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Waterloo Station: A Novel (Grayson, Emily)

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From the bestselling author of The Gazebo and The Observatory comes a passionate and gripping story that follows two devoted lovers through a dramatic period in history.

England. Summer, 1938. An adventurous and beautiful young American woman arrives at Oxford University, never expecting that her life -- and the entire world -- will soon change. When Maude Latham falls in love with her married literature tutor, Stephen Kendall, she learns that the Romantic poets had it right: Love is eternal. Yet just as she has fortified her conviction with the wisdom of the old poets, it is tested when World War II disrupts her perfect love affair. After Stephen joins the Royal Navy and disappears, Maude finds herself living through the war as a trauma nurse in a hospital. As time passes and the war progresses, Stephen’s disappearance forces Maude to question everything she knows about the man she loves and all that he has taught her about love itself.

Emily Grayson takes readers into the turbulent history of World War II, exploring the lives of two lovers who are torn apart in the disorder and chaos that divided the world. A love story that is as deeply emotional as it is suspenseful, Waterloo Station is a timeless tale of faith and devotion that will touch everyone who reads it.

Nice read, but shockingly inaccurate -
Waterloo Station is a pleasant enough read: short, light, the type of thing for a rainy afternoon. However, the dialogue all sounds American, what with "sure", "you're welcome", "two thirty". Trains from Oxford don't actually go to Waterloo--they go to Paddington. And the Independent newspaper was launched in 1986.

But then, I'm a nitpicky old so-and-so!

Remembering One's First Love... -
Love is eternal, but it can be tested by circumstances. With the prosaic beginning of an old lady packing up to move in with her daughter's family after the death of her husband, who knew we had a 'Titantic' love story to suffer through with Maude, now eighty-one. "Though it's often said that old people possess a certain wisdom ...there was an uncommon intelligence in the elderly woman's eyes and words, a quality that seemed to have been there forever." But this wasn't the case at all. Maude had been the first in her family to go to college (like me) and her first love, though at first illicit, taught her how to grow up in a time of turmoil and the wisdom came later.

She is "fragile, but beautfiul, with a head [full] of striking while hair...." It has been three months since the lingering death of her husband, and Maude is moving on, away from the life she has known for sixty-three years. She's giving up her home to finish out her years with her daughter, Louisa's, family. Granddaughter is spending her last weekend before going off to college with Maude as they go through all the memorbilia stored in the attic of the house in Longwood Falls, New York. They find many treasures, some long forgotten, but the steamer trunk with a label "New York to Southampton" stamped on it took the most time to unload. Maude put on her reading glasses, which hung on a silk rope around her neck and, thus, begins this tale of romance and forbidden love. It took two hours to reach the bottom of the trunk and find her most precious possession, a book of poems written by A. L. Slayton. Maude tells the story behind the book as they shifted through a 'lifetime of memories.'

"I'll start at the beginning...'the beginning of my life' which began when I was your age," she tells Carrie. The trunk had last been used in August, 1938, when she traveled on the 'Queen Mary' to attend Oxford University. Her father was determined she would do something with her life. Through that first long year of studying abroad, she thought about her poetry tutor much of the time. He read aloud to her these poems from the Romantic Age and endorsed the Slayton book to his 'best student.' The teacher took her to London to the very inn near Waterloo Station where the poet had stayed "when he was a young, moody writer."

And, so, they fell in love; actually they both fell in love with Slayton's poetry and spent that first weekend looking for traces of him. She and Stephen were sitting side by side in a compartment [of the train] across from two passengers -- "a dozing elderly woman and her companion. In an hour, it would pull into Waterloo Station." They were walking side by side, together but not "together." Not touching. Thus, began the illicit affair as Stephen Kendell already had a wife. The war intervened, but Maude stayed in England to be near him.

"Maude Kendell might not have been a poet, but she knew a great deal about poetry. In fact, she and her husband had both taught literature at the University of Sussex after the war." After his divorce and their subsequent move to New York, "their love didn't flicker for an instant, but they both grew old and frail." That's life.

"By the time she had finished telling Carrie everything, the light in the attic had grown bluish and dim. It was late afternoon, almost evening. They had come to this place to "purge it of unnecessary objects and instead, they had gotten sidetracked by Maude's extraordinary story." Real love isn't just a fantasy after all, thought Carrie. "There is such a thing as an ideal love, and you shouldn't ask for anything else." Telling all of this to her granddaughter, Maude Kendall felt the pain and suffering all over again. Whoever said that love is easy? True love endures all things.

Emily Grayson previously wrote THE OBSERVATORY (2000) and THE GAZEBO (1999). "I can't remember a time when I wasn't writing; as a little girl, I was always working on stories, novels, poems, plays, and I was thrilled when I realized I could turn this hobby into a profession."

Another romantic novel by Emily Grayson -
WATERLOO STATION by Emily Grayson
Courtesy of WWW.LOVEROMANCES.COM
November 11, 2004

WATERLOO STATION is yet another romantic tale by author Emily Grayson. Grayson has a gift for writing such wonderful romances, which can be read in only a few hours, yet they leave such a big impact despite the short length. Emily Grayson knows how to write the perfect old-fashioned romance, and her books are a must-read.

In this tale, a young woman, Maude Latham, makes a big decision by attending college overseas, at Oxford. She has a sense of adventure and this is her first step at becoming an independent woman. It is 1938, and WWII is just around the corner, but she is not afraid of any impending rumors of war.

While studying there, Maude falls in love with her poetry tutor, Stephen Kendall, but there is one hitch: he's married. Their romance is doomed from the start, but the two are so in love that they take risks, such as going off to London to spend a few hours together. Stephen's marriage is an unhappy one, but he is afraid to ask his wife for a divorce, due to her fragile constitution. He promises Maude that one day he will make that big step, and wants Maude in his life forever.

In the meantime, England enters WWII and Stephen goes off to war, advising Maude to return to the United States where she will be safe, but she is stubborn and stays in England, helping out with the war effort. She becomes a nurse and waits patiently for any word from Stephen. As long as she knows Stephen is coming back to her, she is willing to wait, and this keeps her going through the long days ahead. When she receives word that he has decided to stay with his wife, she is devastated, but continues with her work as a nurse, having made that decision to stay in England. She wonders if she will ever love again as passionately as she's loved Stephen, and decides that she needs to forget all about him and move on.

WATERLOO STATION is a simple love story that is predictable on some level, but despite that fact, it is a wonderful book. Anyone who is a fan of the old-fashioned romance is going to love this story, and this reviewer recommends reading Grayson's other books as well.

Romantic -
A nice love story and a worthwhile read. It's short, touching, romantic, and well written.

Romantic Read -
The war looms over Europe in 1938 but Maude Latham, an adventurous American studying at Oxford, refuses to return home. Maude has unexpectedly fallen in love with her handsome, very married, tutor. When war explodes, he enlists and Maude begins a new life as a nurse. She changes, discovers more about herself and about the reality of love. The twists, turns, highs and lows of this love story will hold you captive from first word through to the last.
Beverly J Scott author of Righteous Revenge and Ruth Fever