The Light Years by Elizabeth Jane Howard is a fine old-style character novel of London and the English countryside just before the beginning of World War II. Howard, who was married for a while to novelist Kingsley Amis (and credited by his son Martin Amis with encouraging the younger man's writing), wrote many novels. This one begins the Cazalet chronicles. It moves admirably among many characters of all ages, doing perhaps especially well with the children. I liked its leisurely quality--appropriate to a novel of holidays at a family homeplace.

This is not meant to imply that it is in any way loose or sloppily written. It just takes its time with a typical British confidence in its own story-telling, circling around the large cast of characters, trying them out in various combinations, checking in with what is happening historically at the same time. It has a whiff of (without the difficulty of) Virginia Woolf's The Waves. Both have characters with a shared sense of language and imagery. In Woolf's, four young voices are present as streams of consciousness that blend into one another. Howard's characters share family idiosyncrasies, private references, and class culture, but the characters are vividly delineated. I liked both outsiders to the family like Zoe, the very young second wife of Rupert, who teases her way into an ugly date rape, and insiders like the cousins Polly and Clary who are respectively morally and literarily precocious. The common diction and mental landscapes are part of the strong group portrait.

I love the places and life style, too-- lots of improvised meals and out-door activities-- heaven for kids.

The book demands a reading strategy of stepping in feeling the book swirl around your ankles, then your knees, and right up to your neck. The fascinations are with its texture and threads of interacting personality. And oh those personalities-- even the minor characters (but are they really?) are sterling creations like the Cook and her dictator/busybody counterpart above stairs, the patriarch known as the Brig.

You have to love those British nicknames.

The first of 5 books set right before WWII and later, it's about three generations of a wealthy family. There are a lot of characters, which is hard to keep track of. Love the history in this!

Great characters and story flow. Like the history references. Entertaining to read perspectives of history especially during wartime.

First published in 1990, The Light Years opens in the summer of 1937 with three generations of the Cazalet family gathering at Home Place, the Sussex home of ‘the Brig’, now an elderly man but still in charge of the family business, and his wife, affectionately known as ‘the Duchy’. The Brig and the Duchy have three sons; two of these, Hugh and Edward, work in the business and are able to provide comfortable lifestyles for their wives and children, but the third brother, Rupert, has chosen a different path in life – as an artist who is yet to find any success, he is struggling financially, much to the disappointment of his second wife, the beautiful and much younger Zoe. There is also a sister, Rachel, who is unmarried but, unknown to the rest of the family, in love with her friend, a woman called Sid.

After being introduced to each of the Cazalets, their spouses, children, servants and friends, we then jump forward a year to 1938 when the same people – and several more – are beginning to gather together again. On the surface it looks like being another idyllic summer of relaxing in the garden, playing tennis and board games and visiting the beach, but in reality, few if any of the characters are truly happy. There are cracks appearing in Rupert and Zoe’s marriage, and in Edward and Villy’s, Rachel dreads being separated from Sid, and the children face a series of dramas ranging from chickenpox and the loss of beloved pets to the fear of being sent away to school. Meanwhile, the approaching war casts a shadow over everything, as the possibility of conflict with Germany, which at first seemed so remote, begins to look more and more likely.

I didn’t get off to a very good start with this book; it took me a while to get into it, but I think part of the problem was that with so many characters, and the perspective switching from one to the other every few pages, it made it difficult to find someone to identify with and focus on. Somewhere around the middle of the book, though, things changed. I felt that I was starting to get to know some of the characters at last, and to feel sympathy for the situations they were in. I went from wondering whether to continue reading to knowing that I would not only be finishing this book, but almost certainly reading the second of the Cazalet Chronicles, Marking Time, as well!

I particularly enjoyed spending time with the younger generation of the family. The relationships, friendships and rivalries between three of the girls – Louise, Polly and Clary – and three of the boys – Teddy, Simon and Christopher – were very well written and I’m looking forward to seeing them continue to develop as they grow up. Sometimes when you read a novel with child characters, it feels as though the author has forgotten what it was like to be a child; that was not the case in this book – I felt that Elizabeth Jane Howard had remembered exactly how a child’s mind works and the things that are important to them.

I did end up feeling very positive about this book overall and can understand now why so many people love this series so much.