A Wreath for the Enemy by Pamela Frankau
Review by Hannah Clark
‘In my youth,’ muses our central protagonist, Penelope, at the ripe old age of nineteen, ‘I had an overwhelming passion to be like other people. Other people were a whole romantic race, miles beyond my reach. Not now. I don't really think that they exist, except in the eye of the beholder.’ Like all precocious teenagers, Penelope is insufferable. When the novel begins she is writing an ‘Anthology of Hates’ and raging at the world for precious little reason other than not particularly enjoying her family's bohemian existence running a hotel that caters to fading stars and dispossessed European nobility.
She longs to have a family like the Bradley's: an upper-middle class, nuclear family from rural England. Penelope briefly befriends the Bradley children, Don and Eva, but a minor tragedy ends their budding friendship and awakens Penelope and Don's moral compasses.
A Wreath for the Enemy is told from four contrasting perspectives in an increasingly confusing jumble of first-person narratives, Frankau pulling gently at those loose threads of personal moral conflict which are so often the touchstones of youthful self-discovery. Penelope and Don are guided through their teenage angst by a cast of exuberant and deftly drawn misfits, and, despite the several deaths that punctuate the plot, the novel is less concerned with navigating loss than what it takes to learn to live life well. Penelope is allowed to wallow in her confused personal affairs and conflicting obligations without external judgement, and Don is able to wrestle his conscience and his fears of moral inadequacy with little authorial interference. Living, Frankau seems keen to say, is far more fractious than dying.
A Wreath for the Enemy is a compelling and ambitiously crafted coming of age story — one that is still emotionally resonant sixty-nine years after its initial publication, and more than deserving of renewed attention.
A Wreath for the Enemy is published by Daunt Books, 6th July 2023