A Book You’d Like to Spend Christmas In

As with yesterday, there’s a whole heap of books I could have chosen today. Some contain accounts of Christmas, some don’t. But their settings are all full of warmth and love and acceptance and a feeling that this is the best place to be – whatever the circumstances and regardless of what else is happening in the world.

I won’t keep you in suspense. Today’s choice is Nancy Calls the Tune by Dorita Fairlie Bruce. I hadn’t remembered this yesterday when I chose another of her books. (It’s been an unexpected week here and my brain is still not quite back in gear.) Anyway, I love this book; it vies with The Serendipity Shop, yesterday’s choice, for the honour of being my favourite DFB novel. It is set, and was published, during the Second World War by Oxford University Press, and I have a first edition which you can see below.

Elsewhere I have debated and discussed the setting of the book. From internal evidence and my own knowledge of the area I am convinced that it is set in the Perthshire town of Blairgowrie renamed here Easterbraes. I know that not everyone agrees with me but it will take a very well-reason argument to make me change my mind. What is clear is that it’s set during the autumn of either 1942 or 1943; I’m inclined to settle on the former as the publication date was 1944. It’s the final book in the Nancy series which begins chronologically in terms of reading with Nancy at St Brides.

Nancy is expelled from St Bride’s and most of the books are set in England. Where exactly is unspecified but it’s generally thought to be around Oxfordshire I think. Certainly that’s where it is in my head! There is a final school story that sees Nancy go back to St Bride’s on a fictionalised Cumbrae along with her friend Desda. Although, because of her past, Nancy is nervous about returning to St Bride’s, she is delighted to be back in Scotland. And that feeling of the return of exiles pervades many of Dorita Fairlie Bruce’s books. One can surmise that it was her own feeling, exiled as she was from Scotland for much of her life. It is interesting to note that all of her most favoured characters end up in Scotland whether or not it is the land of their birth.

Desda, in Nancy Calls the Tune, is a case in point and she is joined by her sister Rosalind as well as Nancy. It is very much a book of its time and of DFB’s beliefs. Fighting is the only possible option, conscientious objectors and pacifists are not to be tolerated and God will deliver the nation; historical accuracy is stretched and bent a little out of shape and some suspension of disbelief is necessary. But all that said, this is an engaging read mostly for the atmosphere of home and community and belonging that Dorita Fairlie Bruce creates. I totally believe in Easterbraes and the South Kirk with its outspoken mixture of characters. And I believe very firmly in the strength and warmth of Nancy and Desda’s friendship with each other and Angus, Nick and Rosalind. That’s why I’d like to spend Christmas in the book in spite of its being set halfway through the Second World War.

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