The Common Years
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The Common Years
Narrated by:
Imogen Church
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Narrated by:
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Imogen Church
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By:
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Jilly Cooper
About this listen
Jilly Cooper has kept a diary about life on Putney Common. Noting the effects of the changing seasons and writing about her encounters with dogs and humans, Cooper creates an affectionate and enthralling portrait of her everyday life.
Cooper writes lyrically about the natural world, tellingly about the sorrows and joys of caring for dogs and children and outrageously about the gossip, illicit romances and jealousies of small community life.
©1984 Jilly Cooper (P)2018 W.F. Howes LtdListeners also enjoyed...
Jilly at her best
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A love letter to the common
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Alas, and rather surprisingly, this book does not give readers an insight into Cooper's writing of her best seller, other than to briefly mention losing her manuscript on a drunken bus journey home and having to start over.
What this book does inform us on is Jilly's eye for nature and her love of dogs. Oddly, given the subject matter of her aforementioned best seller, Riders, no such affection for horses is evident.
If you're a dog lover and/or a person who enjoys plants and flowers, this is right down your street. Cooper takes the reader on a ten year journey as she walks her dogs on Putney common and the colourful characters she meets and gets to know along the way. As someone who is familiar with the common, I was surprised how so many places have names that I had no clue about. To me, the common was a place I walked my dog in the 90's. There was grass, trees and bushes. I had no further attention paid to this flora. However, Cooper's encyclopedic knowledge of the multitude of plant and flower varieties, as well as the types of trees,is astonishing. It goes to show how little the likes of me are aware of the huge variety in every day nature.
For me, what made this book most appealing apart from being set in my old stomping ground was the people she got to know and the sense of community, good and bad, that seems to have all but vanished today.
This account is charming, funny, sad and revealing. I have to say that it is beautifully and intuitively read to perfection by Imogen Church. Her skills at infusing just the right intonation and feeling into every word is incredible. She is also capable of perfect French and is able to do multiple accents with ease. She is truly a most talented narrator and brings this account to life.
My main critique of this is that it's perhaps a shade too long and once you've heard about various trees, plants and flowers for the umpteenth time, it becomes a tad tedious. This account is revealing into Cooper's character in ways that, for me, were not so flattering. She loves her dogs but tends to over anthropomorphise them, giving them way too much leeway that led to tragic outcomes more than once. I used to keep my dog on a long extendable lead while walking him because of his unpredictable nature, as a result, I never had any cause for concern or had to take the actions Cooper did as a result of her over indulgent attitude toward her dogs.
I was also shocked how the death of her father, something she claimed she was "hellishly" too busy to make the time to see him before his passing, barely covered a paragraph or two and yet the loss of a dog saw her grieve far more intensely. Her routine, such as it was detailed here, saw her spend hours each day on the common with her dogs. I don't consider that to be too busy to visit your dying father. She also seemed to consider waking around 8AM to be early at over 40 years of age and the only money worries mentioned saw her have to downsize her staff while still being able to afford sending her son to boarding school. Quite a different reality compared to the vast majority of ordinary people, so I'd say a life that was far easier than most. Cooper experiences the world in a very different way to most of us. I found it telling that those who couldn't afford to run the heating were considered "poor" by her. As I say, not the most flattering insight into her personality but interesting all the same.
I also found the reasons she wanted to leave Putney somewhat absurd. Perhaps she should've tried living in Battersea in the early 70's, as I had, to see what a really bad area was.
Nevertheless, a fascinating insight in life in Putney from 1972 to 1982.
Charming and Revealing
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The common years
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