'You don't mean you're going to divorce him?' Miss Spanner said with
horror.
A sophisticated, emotive novel, Chatterton Square concerns the complex
web of relationships between two neighboring families, the Blacketts and
the Frasers. Framed by the advance of the Second World War, the subtle
mechanics of marriage and love are laid bare through the observation of
three of the marital options open to the mid-century woman: unmarried,
separated, miserably married. Chatterton Square was published ten
years after calls for a change in divorce law resulted in the
Matrimonial Causes Act 1937. Despite there being more legal provision
for women seeking divorce, the suggestion of it remained shocking,
providing the central focus for Young's novel.
British Library Women Writers 1940's.
Part of a curated collection of forgotten works by early to mid-century
women writers, the British Library Women Writers series highlights the
best middlebrow fiction from the 1910s to the 1960s, offering escapism,
popular appeal and plenty of period detail to amuse, surprise and
inform.