Invitation to the Waltzby Rosamond Lehmann
Rating: ★★★★
Series: Olivia Curtis #1
Publication Date: January 1, 1932
Genre: fiction
Pages: 256
ReRead?: No
Project: 2025 read my hoard
A diary for her innermost thoughts, a china ornament, a ten-shilling note, and a roll of flame-coloured silk for her first evening dress: these are the gifts Olivia Curtis receives for her seventeenth birthday. She anticipates her first dance, the greatest yet most terrifying event of her restricted social life, with tremulous uncertainty and excitement. For her pretty, charming elder sister Kate, the dance is certain to be a triumph, but what will it be for shy, awkward Olivia?
Exploring the daydreams and miseries attendant upon even the most innocent of social events, Rosamond Lehmann perfectly captures the emotions of a girl standing poised on the threshold of womanhood.
What a fine time I had reading this novel. It had been on my shelves for a completely reasonable 3 years – I bought it, along with it’s companion/sequel The Weather in the Streets, in March, 2022. I’ve had it on and off the book cart several times since then. The whim took me this morning when I was looking for a book.
Set in 1920, immediately post-WWI, it’s the story of Olivia Curtis’s 17th birthday and a ball she attends a week or so later. It’s very much a slice of life type novel, and the first person narrative brings us very close to Olivia’s perspective. She has a birthday. She gets a new dress. She goes to a ball. She waits for her life to start, feels very unsure of herself, and finds herself rather boring and average.
Olivia is not the sort of sparkling personality who is the recipient of a lot of attention. She’s not as pretty as her sister, Kate, not as effervescent as her cousin, Etty, and not as popular as Marigold, the daughter of the family hosting the ball. She is guarded and thoughtful, watching from the sidelines. But she is also perceptive and observant, and she really sees the people around her, even if they barely seem to notice her.
Lehmann wrote a second book featuring Olivia, that starts 10 years in the future. I hope to get to it sooner rather than later. I’m interested to see what happens to her next.