Love Divine, the debut novella by Ysenda Maxtone Graham, is set in the leafy, fictional parish of Lamley Green and weaves together a tableau of stories about the community. The title comes from the hymn ‘Come Down, O Love Divine’; but beneath this bourgeois Church of England world of round-robins and milky tea is a satirical portrait of a parish with a dark underbelly.
Maxtone Graham perfectly captures hypocritical English chit-chat, and the polyphony of perspectives works well. The central thread concerns Lucy Fanthorpe, 54, who is hit by the sudden death of her beloved husband Nick and the gradual realisation that he might have been having an affair. One of my favourite characters is Hugh, the lonely schoolmaster. Who knew that a musty, dusty Latin teacher learning to make vol-au-vents from scratch with only his dog Odo as witness could be so moving? Then there’s Chantelle, a Prada-loving parvenu who starts attending church simply to get her daughter into the local church school; and there’s even a Pilates-practising archdeacon. And Carol, the voice of doom, who scours the papers for far-off conflicts for her lugubrious intercessions. As one churchgoer reflects: ‘Are there really that many wars going on?’
The style is a curate’s egg – a mix of narrative and screenplay dialogue. Sometimes scenes sit like the excess footage of a documentary, such as the entire minutes from a PCC meeting. But there are comedic gems throughout. Hidden in the minutes we have: ‘There have been a few teething problems with the motion-sensor lighting. The builders failed to consider that when someone is sitting on the toilet, they actually don’t move.’ It’s amid this English humour that rather unheimlich clues are dropped: a teddy bear with snipped out eyes and Easter eggs filled with toothpaste.
The jobsworthiness of modern life is nailed perfectly in the depiction of ‘sadmin’ – such as Lucy incurring a speeding ticket when driving to hospital to be with her dying husband. And the bureaucracy at St Luke’s is also well wrought: new rector applications, fiscal worries and concerns over Fairtrade coffee and flower guilds.
Love Divine is a slow burn; but it’s redeemed by the quirky docu-fiction style. The publisher Slightly Foxed deserves special mention for its beautiful clothbound hardback edition. Reading the book is like going to a church service as a non-believer: you come for the tea and stay for the transformation.
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