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Those Measureless Fields
Captain Laurence Greene was gassed at Ypres. He takes ten years to die. With her fiance, Joseph, lost in France, Effie Shaw spends a decade as Laurence's cook. They share a roof, a sweet tooth and a taste for pastoral romances. Propriety, however, prescribes that their sharing end there. It is a surprise to Effie, then, when Laurence bequeaths her a railway ticket, the deeds to a tea shop and a declaration of his unspoken love. The terms of Laurence's will require that Effie must travel to Ypres and visit her fiance's grave. As Laurence had always told it, Joseph met his end with a show of heroics. But, in carrying out Laurence's last requests, and following his wartime diary, Effie is to discover something shocking. Joseph wasn't quite as heroic as she was told nor is his grave where it's supposed to be. The stories of three soldiers connect through Laurence's diary. As Effie travels on, from Passchendaele to Paris, these men become linked together once again. A decade on from the Armistice, is the war really over at all? Effie is about to realise just how many echoes - and untidy ends - 1918 has left behind. As seen in the Blackpool Gazette."
370 pages, ebook
First published January 1, 2014
5 people are currently reading
205 people want to read
About the author
Caroline Scott
8 books234 followersAfter completing a PhD in History, at the University of Durham, Caroline Scott worked as a researcher in Belgium and France. She has a particular interest in the experience of women during the First World War, in the challenges faced by the returning soldier, and in the development of tourism and pilgrimage in the former conflict zones. Caroline lives in southwest France and is now writing historical fiction for Simon & Schuster UK and William Morrow.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 26, 2014
The fragmentary form of this novel – a two tiered depiction of world war 1 and its aftermath – mirrors the sundering effect of those tragic times when so many individuals were left with the legacy of having to put back together again all the scattered and charred pieces of devastation the war left in its wake. This is the task set for Effie the novel’s heroine who, during the course of the novel, becomes a kind of paean to the regenerative female principle in life.
Effie, with her wry wit, her naïve diffidence, her laissez-faire insularity, her sweet tooth, works as housekeeper for Captain Laurence Greene, who for ten years has slowly been dying of mustard gas poisoning. She seems to have come to terms with the death of her fiancé Joe, a private in the same regiment as Laurence who was killed in the fighting, supposedly dying a heroic death. But Effie remains oblivious – she lives in a state of wilful ignorance for the early part of the novel – that Laurence is and always has been in love with her. When Laurence dies, at the beginning of the novel, he bequeaths to Effie a mission and a number of surprises. The mission is to go to France, to Ypres, to visit her fiancé Joe’s grave.
On the train she meets Henry, another reticent convalescent of the Great War. There’s immediate chemistry between her and Henry and finally Effie seems to acquire a possible future, except her front of wilful ignorance is still inviolable – perhaps because first she has to revisit the past and make order of it before she can allow herself any ongoing pathway.
Effie’s pilgrimage to France, a kind of series of annunciations, is now interspersed with flashbacks to the war, from the point of view of both Laurence and Joe. Most of the best writing in the novel is when we’re in the trenches or on the battlefields of the war. The author does an admirable job of evoking the terror and horror, the comradery and emotional inner life of a soldier’s life in those unprecedented times. “He slid into a shell hole. Small things crept in the busy earth. He stared at the blood, a startling slash of vermillion in a sepia landscape. He watched its progress, marbling in the mud. Dirt fell in fragile showers that fizzed like fireworks. The mud was in his eyes, in his ears, in his mouth. The dirt ground against his teeth.”
All the central characters have a defining hashtag, a recurring motif. Effie has her cakes – a frivolity at the beginning that cleverly takes on a more restorative symbolism as the novel unfolds; Laurence throughout clings to his faith in narrative; Joe’s spirit creature is the bird. There’s a great scene when Joe is called upon to collect a homing pigeon: “As they were reaching the outskirts of the village a shell tore through the barn just behind. Suddenly the cage on his back was full of thrashing. The basket was full of feathered frenzy. Panic flailed in the box and then in his own chest. The wings seemed to be beating inside his rib cage and Joe couldn’t breathe.”) All three – cake, narrative and birds – will eventually reveal themselves to be purveyors of regeneration.
I don’t want to give the plot away only to say that it abounds with compelling twists and turns all the way through to the end. Now and again there’s a regret that the war wasn’t written in a more linear continuous form as perhaps a little of its gripping tension was lost by fragmenting the narrative. However there’s an organic authenticity about the fragmentation which poignantly evokes the damage the war did and the challenge of putting everything back together it threw up in its nightmarish afterglow.
Effie, with her wry wit, her naïve diffidence, her laissez-faire insularity, her sweet tooth, works as housekeeper for Captain Laurence Greene, who for ten years has slowly been dying of mustard gas poisoning. She seems to have come to terms with the death of her fiancé Joe, a private in the same regiment as Laurence who was killed in the fighting, supposedly dying a heroic death. But Effie remains oblivious – she lives in a state of wilful ignorance for the early part of the novel – that Laurence is and always has been in love with her. When Laurence dies, at the beginning of the novel, he bequeaths to Effie a mission and a number of surprises. The mission is to go to France, to Ypres, to visit her fiancé Joe’s grave.
On the train she meets Henry, another reticent convalescent of the Great War. There’s immediate chemistry between her and Henry and finally Effie seems to acquire a possible future, except her front of wilful ignorance is still inviolable – perhaps because first she has to revisit the past and make order of it before she can allow herself any ongoing pathway.
Effie’s pilgrimage to France, a kind of series of annunciations, is now interspersed with flashbacks to the war, from the point of view of both Laurence and Joe. Most of the best writing in the novel is when we’re in the trenches or on the battlefields of the war. The author does an admirable job of evoking the terror and horror, the comradery and emotional inner life of a soldier’s life in those unprecedented times. “He slid into a shell hole. Small things crept in the busy earth. He stared at the blood, a startling slash of vermillion in a sepia landscape. He watched its progress, marbling in the mud. Dirt fell in fragile showers that fizzed like fireworks. The mud was in his eyes, in his ears, in his mouth. The dirt ground against his teeth.”
All the central characters have a defining hashtag, a recurring motif. Effie has her cakes – a frivolity at the beginning that cleverly takes on a more restorative symbolism as the novel unfolds; Laurence throughout clings to his faith in narrative; Joe’s spirit creature is the bird. There’s a great scene when Joe is called upon to collect a homing pigeon: “As they were reaching the outskirts of the village a shell tore through the barn just behind. Suddenly the cage on his back was full of thrashing. The basket was full of feathered frenzy. Panic flailed in the box and then in his own chest. The wings seemed to be beating inside his rib cage and Joe couldn’t breathe.”) All three – cake, narrative and birds – will eventually reveal themselves to be purveyors of regeneration.
I don’t want to give the plot away only to say that it abounds with compelling twists and turns all the way through to the end. Now and again there’s a regret that the war wasn’t written in a more linear continuous form as perhaps a little of its gripping tension was lost by fragmenting the narrative. However there’s an organic authenticity about the fragmentation which poignantly evokes the damage the war did and the challenge of putting everything back together it threw up in its nightmarish afterglow.
July 20, 2014
This is a poignantly balanced story told in two timeframes - one during the First World War in the muddy and bloody trenches and fields of France, and another, 15 years later, following that same path through France - now in the process of repairing and trying somehow to forget - as Effie Shaw searches for the grave of her fiancé.
Effie is a likeable woman - loyal, kind, witty - and naïvely unaware of the truths of those she loved and lost, until she inherits a diary written by the soldier for whom she's acted as housekeeper and friend for 10 years, and instructions of a journey she must take through France as a condition of his will. What follows is an engaging, intriguing story as Effie sets out on the route instructed by Laurence in a series of `letters from the grave', to find the real truth of his - and her fiancé's - war.
I say `poignantly balanced' because of the skilled and utterly compelling way in which the author contrasts war-entrenched France with its later bruised, battered, optimistic self in those immediate post-war years. The scenes on the battlefields and in the trenches are heart-breaking. Clearly the author's knowledge of the time-period (the back flap tells us she has a PhD in history with a special interest in WW1) comes to the fore in creating these bloody scenes as incredibly believable moments. But there's no dry history here - it is her skill as a novelist and observant human being that takes us inside the heads of those men to show their fears, desires, the way in which the smallest pleasure comes to mean so much, and the total desperation of those who know their odds of dying as they climb over the edge of the trench far outweigh their chances of survival.
This would be a relentlessly dark read if not for the other people with whom Effie mingles - the ladies at the tearoom back home, the folk she meets along her journey, Henry, the wounded soldier who encourages her to be more daring, to dance, to drink champagne and, of course, Reginald... the affable dog with a penchant for sugared mice and brandy cream. Their stories balance the bleak landscape of war-ridden France and curiously act both as respite from those darker scenes and also as poignant contrast, ensuring the full horror of that war, those thousands of wasted lives, remains with the reader long after the final page has been turned.
Effie is a likeable woman - loyal, kind, witty - and naïvely unaware of the truths of those she loved and lost, until she inherits a diary written by the soldier for whom she's acted as housekeeper and friend for 10 years, and instructions of a journey she must take through France as a condition of his will. What follows is an engaging, intriguing story as Effie sets out on the route instructed by Laurence in a series of `letters from the grave', to find the real truth of his - and her fiancé's - war.
I say `poignantly balanced' because of the skilled and utterly compelling way in which the author contrasts war-entrenched France with its later bruised, battered, optimistic self in those immediate post-war years. The scenes on the battlefields and in the trenches are heart-breaking. Clearly the author's knowledge of the time-period (the back flap tells us she has a PhD in history with a special interest in WW1) comes to the fore in creating these bloody scenes as incredibly believable moments. But there's no dry history here - it is her skill as a novelist and observant human being that takes us inside the heads of those men to show their fears, desires, the way in which the smallest pleasure comes to mean so much, and the total desperation of those who know their odds of dying as they climb over the edge of the trench far outweigh their chances of survival.
This would be a relentlessly dark read if not for the other people with whom Effie mingles - the ladies at the tearoom back home, the folk she meets along her journey, Henry, the wounded soldier who encourages her to be more daring, to dance, to drink champagne and, of course, Reginald... the affable dog with a penchant for sugared mice and brandy cream. Their stories balance the bleak landscape of war-ridden France and curiously act both as respite from those darker scenes and also as poignant contrast, ensuring the full horror of that war, those thousands of wasted lives, remains with the reader long after the final page has been turned.
July 12, 2024
I have been waiting for this book to be republished since I read and loved The Photographer of The Lost, When I Come Home Again, The Visitors and Good Taste and it was well worth waiting for. Caroline Scott writes beautifully and has a talent for portraying the horror of the Great War and its aftermath and the effects on a generation without the reader being subjected to pages and pages of gore. Effie is a lovely protagonist and her adventures in Paris and Ypres whilst following Laurie’s posthumous instructions were heartwarming. I loved Laurie (and the fact that Effie was completely unaware that he had been in love with her since before the war) and it was obvious that she did love him too, not realising how much until after his death. I also liked Henry, with his own secrets and tragic memories of the war, and as I always like a canine character, I have a soft spot for Reginald! I absolutely loved this book, thoroughly recommend it and eagerly await Caroline Scott’s next book
July 14, 2016
A really good read about World War 1 and its aftermath. Manages to be both heartbreaking and very funny at times with the main character Effie a delightful creation.
September 1, 2025
A beautifully written novel that sensitivity explores the lives of those who survived the battlefields of WWI. A heartbreaking, powerful and ultimately uplifting read from one of my favourite authors.
October 17, 2022
This book is one of the most beautiful things I've ever read, such a remarkable work and all the more remarkable for its deft handling of an era fraught with unresolved loss.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews