Jane Gardam, one of my favorite contemporary British novelists, died on April 28th at the age of 96.  The winner of two Whitbread Awards and named an OBE, her novel, “Old Filth” was named by the BBC as one of the 100 greatest British novels. I had read and loved her late work, the trilogy comprising “Old Filth”, “The Man in the Wooden Hat”, and “Last Friends” published in 2013.

To honor her memory, I decided to read one of her earlier novels. I found six written between 1977 and 1996 on the shelf at the Cambridge Public Library, and after leafing through them, I chose “Crusoes’s Daughter” largely on the basis of the Preface she wrote for the 2012 edition I was holding. In that preface, she wrote “This, by far the favourite of all my books ….would be the one that mattered. I wanted to write a novel with more depth, less comic-sardonic, less self-congratulatory, less about my childhood adventures and passions; in fact I wanted to obliterate self and become a writer of substance and wisdom.”

That she did in this very entertaining gem of a novel that while starting slowly, eventually grabbed me and had me rushing back to it every time I had some open time.  The story is short on action and long on character in both senses of the word. Polly Flint is orphaned out at the age of six to her two maiden aunts, Frances and Mary, who along with Mrs. Woods and the maid, Charlotte, live in a big yellow house on a marsh on the northeast coast of England.  We witness Polly growing up until she reaches the age of 87 in the final chapter.  Along the way, we meet a host of fascinating and odd characters—Mr. Thwaite who wished to marry Frances but was not allowed to; his sister Celia whose home is a refuge for artists, writers, and poets who need rest and rehab; the Zeit family, German Jews who owned the iron works across the marsh from the yellow house, and their son, Theo, who loves Polly and who sends his two daughters to her on the Kinder Train in 1939.  And there are so many more, including Robinson Crusoe who is Polly’s consistent source of wisdom and guidance.

This is a big novel masquerading as a small one. I think it matches up well to the trilogy, though if you’re going to read only one Gardam (and I do hope you will), read “Old Filth” which by the way stands for “Failed in London, tried Hong Kong”.  Another friend has passed away.