The writing style is beautiful and I enjoyed it very much.
Some of the darker topics in this book were not really investigated fully.
It was just lacking some oomph

Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

Although I loved Carys Davies' earlier novel, West, this one just didn't hit the same highs for me. Whilst the other was startling, thought-provoking and lingering, The Mission House was wholly forgettable. Honestly, if I had to give you an elevator pitch, I don't think I'd be able to.

The Mission House is a deceptively quiet novel from the Welsh author Carys Davies. On the outside it’s a subdued and subtle tale about a lonely man while inside there’s a darker thread about the continuing legacy of British imperialism in India.

These two dimensions come together in the shape of Hilary Byrd, a middle-aged librarian from London who is travelling alone in India. A chance encounter with a padre on a train gives him an opportunity to swap the unbearably hot, dusty plains for the cool of the mountains. In the hill station of Ooty, Byrd settles into a bungalow in the garden of the padre’s mission house.

Gradually it becomes apparent that it’s not just the heat that Byrd is escaping. Back home in Britain he’d suffered a nervous breakdown when his once-quiet library was taken over by “the tapping of keyboards and the singing of babies and the hysterical shouting of the drunk and the angry [and] the loud show-offy inquiries of the family history folk. ”

In the Mission House at Ooty, his equilibrium is restored by the temperate climate and the comfort of the familiar. His daily routine takes in visits to places that make him feel as if he were back home: the neat and orderly botanical gardens, the peaceful Victorian style library”; the King Star chocolate shop stocked with bars of fruit-and-nut, and Higginbotham’s bookshop with its supply of Penguin Classics.

Peace and tranquility is further enhanced when Hilary is asked to help the padre’s orphaned housekeeper, Priscilla, to read, bake and sew. His time is soon occupied with teaching Priscilla to bake sponge cakes scones and to stitch, reviving the skills he’d learned from a maiden aunt. At night, the pair read from fairy tales and old Laydbird books under the watchful eyes of the padre.

But Byrd’s peace of mind rests on a delusion which Carys Davies suggests is the product of a westerner’s sense of superiority.

When Byrd warms to the idea of marrying Priscilla it’s not because he loves her but because he pities her as a lame orphan alone in the world. The books he chooses for her reading practices are those he loved in his younger days but they’re from a world alien to her own culture and history. When we get inside the girl’s head it’s to find she actually hates the “horrible old books from the UK.”

The relationship which is even more revealing is that between Byrd and Jamshed, the aged driver of a rickety auto rickshaw. They meet, literally, as the result of an accident after which Jamshed becomes Byrd’s regular driver, taking the visitor on daily rounds of his favourite places.

As the weeks pass, a bond forms between this unlikely pair.

Byrd finds himself able to talk more openly about his anxieties to the old man, than he ever could to his doctor or his sister. But that’s only because he is talking to the back of Jamshed’s head and it’s only ever Byrd that does the talking.

He never inquires about the old man’s life or his health and never learns of the man’s concerns about earning enough money to keep his fuel tank full and fund his nephew’s extraordinary ambition to be a country and western singer. He’s so completely oblivious to Jamshed’s life that on one occasion he advises the driver to read Chekhov, blithely adding that the bookshop should have a Hindi translation.

Carys Davies’ characterisation is wonderful. Jamshed cuts a ridiculous figure when first seen in his mismatching footwear (one black flip flop and one red plastic cog) and washed out shirt bearing the slogan WORLD CLASS. As we get to know him, he emerges as a thoughtful and selfless man who methodically keeps a record of his life and the history of Ooty, capturing events big and small in colourful exercise books.

Davies presents Byrd as a figure to be pitied, a man completely at sea in the modern world, a “scarab beetle on its back … all its legs and arms waving about, rocking from side to side trying to flip itself the right way up”. He could be viewed as one more example of the hapless figure in a foreign country.

He seems to find his feet after a fashion, getting over his initial feelings of dislocation; the feeling that he belonged “in these foreign fields and also that he didn’t”. But his equilibrium has been achieved only by retreating back into the past, to the heyday of the British Empire. Byrd’s tragedy is to want life to stay the same at a time when Hindu nationalism is on the rise and the forces for change in India are gathering momentum.

This isn’t an overtly political novel. There are hints of unrest and unease — the padre at one point mentions “the beatings and the burnings, the lynchings and the riots.” — and an early clue that some misfortune befalls Byrd. But these never dominate the overall narrative about relationships and the failure to connect. It’s a novel that starts quietly in a rather understated manner, but deepens through an accumulation of details and perspectives to an unexpected conclusion.

Having loved West by this author I was very keen to read this. I did enjoy the way that the book felt that it was not set in a contemporary setting at times, and had a certain old-fashioned feeling to it. I particularly liked the character of Jamshed the rickshaw driver, and loved his efforts to improve himself and what he learned from his English passenger. I enjoyed the book up to a certain point but then felt it lost its way a bit, with the ending being slightly bizarre, and seeming out of step with what had happened before. A bit disappointing..

This novel has justifiably had a huge amount of interest. Carys Davies is a phenomenal writer and this latest novel is possibly her best yet. Read it.

Hilary Byrd, what a complex, infuriating, silly, clever, lovable contradiction of a character.
I emphasised with him in so many ways, chiefly his Library experience, like him the Library where I worked was turned into a community campus, so different from the hallowed and peaceful refuges that they used to be. Open access, self service machines, removal of reference books, no wonder he had a breakdown. Another part I loved was how he taught Priscilla to sew, those old terms tailors tack, french seam etc really bought back memories of sewing lessons and forgotten techniques, likewise the cookery lessons.
This amazing man, his misunderstandings, attitudes and warmth really resonates, his relationships with the Padre, Priscilla and Jamshed are all well described.
Descriptions of home and India, bring both places to life.
The ending just reinforces his basic essentially good intentions.
Thank you Carys for the heart warming and different novel.

I found this book quite enchanting. The characters were very real and I found myself caring for them.

This should have been right up my street: a literary book written by a distinguished author taking in topics of religion, love, colonial history, different and conflicting cultures; all stuff I usually love and indeed it was a book I couldn’t wait to get my teeth into, but something didn’t quite gel for me.

The Mission House is a strange book and it pains me to say this, but it is at once both intriguing and dull; fascinating and tedious; beautifully written but ultimately banal.
After much meandering, like its protagonist’s storyline, the book ultimately ends up going almost nowhere and saying very little about all of the topics that it touches on. I know that all sounds very harsh but it is my honest feeling on the book.

Having said all that, there is enough in this novel to make me still feel fondly about it, and I genuinely connected with at least some of the characters. So at the end of the day, I got enough out of The Mission House to make me want to search out more Carys Davies titles. I certainly did not feel that I had wasted my time reading this book, I just hoped for a little more.

"What was it, exactly, that he liked so much? Was it because it had an aura of home, or because it felt completely strange and new? The fact was, home by itself depressed him. Home made him ill. Home,since leaving the library,had become intolerable. ….. In the last few weeks here in the hills, he’d come to enjoy the hectic excitement of the place, the noise and the relentless activity, the colour and sparkle and the glittering untidiness of the streets which every day turned up something surprising …… And yet he wasn’t sure if he’d like it as much as he did if it wasn’t for the things that were like home and therefore made him feel at home – the calm orderliness of the Botanical Gardens, for instance ………….. and the piles of Penguin paperback books in Higginbotham’s, all in English, most of which he knew like the back of his hand. Perhaps – he found himself saying to the old man, Jamshed, as they drove through the town and Byrd sat on the floor of the clattering auto just behind him – it was the combination of the strange and familiar that suited him. Perhaps there was a balance that was just right for his personality. Perhaps it provided him with a sort of perfect equilibrium."

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The book tells the story of Hilary Byrd – a middle-aged, virginal Englishman whose relationship with the world was intermediated by his sister Wyn, with even she proving powerless to prevent some form of nervous breakdown bought on by the increasing encroachment of the 21st Century on the previous safe haven of the library where he works.

In desperation, and against his sister’s wishes, he decides to travel abroad to find himself and picks India. However this is not someone going to India to avoid the constrictions of England (as it’s the increasing disappearance of those constrictions that has unmoored him). Neither is it someone going to discover Eastern religion and mysticism as Byrd is very much an atheist with a very Western liberal view of faith and a non-practicing CofE head-knowledge of the bible (albeit with little understanding as shown by a complete lack of comprehension of the Cain and Abel story).

Early on he struggles with the noise and chaos of India and above all the heat – but (at the book’s start) he has found his place in the hill station of Ooty, where he stays in a temporarily empty mission house (the much younger missionary having returned temporarily to his home country of Canada), living next to the Padre and the latter’s housekeeper Priscilla (the last member of an orphanage who the Padre was persuaded to take in). The other main characters are Jamshed (a rather unsuccessful elderly auto-rickshaw driver who sees in Byrd his chance of a full-time customer, and shares Byrd’s views on religion) and Jamshed’s nephew Ravi (working as a hairdresser while he begs and borrows for his dream of becoming a fully-equipped – even with a horse - country and western singer).

The book is told in a series of short third party point of view sections varying across each of the main characters (plus a small number of others) and we get a sense of their different aims: the widowed Padre worried about the increasing religious violence in India, a worry encouraged by his daughter in America, but determined to find a husband for Priscilla before he goes; Byrd trying to restore his mental health, completely unaware of the religious undertones around him (despite staying in a Mission House and – I think symbolically – orientating himself by the church steeple), but getting stressed that the Padre is trying to set him up with Priscilla and then even more stressed when he realises he isn’t; Kamshed enjoying his new found regular income but distressed that Byrd will not engage with him as more of an equal; and Priscilla who shares Ravi’s dreams).

At the book’s end Byrd finds that the ways in which the town picks up something of an older England has a rather darker element.

For much of the time this is I felt a rather old fashioned and gentle novel; but it has a much more contemporary and violent side – latent for much of the novel but very apparent in its ending. In that respect of course the mix of “calm orderliness” and “hectic excitement” hectic excitement very deliberately matches Byrd’s impressions of the hill town (as in the opening quote of my review) although I would say that (continuing with that quote) the balance/equilibrium is perhaps not quite right for my reading tastes. Nevertheless this was an enjoyable read.

My thanks to Granta for an ARC via NetGalley

Hilary Byrd is a man born at the wrong time- the traditional English gentleman, alienated by modern life, suffering from depressive episodes. He flees his old life for a stay in India and finds a new sense of calm and happiness when he goes to live the mission house attached to a presbytery in the mountains, an area without the sultry climate and bustling life of the cities, that reminds him of the best of England. Soon he finds new interests in exploring the area by rickshaw with his driver, Jamshed, and a new purpose in teaching Priscilla, the Padre’s beloved young housekeeper and helper, to improve her English and other skills that will help her to find a husband. But religious and political differences are seething below the surface in the region, and the peace that Byrd has found cannot last. Like Carys Davies’s first short gem of a novel, “West,” this is an exquisitely written book about the pleasures and problems of embracing other cultures, improbable dreams, unlikely friendships and the beauty and challenge of nature. The author has a magic way with words, building a picture of each character subtly through telling detail and incident so that even minor figures come alive and invite sympathy and understanding. Her voice is so fresh and vibrant, and what seems like a simple story reveals layers of meaning that touch the heart. A lovely and memorable read.

Thanks to Netgalley and Grants for providing an arc for review

Like West before it, The Mission House is a spare, at times lovely, reflective, novel.

Set in the Ootacamund (Ooty) in Tamil Nadu state, this is a different take on the old colonial idea of British India.

Hillary Byrd is a depressed, disillusioned man fleeing a changing, more oppressive modern, Britain for what he hopes will be a more laid back break in India. Fleeing from the heat into the upper hills to Ooty, a chance meeting b leads him to stay at The Mission House with a widowed Padre and his disabled ward Priscilla.

The novel goes from there, we follow Byrd as he is driven round by Jamshed, an old auto driver who serves as a window into some of Byrd's thoughts, as our protagonist is wont to pontificate about his past in England as he's driven around. Mr Byrd is, however, of that type of reserved British person who views other cultures and ways with suspicion and doesn't really notice Jamshed at all. He also assumes that there is a plot to marry him off to Priscilla when in fact there is nothing of the sort, and when he finally finds that he has feelings for her, any chance he might have had long gone. Not least as Priscilla is more interested in wannabe country and Western singer Ravi.

Hillary Byrd is also blind to the undercurrent of political unrest in India, a thread which runs with low level threat through the novel.

There isn't much plot to the story, but where it is strong is in its description of place and it's ear for the language. The sparse and, at times, gorgeous prose gives the novel room to breathe and allows the character of Ooty to come through, so much so that looking at a picture of the place after I could easily recognise it from the novel.

If there's a flaw in the novel, it is with the ending. When it comes it's felt that it couldn't have happened any other way but it falls flat and feels rushed in comparison to the slow build up.

That said it doesn't ruin the book because of the build up and work that leads up to it.

This is a gentle rather slow book set in an Indian hill station. I found Hilary Byrd a rather boring old fashioned Englishman abroad. I thought Ramjesh, his Indian tuk-tuk driver far more interesting. Though beautifully written, this book wasn't for me.

Almost hidden in the delicate layers of this novel is a deeply moving, unlikely love story. Yet, it is only because Carys Davies is able to draw us inexorably into the moral lives of the characters and the chance each has to change for the better , that we come to understand in the final reckoning the importance of love. Hilary Byrd is a rather etiolated, desperately anxious, retired librarian who finds himself a heat-stricken traveller in southern India, having turned his back on an increasingly coarse, uncouth world at home he barely recognises and can no longer endure. He is a man of little conviction or moral certainty. Byrd is an emotionally brittle, vulnerable 58 year old who is unable to make the simplest of decisions without consulting his sister, Wyn, whose forbearance borders on the saintly. His physical unsteadiness seems symptomatic of a life off-balance and a mental atrophy. He is loveless and unfulfilled, a life slipping away. Yet It is a chance meeting with the ‘Padre’, a local priest, that draws Byrd into the temperate hills where the mission house and presbytery seem like an edenic sanctuary blessed by rain and cooling winds. The Christian mission is a haven for the poor and outcast where itinerant missionaries and overseas students salve their consciences with an inviolable if transient devotion to duty. Here, Byrd hears of the young Canadian missionary Henry Page who has returned home but whose return to the mission will have significance for them all.
If the reader is inclined to recall Scott and Forster or Seth and Rushdie, it is because Carys Davies is able to evoke the chaotic colours and sounds of India: the intractable complexities of culture, language and religion. But, she is also interested in creating a folklorish tale of love, parental authority, moral choice and attendant jeopardy at the heart of her story. For it would seem the father/Padre’s final act of faith and love is a moral covenant to find a husband for Priscilla, a young woman of the Toda people who was cast out as a young child because of physical deformity and she bears the stigmata of the pariah. The foundling child and the well-intentioned elder are two elements of the folk tale and Hilary Byrd becomes the third element as the latest stranger to enter the remote sanctuary and the plans of the matchmaker.
If Hilary Byrd’s vacillation and weakness have rendered him less than prepossessing in our minds then his grudging agreement to help Priscilla with her English is hardly going to change things. But, in time he seems almost to care for her as their days are filled with reading fairy stories, cooking and sewing. In fact the way he begins to,first, see himself as someone who can love and, second, Priscilla as someone he can love is gently heart-rending.
The characters are all faced with moral choices, from the rickshaw driver, Jamshed, who first tries to exploit Byrd but ultimately chooses to help him, to the Padre,himself, whose epiphany may be that he has been wrong to manipulate Byrd in his match making. Their human decency seems to prevail and things change But it is Byrd, who openly declares he is not a Christian who seems furthest out of redemptive reach.
Carys Davies’s achievement here is to generate such moral and emotional force from her unlikely love story; and she does it with a beautiful simplicity. In that sense it has echoes of Silas Marner, Of Mice and Men and Ethan Frome.

Thank you to Netgalley and Granta Publications for this ARC in return for my honest review. I enjoyed this book set in Ooty, India. Well crafted, beautifully written. Loved how the story flowed, it really drew me in and kept me engaged throughout.

This book, for me, had the touch of a Somerset Maughan novel about it. Hilary Byrd a deeply troubled quintessential Englishman escapes the heat of the plains to rediscover himself in Ooty, Tamil Nadu. Fortunately for him he is taken in by a local Padre in this hill station community. Gradually as his mind settles, he starts to experience joy in his life, that he has been lacking due to becoming disillusioned with his current employment as a librarian. He forms an unlikely friendship with the local taxi driver Jamshed who runs him around each day. Jamshed starts to build a relationship with Hilary and interprets his daily mood. Priscilla another rescued soul of the Padre also forms an attachment with Hilary though a pupil teacher relationship and not perhaps the romantic one he wishes for. Ravi, Jamshed’s erstwhile nephew also is a prominent character, as aspiring Country western singer with his old pony.

A worthwhile read, a little sad and melancholy in parts. Thank you to the publisher and to Netgalley for a copy of the novel in exchange for this honest review.

At the start of The Mission House, Carys Davies throws us into an Indian hilltown, as an Englishman, Byrd, arrives to meet with a small array of characters who we gradually come to work out in relation to each other. There is Byrd himself, fleeing his difficulties in England, the Padre and Priscilla his foster daughter, long-suffering rickshaw driver Jamshed and his nephew Ravi. All the characters are looking for some personal happiness but in ways that might inadvertently conflict with the happiness of others.

This book is really a joy it is so beautifully written conveying a powerful sense of place through vivid and careful detail. The characters are all incredibly poignant in their different ways, Byrd particularly., is such a tragic and believable figure. I loved it.

This was a very gentle story set in what is clearly, to those who have been there Ooty, or Ootacamund in Tamil Nadu, South India. It is the story of life in the small town from the point of an slightly older gentleman tourist in more or less the current day. He has come to Ooty, an old hill station established by the British and retaining many of the featiures from that time, to escape the heat of the plains . The descriptions of Ooty, come from the visitor, but also from the point of view of some of the residents. The India viewpoint is well put , the values ascribed to the driver of the auto rickshaw and to others are believable and in my experience true to type.
The descriptions are well done and the atmosphere very well created.
I enjoyed the book and read it over a period of a couple of days. Thanks to NetGalley for an advance copy to review..

The Mission House follows a small group of characters living in and around an old British hill station in contemporary India, including Hilary Byrd, an older Englishman trying to escape the misery of his life in Britain.
Whilst the writing is beautiful and really transports you to modern day India, I found it difficult to get hooked into the narrative, still considering putting it down at 70% read. I didn’t because there is a small undercurrent of mystery which is revealed right at the very end, but even this was underwhelming unfortunately. The characters were difficult to warm to, although I did feel an incredible sadness for Byrd throughout this novel, and enjoyed his relationship to his local driver, Jamshed, which I think could’ve been explored further.
Overall, a quiet, gentle read ideal for anyone who wishes to be transported elsewhere, but no overly exciting plot - however I firmly believe that it’s not ever the wrong book, just the wrong book for me, and having seen multiple 5* reviews I have no doubt many readers will love it.

In a colonial mountain town in India, a lonely tourist from the UK, Mr Hilary Bird, finds himself staying in a mission house after hopping on a blue train to escape the heat of the Indian plains far below. He has fled his life in Britain with no plan in mind and no future in sight, and seems to be almost sleepwalking through the motions of being a tourist in this strange, vibrant new atmosphere, caught up in his search for meaning, his memories of what went wrong in his life in the past and why things have turned out as they have. The hill town of Ooty, so far away from home, both familiar and exotic simultaneously, seems like it might be the perfect balm he needs to remedy his confusion and depression with modern life, particularly as he gets to know locals Jamshed, Priscilla and the Padre, but is it really what it seems to this preoccupied, solitary man?

I didn’t feel much engagement or interest in the characters by the end of the book which is why it ultimately left me unsatisfied on a personal level, but I did feel sympathy for the situation of the characters - there was a confluence of chance events which ended in fortune for some and misfortune for others, and I found it interesting to watch that play out - there are multiple perspectives which were interesting, as the reader gets to witness mistakes in judgement, and the mismatch between expectations and hopes of different characters, which felt very real and well done. I found this book to be well written and a thoughtful commentary on modern life, though purely because it didn’t resonate particularly with me personally I have rated it 2/5 stars.

My thanks to Granta publications, the author and to #NetGalley for the arc to review.

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