"Bags me be the one who fell in love wth Hitler and shot herself."

[intrepid--fox.livejournal.com]

I've been reading the Mitford sisters' letters recently and was struck by how easily - but how weirdly - Peter's Room could have featured Mitfords rather than Brontës,with Ginty fancying herself as one of the more glamorous sisters, and even Peter being vaguely aware of who they were ("for after all, it's not easy to achieve complete ignorance of the Mitford sisters" or words to that effect).  It would have made for a very different story, but one with lots of strangely similar stuff about family loyalties vs poltical convictions.

Comments

[intrepid--fox.livejournal.com]

Oh, but I think Peter is Unity - his talent for picking the wrong friends coming to the fore.

[richenda.livejournal.com]

Do you see it as "wrong" friends? Isn't it more that he sees things in people that aren't obvious to other people? Even the traitor has his good points, I'd say.

[intrepid--fox.livejournal.com]

His friends when he was you were crap, though, weren't they? "All quite horrid in their various ways" according to the authorial voice.

[richenda.livejournal.com]

I haven't access to the book at present, but am quite sure that you are quoting correctly. However, I'm not sure that I'm convinced about the "authorial voice".
I think that Forest has a very delicate line in irony, along with her gift for expressing the varying points of view of her characters, and I'm not convinced that there is an authoritative ( ha!) authorial voice.
I'd need to read again the passage, of course, to argue this point fully - and to find other examples - but my guess is that the author might at this point be expressing other points of view (e.g. FAMILY)than her own.