One Year’s Time – Angela Milne (British Library Women Writers)

Why have we only got one Angela Milne novel? This is such a good read! First published in 1942, but set a few years before the war, One Year’s Time is the story of a young woman’s pursuit of happiness which, she believes, comes in the guise of Walter, a man she meets at a party at New Year. Liza is single, highly aware of the social expectations regarding Batchelor Girls, and is waiting for The Future. There’s a brilliant honesty to Liza’s character – we have an early description of her unsatisfactory attempt to paint the edges of her floor with black gloss paint – and in that sense she is the literary great aunt of Bridget Jones (without giving too much away, one can also see something of this in the men she meets).

Liza works as a secretary but yearns for something more romantic. The Future that Liza imagines is detailed and changeable (the engagement ring she sees in various scenes changes according to her outfit), but she is also often in a passive role, waiting for Walter to call or to settle on his plans. As a couple, they play two main roles simultaneously – a young middle-class pair of bright young things who make flippant comments about life (‘May I lie down on [the divan]? I hate sitting on chairs like ordinary people, don’t you?’), and a domesticated young married couple who are setting up home together. She and Walter find each other fascinating, although the reader is always aware that Liza is deliberately shaping herself to be what Walter wants – he himself is also trying on the roles of author and prep school master, and it falls to Liza to keep up. It struck me whilst reading this that the lot of young women in the late 30s was a tough one – sex is something to be made available whilst maintaining respectable appearances is essential, and all domestic chores also fall to Liza (there’s a brilliant shift from Liza being thrilled at the intimacy of ironing a suit for Walter to the sense that this is now becoming a commonplace chore).

Milne gives us many different portraits of female life and choices available to women in the immediate pre-war-world. She does quick sketches brilliantly – another secretary, Miss Derry, having to choose between her mother and moving to Burma with her fiancée, for example – and her descriptions of daily routine are made up of small observations about boredom which help us see exactly why Liza falls for the debonair Walter. Structured into four seasonal sections, the year stretches out.  It’s a fascinating capture of a period in time (which is one of the many things I love about the choices made by the publishers of this series); what Liza realises, and what Milne’s early readers in 1942 would also have been keenly aware of – is how much difference a year really can make to the way life is lived.