Grandson of a Birch

The Birch family of Camden, London will be spending their first Christmas together in several years. The bad news is that the gathering at the family’s country house, Weyfield Hall, near Blakenham, Norfolk, is not voluntary. They have been forced into quarantine because older daughter Olivia (Wiv), who is a doctor, is jetting home from Liberia after doing a five month stint with HELP fighting the Haag virus.

This is the premise of Francesca Hornak’s debut novel Seven Days of Us. Hornak is an English journalist who has published two non-fiction books along with several newspaper and magazine articles. She refers to the disease as Haag, which is an acronym for Hepatitis A antigen. But judging by Olivia’s flashbacks to children puking themselves to death, it is what the rest of us have learned to call Ebola.

There are four Birches facing this week’s confinement, starting when Olivia returns on December 23rd, and each of them is bringing a secret to the house. They all intend to reveal the secret at what they consider to be an opportune time; they just don’t want to let it spoil the holiday or become a distraction from Christmas 2016. Of course, living at such close quarters pretty well guarantees that the secrets will be revealed at a time and in a manner that none of the secret holders anticipates.

Andrew, the father of the family, used to be a foreign correspondent for The Times. But for the last fourteen years, he has been hammering out mostly critical restaurant reviews for The World magazine. About a year ago, he received a letter from a woman that he had a onenight fling with in Beirut early in 1980. She has written to inform him that she is dying and that their coupling produced a son who was put up for adoption.

Andrew has sat on this letter, making no effort to find the man. Imagine his surprise when he receives an e-mail from Jesse Robinson, who announces that he was raised by adoptive parents in Iowa. He now seems to be a stereotypical Californian: an openly gay vegetarian who makes documentary films. More importantly, he is coming to England for the Christmas holiday and is hoping to look Andrew up.

Emma, the mother of the Birch clan, whose family had long owned Weyfield, has recently been told by Dr. Singer that the lump under her arm is nonhodgkin’s lymphoma. She will need to start cancer treatment as soon as possible after Christmas.

Olivia, age 32, and Sean Coughlan, the Irish paediatrician who has accompanied her on the flight from Monrovia, have done more than break their employer’s “no touching” rule when not wearing their PPE (personal protective equipment) suits over the last three months.

And Phoebe, age 29, who works for a television studio, has just become engaged to her boyfriend of six years, George Marsham-smith. But she is having misgivings about the arrangement. George has never told her “I love you”, and she really doesn’t like the ring that George has picked.

Hornak manages a couple of interesting tricks in this book. Each day is a large chapter on its own. But every day is divided into a series of vignettes told from the point of view of the different characters. The chapters titled Andrew present what is happening from Andrew’s perspective. Chapters titled Phoebe or Emma or Jesse are presented from the perspectives of those characters.

She presents each small chapter as a newspaper despatch, with a dateline. But the datelines are the time of day and the room in the house where the action begins. One thing that really would help the reader’s understanding is a sketch of the layout of Weyfield Hall. This would help to understand if the action is upstairs or downstairs, in the front or in the back. “The Willow Room” is not very informative.

Another clever device Hornak uses is emails as a means of telling the reader what is really on different characters’ minds. This way she highlights the differences between what the family members are telling each other and what they are telling people in the outside world.

One of the best parts of the story is the family tradition of a Boxing Day “clear-out”. They ascend into the attics and rummage through old correspondence and documents. This would not be so exciting if some family members were not trying to hide things amongst the junk.

This is an enjoyable book, with some dramatic plot twists as the various secrets are revealed. Seven Days of Us is now available at the Lennoxville Library.

The Lennoxville Library is looking for new board members to fill some vacancies that have developed over the past year. Interested members of the Library should contact the Library at 819-562-4949 before February 26th to make inquiries and/or offer their services. They can also email us at bibliolen@gmail.com