lucy’s father has died unexpectedly; she’s still processing this new circumstance that her father, who she loves and had been her companion for many years is no more. As Lucy looks out on the vast sea, she notices a man who approaches. Everard Wemyss, confides in Lucy that he’s lonely and has lost his wife.

“Alone with sorrow,—of all ghastly things for a man to be alone with! It was an outrage, he felt, to condemn a man to that; it was the cruellest form of solitary confinement.”

Vera – Elizabeth von Arnim

Strangers who meet in the most unlikely circumstances, Lucy feels relieved by the assistance Wemyss provides in finalizing the arrangements for her father’s funeral/burial. Some 20 years older than Lucy, it’s assumed by others, Wemyss is a friend of Lucy’s father.

The story that develops reminds me somewhat of Rebecca but feels disturbing in a different way. Unlike Rebecca, we know the name of the young woman who marries the widowed man, but like Rebecca, the new wife seems to live in the shadow of the deceased wife, marrying a man she knows very little about. Everyone except Lucy can tell Everard is a self centered tyrant, mentally and emotionally abusive. The circumstances surrounding Vera’s death, like Rebecca don’t seem to add up.

This book is darker than the other von Arnim books I’ve read, Elizabeth and her German Garden, The Enchanted April, and The Solitary Summer) but some of her snark humor made minor appearances (Aunt Dot and Everard trousers). I read some background (brief) on the basis for this book and Von Arnim seems to draw from her own experience of her second marriage to an earl.

Von Arnim depicts in Lucy’s character, the naivety of love, but sheds light on how someone like Everard, wants his way and will not tolerate ANYONE who tries to interfere. Lucy believes she must suppress her own feelings and emotions, wants and desires because she’s afraid of Everard and realizes, he’s not the same person she thought he was when they first met. He wasn’t looking for a wife, he was looking for a pretty doll (puppet) he could control but one he expected to read his mind. He was a sociopath and I wanted Lucy to fix him some tea and have him sit in a window.

I was hoping for a different ending but I have a few ideas about what possibly could have happened.