This month’s book club’s theme was “Anything You Want to Read”. After striking out twice choosing novels that turned out to be duds, I didn’t want to waste any more time, so I thought I’d try a novel from an author that I had previously enjoyed. I liked the two other novels that Jennifer Robson had written, so when I saw Coronation Year her latest novel on the shelf, I decided to give it a try. I am certainly not a Monarchist, and I was a little scared given the title, but once I started reading, I enjoyed the story.
The novel is not about the Coronation of young Queen Elizabeth itself, but certainly her coronation plays a big part in the storyline. The novel is set in London in the first five months of 1953, and the countdown to the Coronation, and centers around the Blue Lion Hotel, its staff, and boarders, as they anticipate the big event.
The Blue Lion Hotel was built in the 1500’s and had been run by the Howard family from the beginning, however, the novel finds the Blue Lion hotel in financial decline. Edie Howard, the present owner is last descendant of the Howard line and the first female to run the hotel. Edie had inherited the hotel from her father, who had left it in a bad financial state.
Edie had grown up in the hotel and she now dedicated her life to managing it and bringing it back financially. She had sacrificed most of her own time and money to keep the hotel going. She was kind and generous to her staff and to the handful of longtime borders in the hotel, some of which were more of a deficit than a credit, but to Edie, they are all like family.
Edie was banking on The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth a major big event, to hopefully generate enough money to change the direction of the hotel’s finances. Luckily for the hotel, the Coronation Parade was set to run down the street in right front of the Blue Lion, and Edie hoped that an influx of wealthy guests paying higher prices for the rooms with windows overlooking the Queen’s route, would save the hotel financially.
Two of the hotel’s newest boarders play an important role in the novel’s plot. One of the new guests is Jamie, an East Indian war hero who had worked in dangerous field of bomb disposal. Since the War, Jamie had become a gifted painter, who had been given a commission to paint a picture of the Queen’s carriage as it proceeds in front of the Journeyman’s building. Jamie took a room at the Blue Lion month’s before the event, because the Journeyman’s building sits right across the street, and he needed to do preparation drawings of the building for the painting, before the Queen’s Parade.
The other important new guest is Stella, a young Jewish concentration camp survivor from Italy. Stella is a talented photographer, who had recently managed to procure a position at a British photo-based news magazine. Her parents, who had been killed in the concentration camps, had run an Italian Tourist Guide before the War and they had known Edie and the Blue Lion Hotel during their work for their tourist guide publication. When Stella got the job and moved to London, she took a room at the hotel, because she knew no one else and had a connection with the hotel through her parent’s.
Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation is of course the major driver in the plot, but as its date approaches, a mystery arises that threatens the hotel’s future. It seems that someone is trying to sabotage the hotel before the coronation, and the excitement builds in the novel as the Queen’s Coronation approaches, and the plot to sabotage the hotel start to converge.
Again with Coronation Year, the author Jennifer Robson didn’t let me down.
You can view my paintings at: davidmarchant2.ca
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