Lead Review (The Eights)
- Book: The Eights
- Location: Oxford
- Author: Joanna Miller
When you go to Oxford, it is a city that exudes a strong sense of the footsteps past, and this novel taps into that rich history. Four young women are the first “undergraduettes” to attend the university, embracing their studies in the Michaelmas Term 1920 at St Hugh’s College (which “looks like a home for lost governesses”). The story evolves through the Hilary and Trinity Terms into Summer 1921.
This is the story of a friendship group in Corridor 8 at the College. They were the first cohort of female students after the Great War to study for a full degree, and as such they were pioneers. Beatrice, Dora, Marianne and Otto (Ottoline) immediately bond, Each has a different backstory and personality – and initially I felt they were going to be of a ‘type’, cliché, even – but in this author’s capable hands they blossom and develop into wonderfully individual characters.
The characters are beautifully set in the context of their era and there is great excitement surrounding the works of an emerging author called Agatha Christie. There are still the reverberations of the war years, affecting one young woman in particular, and there is involvement with the emerging suffragette movement.
The young women have to abide by rigorous rules and wear specific clothes, running the daily gauntlet of male undergraduates, who resent their presence and make fun of them. But as a group they are determined to make their way, despite the innumerable obstacles and barriers.
The sense of time and place is beautifully brought to life in the extremely competent storytelling of this debut author, and I really look forward to what she serves up next. She will gain a loyal following as she builds her oeuvre, there is no doubt about that.
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