Old Baggage by Lissa Evans

Although you can read Old Baggage quite happily as a stand-alone novel, it is also something of a prequel to Crooked Heart, Evan’s wonderful novel about a grifter who takes on an evacuee during World War Two.

Old Baggage takes up the story of Mattie, an aging suffragette who was there when (some) British women were given the vote in 1918. Now it is 1928, the year women were finally given suffrage on the same terms as men, but Mattie is always on the look-out for a cause. She discovers that there isn’t much point in allowing young women to vote if they are uneducated and politically naïve.

And so she begins the Amazons – a club for girls which includes vigorous exercise, lessons in history, camping out and badges. At home, keeping up with the paperwork and organizing the slides – Mattie gives talks about the Suffragette movement – as well as being a welcome breath of common sense is The Flea (Florence Lee).

The Flea was also there during the tough years of the women’s suffrage movement, working quietly in the background. While a lot of the humour is centred around Mattie, who at her most confrontational best is witty and eccentric, Florence’s story is more poignant. She is a health worker visiting terribly impoverished homes, and it is here, and with Ida, their maid, that the book becomes a window on social conditions of the time.

Evans has a real knack for balancing humour and light relief with glimpses of the politics of the day. There is drama too in the snapshots of the past that have a way of disturbing the present, which gives the plot a structure that has you turning the pages to an unexpected but immensely satisfying ending.

But the life and soul of the novel is the character of Mattie. I can see why Lissa Evans wanted to build a new story out of someone who makes a brief but memorable appearance in Crooked Heart. She’s the kind of person you don’t forget and is just so very entertaining.

Posted by JAM

Catalogue link: Old Baggage