REVIEW: Business as Usual by Jane Oliver
Business As Usual by Jane Oliver and Ann Stafford was first published in 1933. It’s a delightful illustrated novel in letters from Hilary Fane, an Edinburgh girl fresh out of university who is determined to support herself by her own earnings in London for a year, despite the mutterings of her surgeon fiancé. After a nervous beginning looking for a job while her savings rapidly diminish, she finds work as a typist in the London department store of Everyman’s (a very thin disguise for Selfridges), and rises rapidly through the ranks to work in the library, where she has to enforce modernising systems on her entrenched and frosty colleagues.
Business as Usual is charming: intelligent, heart-warming, funny, and entertaining. It’s deeply interesting as a record of the history of shopping in the 1930s, and also fascinating for its unflinching descriptions of social conditions, poverty and illegitimacy.
A few times in the book, Hilary refers to “Anglo-Indians.” When I looked this up, I saw that historically it referred to white British people in India. The book was written in 1932 so this is how I think “Jane Oliver” meant it to be used.
Review
Based on their algorithms, Amazon showed me this book. Intrigued, I requested a sample only to discover that the entirety of the sample was just background information on the two authors. Well, that was disappointing. Undeterred I discovered that Hoopla, to which I have a free subscription through my local library, had it. Finally I got a chance to read the actual novel as well as see the charming line drawings. I will be buying a copy in the near future.
Hilary Fane is a twenty-seven year old Oxford educated Scottish woman who doesn’t want to just fritter away the year long engagement she has with an up and coming young OB-GYN who is practicing in Edinburgh. Instead, after being made redundant (let go) at a local library due to financial constraints, she decides to head to London and look for a job there. The pickings are slim and after several ghastly interviews, she lands a clerk job at Everyman’s Department Store due to a worker’s medical leave for appendicitis. This was back in the day when this would necessitate weeks of time to recuperate.
In a series of wryly humorous letters home(which often include her delightful line drawings) to Basil (the fiance) and her family, Hilary outlines her plunge into the working world as well as her various rented rooms, bedsits, and apartment. She describes her Saturday outings in and about rural areas outside London as well as a weekend visit to an old (and wealthy friend) which reminded me a little of the setting of “Gosford Park.” There are also some interdepartmental memos which highlight Hilary’s (to her unexpected and to her colleagues the result of favoritism) rise through the ranks at work.
Hilary is from a more privileged background than most of her coworkers and in her comments to her family and Basil she shows that she is aware of this. She can leave in a year’s time to marry a man who will be able to provide a comfortable life for her while she can see the various age stages – from women her age through those who have endured this drudgery for a lifetime – of those who are stuck in these jobs until they retire. But she’s made the decision to stick it out and beyond a few care packages from home that she (gratefully) gets, she economizes and adheres to her £2.10 a week salary (I can’t even imagine trying to survive on that amount then much less today!). Hilary not only has sympathy for her fellow Everyman employees, she has empathy as well.
We never see the letters from home but due to her responses, we don’t need to. Her sometimes contentious relationship with Basil is obvious while it’s clear that her parents, while not enthusiastic, are supportive of her decisions. Hilary is open and honest about her strengths as well as her weaknesses, her triumphs and her failures. She is not a person who just wants to sit around but who is happiest actually doing something. Through these letters and memos the now vanished world of department stores chock full of employees (which reminded me of what I’ve seen in the movies “Bachelor Mother” and “The Shop Around the Corner”) as well as early 1930s London come alive. Hilary’s letters are also funny – very funny in a lighthearted and charming way.
“Business as Usual” is more a women’s fiction novel through which the threads of Hilary’s relationship with Basil (whom she does appear to love) along with her slowly developing boss/employee with Mr. Grant run. Hilary is intelligent, has vast wells of common sense, and can succinctly limn the characters and characteristics of her co-workers. Watching her as she grows and changes is delightful and I now intend to seek out more books by “Jane Oliver.” A-
~Jayne
This is on SALE now! Yes, I know $9.99 doesn’t look like a sale price but usually it’s $14.99 for the digital book.
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There is something about these older (not even sure that’s the right word) stories that touches me in a way modern fiction doesn’t. I’m very much reminded of OUR HEARTS WERE YOUNG AND GAY by Cornelia Otis Skinner and Emily Kimbrough, the story of their European tour/misadventures after graduating from Bryn Mawr, I think in the 1920s. It, too, was witty and charming, an eye into a world–a fairly wealthy one–that I couldn’t imagine as a teenager. Letters of introduction, parties, clothes, all of it outside my experience. I loved every word. BUSINESS AS USUAL sounds similar and I’ll scour the libraries for it. Thank you!
Thank you for this review. I have long enjoyed finding novels written in the 1930s and 40s at library sales. This book is available on Scribd. By my experience, I strongly suggest reading the Introduction after the book because the introduction gives away entirely too much plot and characterization and has almost put me off reading the book. But then, I just want to read a good story; I’m not interested in critical analysis to this degree.
@LML: When I read the sample from Amazon, all it showed was the introduction stuff which I wasn’t interested in. Then I found it on Hoopla and tried to read it but initially something was wrong with the file and it never loaded for me to read. Finally Hoopla got that fixed and I read the book. So – long story short, I barely remember the introduction. Dive right into the story – it’s wonderful.
@Darlynne: “Our Hearts Were Young and Gay” sounds great too but yikes – no digital copies!
One of my favorite recent reads was also from the 1930s: “Miss Buncle’s Book” by D.E. Stevenson, published in 1934. I describe it to people as rather like drinking champagne, in that it has no nutritional value but is fun and fizzy and I felt significantly better after reading it. It is about Miss Barbara Buncle who publishes (under a pseudonym) a thinly veiled story of the people in her village, and the reactions of her neighbors to the book once they realize that it is about them. There are also two sequels. They weren’t bad but didn’t quite rise to the level of the first book.
Should have noted that “Miss Buncle’s Book” was reviewed by Jane and was a recommended book.
https://dearauthor.com/book-reviews/overall-b-reviews/b-plus-reviews/review-miss-buncles-book-by-d-e-stevenson/
@Susan/DC: That was Jayne, actually. She has reviewed other Stevenson books for us, too. If you are interested, you can find her reviews of books by this author here: https://dearauthor.com/?s=D.E.+Stevenson
This sounds charming, Jayne. Thank you for the review.
@Janine: Sorry I didn’t correctly attribute the review to Jayne. My sister’s name is Jane, so that’s often what I type without being conscious of it.
@Susan/DC: No worries.