Kathy Page has written a year-spanning and incredibly readable novel in Dear Evelyn. The story begins pre-WW2, and we follow Evelyn and Harry through wartime and afterwards, through hard times and good, until old age. Not that Evelyn ever finds anything good.

I found the beginning years more carefully drawn- once they have their children, time skips right along. A parent to three myself, I understand that this does really happen (I have absolutely no memory of the late 80’s, early 90’s for example), but I found myself yearning for a few more details between decades.

Harry loves Evelyn much more than she loves him- her feelings are rarely mentioned, unless they are annoyance, and their relationship seems to be one of her complaining and him meeting any of her desires. I felt for him. I wanted to feel for her, but her waspishness reminded me of the bitterness I developed during my marriage...something that I rejected and fled.

The war scenes are especially gripping and carry the weight of this novel. The author says she used some of of her father’s letters to her mother when he was deployed as research- perhaps this is why this section reads the truest.

I found Evelyn a bit tiresome (as was Harry) - but I felt sorrier for Harry, especially as he is placed in a home.

Worth a read. I gulped it back in one evening. It held my attention throughout. Clever scene and time cutting made the story run along. ( )

Het kan: een liefdes- en huwelijksroman zonder sentimentele kitsch die begint bij de geboorte en eindigt met de dood. Een verhaal van twee doodgewone mensen, Harry en Evelyn, dat laat zien hoe hun gevoelens voor elkaar met de tijdgeest mee veranderen. En hoe sluipend of radicaal hun machtsverhoudingen ondermijnd worden wanneer de levenscirkel bijna rond is.
Ze leren elkaar op een middag in een Londense bibliotheek kennen. Harry, een sensitieve natuur- en literatuurliefhebber, is gefascineerd door de wilskrachtige Evelyn en hij zal dat ook altijd blijven. Maar de ander gelukkig maken blijkt iets wat hen een leven lang veel moeite kost.
Ze doen beiden hun uiterste best. Evelyn probeert van hun eigenwijze dochters fatsoenlijke vrouwen te maken en haar ‘appetijt voor de betere dingen’ voor Harry te verbergen. Harry doet er alles aan om zijn middenstandersdroom van een groot en licht huis met een keuken met een stalen afwasbak waar te maken.
Page is een meester van de tussentonen en laat ons zien hoe Harry in zijn streven naar een fatsoenlijk leven en Evelyn in haar onverzadigbaar perfectionisme langzaam uitgeput raken. Er sluipt een melancholie in het huwelijk, die het enthousiasme voor lange wandelingen en de liefde voor gedichten opvreet, opslokt, vernielt. Waren de wederzijdse teleurstellingen op hun oude dag te vermijden geweest? Wat heeft het evenwicht in hun machts- en liefdesverhoudingen verstoord, en waar hebben ze de verkeerde afslag genomen?
Een huwelijk van zeventig jaar dat leest als een thriller, verteld op het hoogste literaire Gardam-niveau. Voor gehuwden en ongehuwden: dringend lezen! (bron Standaard Boekhandel)

Een gouden raad: word géén Evelyn!! ( )

I have a real affinity for Canadian authors but Kathy Page is a new one for me. After reading her beautifully written novel about the love and marriage of Harry and Evelyn Miles I will be seeking out more of her work.

The title would lead you to believe that this is an epistolary novel but that's not really true. It does have some excerpts of letters, mostly Harry's letters to Evelyn from Egypt during WWII, letters that are actually, word for word, letters written by the author's father; but for the most part the novel is a regularly framed narrative that covers their 70 years of marriage.

Although Page definitely brings out the joy and struggle of raising a family in the middle of the 20th century, I found the sections describing the changes that a marriage goes through, even after dealing with difficulties in raising children, to be the most heartbreaking, and yet probably very common.

Towards the end of the book, Harry and Evelyn are quite elderly and facing the extreme challenges of aging. Evelyn is distraught:

"What no one seemed to understand was that he was not the man she had married. Not the man who had written those letters in the war, or come back from it and built the house....The fact was that things ended. She felt suddenly very weak, sat down on the bed, put her head in her hands and sobbed until there was not a sound left in her."

Harry's got a quite different take:

"Evelyn, Evelyn! He had loved her all his adult life, long after the gloss of their youth and it's illusions had been worn away and left them with the essentials of who they were, along with a collection of sometimes contradictory memories...He had never denied her anything, material or emotional, that he could provide, and what she desired now was his absence from her daily life. Evelyn! She was frightened by weakness. It did help considerably to understand her from the inside. To align himself in that way with her."

Beautifully written, heartbreaking but at the same time so realistic, I was completely absorbed by Harry and Evelyn's story. Very highly recommended. ( )

It is the eve of WWII and Harry Miles rushes to the library entering at the reference library doors just as Evelyn Hill exits, several books in her arms. A copy of Du Maurier’s “Rebecca” escapes her grasp and falls. Harry picks it up. “Is it any good?” he asks. “I’ll find out when I read it, she tells him.” And so begins a relationship, and the story of a marriage that lasts for decades until death separates the two. And from the dust jacket: It “explores how two very different people come together to shape and reshape each other over a lifetime.”

While not a completely epistolary novel as the title might suggest, the book does include many letters during the war years, some of which the author has taken in part, or whole, from her own father’s letters. A captivating story from beginning to end, this is a beautifully-written story; intimate, compassionate and remarkably honest. ( )

The British-Canadian author, Kathy Page, is new to me, so I did not know what to expect in DEAR EVELYN. Initially I was intrigued by the young protagonist Harry Miles' interest in poetry, and how it was stimulated by the efforts of a teacher who was a disfigured, damaged veteran of the Great War. The poetry of Edward Thomas plays a central role throughout the novel, which also interested me, because, although I'm not really familiar with Thomas's work, I had recently read a fascinating essay on Thomas and his place in the pantheon of war poets in Samuel Hynes' thoughtful collection, ON WAR AND WRITING. Page sprinkles pertinent lines of Thomas's poems throughout her narrative and makes it plain that Harry, a veteran of the North Africa campaign in the Second World War, a lover of nature, and a man who yearns for a more rewarding, literary life, is a great admirer of Thomas, and has studied the obscure poet's work and life in great detail.

So there's that - the literary element - which drew me in. And then there was Evelyn, the title character, a fiery, determined, ambitious woman who evolves in ways that make her, variously, both admirable and unlikable. Harry's love for her, however, remains constant and unshakable. And yet, and yet ...

DEAR EVELYN gets its title from the many letters Harry writes to her from the war. Page tells us, in her Acknowledgements, that these letters - indeed, the book itself - were inspired by her own father's letters to her mother during WWII. How "dear" Evelyn actually is will probably be a debatable point for many readers, due to her increasingly nit-picking, inflexible ways and total inability to curb her sharp tongue or to apologize - ever! And although Harry never really stops loving Evelyn, he also realized that "there was a line between strong-minded and outrageous that Evelyn now crossed with increasing frequency."

Because at the heart of this absolutely beautiful novel is a marriage that endures for over seventy years, giving you a front-row seat at how everyday life (Harry is a kind of corporate "bean counter," financially successful if unhappy in his work) , family pressures (there are three daughters, the last one a change-of-life 'surprise'), and the physical indignities of aging can change people and reverse roles in a relationship.

There is a particular passage which might explain the almost morbid fascination some readers will feel in reading this book. In it Harry is reading yet another biography of the poet Edward Thomas and finds that he identifies more closely with the poet's wife, Helen, "because she was forever fitting herself around someone driven and intransigent. And it was oddly gripping ... though also strange, to learn about the intricacies of another couple's married life." Gripping indeed, perhaps even voyeuristic.

But here's the thing. Harry and Evelyn became so real to me as I followed their long life's journey together that I wanted so badly for things to to turn out right for them, as a couple. I wanted that "happily ever after" thing for them, wanted them to be okay. Maybe it's because my wife and I are now fifty -plus years into our life together. Many of the things that Harry and Evelyn experience and manage to get through - well, us too.

I literally had trouble putting this book down. This couple - young, then middle-aged, and, finally, old - were so real, so utterly human, so important. I was weeping as I read the final pages. Big tears - my wife was asking me what was wrong? I loved this book. I cannot recommend it highly enough. Bravo, Ms Page. Bravo!

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER ( )