75. The Spring Madness of Mr. Sermon by R. F. Delderfield

If you see a Delderfield, you gotta pick it up.  That's my new motto.  Can't remember where I found this, but my on-deck shelf was groaning and yet I knew I had to have it.  I took it with me on a trip to America which would involve much hanging with friends.  I thought it would offer easy reading in small bursts and this turned out to be true.

It starts out with a pretty funny bang.  Milquetoast professor at a middling prep school suddenly loses his shit and beats the snot out of a bad kid who set off a stink bomb.  He then goes home and realizes that his marriage and home life are also no longer tolerable so he takes off with a rucksack and 8 pounds in his pocket.  The first third of the book is deeply enjoyable, with a Delderfieldian collection of rough and honest and lovable English people and a series of situations that are never tense, all contributing to the awakening of confidence in Mr. Sermon.  His first encounter is really the best, where he hitches a ride with an antique seller, helps him out in his business by pretending to be a gentleman buyer and then gets totally drunk while entertaining the locals on the piano.  It's just a great party scene.

Eventually, the narrative settles down to Mr. Sermon living in this beachside town, getting a job as the waterfront supervisor and developing a friendship with a younger woman whose dad is the headmaster of the good kind of school that Mr. Sermon wishes he had taught at.  For the reader, you really want to know how it will resolve and unfortunately, the central conflict reverts back to his relationship with his wife. The book loses its spontaneous fun and starts to fall into weird early '60s gender clichés and unrealistic emotional developments.  It's all done gently and thoughtfully but is ultimately quite silly and deeply sexist, to the point where it is almost cancellable in today's environment (his wife just needed a good spanking).  I give Delderfield the benefit of the doubt and it was more the simplicity of the way they turned their marriage around that turned me off more than the stereotypes (and honestly these were much more bearable than when John D. MacDonald does them).

So the second half fell flat for me but I still really enjoyed the book.  The opening chapters are worth it alone.  It's ultimately a middle-age male fantasy, wrapped up in rich locations and characters with a love of all this good and simple in non-snobby England.