The latest installment in the Maisie Dobbs series finds Maisie exploring an Indian subculture that is just beginning to appear in London. It’s 1933 and Mahatma Ghandi has begun his work in India, far off rumblings that barely intrude on the consciousness of most Londoners. Closer to home, a man named Hitler has been appointed chancellor of Germany, but again, very few are concerned about what’s happening in Europe. Meanwhile, Maisie is feeling restless. Her employee, Billy, who was badly beaten up in the last installment, has returned to work but it’s obvious he’s not really well yet. The body of an Indian woman, clad in a bright sari and shot right through the red bindi mark on her forehead, is found floating in a canal in a poorer area of London. Her brother arrives from India 2 months later, outraged that so little has been done to find the murderer. Maisie is called in to help.
The murdered woman, Usha Pramal, was a most unusual person. She came from a well-off family and was highly educated, yet she chose to become a governess to a British family and travel with them to England. At the time of her death, however, she was living in an Ayah’s Hostel, a home for Indian women who traveled far from home with British families and then were abandoned when their services were no longer needed. Usha is saving money to return to India and open a school for girls. As Maisie visits the hostel and meets the people who run it and the other residents of the area, her suspicions begin to rise. Usha emerges as a most unusual woman, someone who had a gift of touching everyone she met. Could someone have loved her so much they killed her? Meanwhile, Maisie’s office has also been called upon to investigate a case of a boy who’s run away from his boarding school, and whose father seems curiously unaffected by his disappearance. Maisie has been trained that there’s no such thing as coincidence, and when she learns of an Indian connection, she pursues things further.
Leaving Everything Most Loved is a double-edged title, referring both to Usha’s journey from India and to Maisie’s own restlessness and desire to travel beyond her island home, which would in effect cause her to leave the things she most loves. As she talks to Indian and British people who’ve made similar decisions, she comes to a decision.
Leaving Everything Most Loved does an excellent job of capturing a time and place. It was interesting to note the racism in British society of the time (which was hardly shocking) and to note places of its absence, which was much more surprising, to learn of certain mixed couples who had found a measure of acceptance in their respective circles. I also appreciated author Jacqueline Winspear’s ability to place this novel into the wider context of international relations of the time. My only problem was that Maisie herself felt a little too modern, with her ready acceptance of new cultures. Even the very best of us are to a certain extent products of our time and culture, and even a very enlightened woman in 1930s would probably still have used terms and had opinions that we would find squirm-inducing today. This didn’t spoil the book for me, but I felt (and have felt before) that Maisie is in many ways more like a time-traveler from our times than a true creature of the 1930s. However, I very much enjoyed this 10th installment in the Maisie Dobbs series.
Sky says
I had not heard of these books, they sound intriguing. Thank you for the review!
Sky
Brooke says
I’ve seen books by this author, but I’ve never read any of them.