Wedding Bells for Land Girls opens with the marriage of Bill Moystn, a decent, fair dealing man that would never overcharge for a tractor repair, and Grace, a wide-eyed, beautiful farmhand with shoulder-length, wavy blonde hair. Grace’s last-minute doubts about the wedding are overcome with the encouragement of her land girl friends, and the two are joined in matrimony much to the relief of all. This rosy-cheeked, whimsical, and ever so slightly naughty opening reassures the reader that they are in for an inoffensive pastiche of the romances of rural England during the war.

Jenny Holmes is clearly aware of readers’ expectations of Wedding Bells, however, and makes efforts to challenge and subvert them at every turn. This involves some interesting authorial choices, as Holmes introduces us to a parade of increasingly maligned characters that sometimes cross the line from eccentric into sickening. Primary among these questionable plot choices is the early introduction of the serial attacker Mack the Knife, described by land girl Brenda Appleby as being a “violent and unscrupulous” character. What begins as a somewhat oddly placed whodunnit subplot starts to verge on the uncomfortable as Holmes seems to become less and less restrained in her descriptions of Mack’s crimes.

At several points, I had to put the book down out of discomfort

By the end of the second chapter, the book is almost wholly dominated by increasingly long and graphic accounts of Mack the Knife’s manic savagery. At several points, I had to put the book down out of discomfort, as by the end of the second chapter, the pages become increasingly dominated by accounts of Mack the Knife’s attacks against the innocent that sometimes run on for several pages and are needlessly brutal. The oversight of an editor would certainly have done the novel’s pacing some good here.

This is immediately followed in the second act by a somewhat jarring “winter jamboree” sequence, during which the land girls seem, bizarrely, largely unaffected by the rampant savagery of Mack the Knife. In fact, Mack the Knife and the frantic terror he once inspired in the heart of Yorkshire is never mentioned again, which leads one to question what narrative purpose his inclusion served in the first place. Regardless, Holmes endeavours to put us back on track with a heart-breaking sequence in which the newlywed Bill and Grace Moystn are separated as Bill is conscripted to serve in the Allied liberation of France.

Again, the third act sees some bold authorial choices as Holmes attempts to maintain the novel’s whimsical atmosphere, while simultaneously exploring the character of Bill, who has returned scarred from his experiences on the western front. Holmes’ characterisation was never her strong suit, and there are some clumsy choices here: as an example, note the following, which describes Bill recounting his wartime experiences to his nephew, Samuel.

“In the hot autumn of 1946, I spent a lot of long, dry nights with Uncle Bill. Sometimes we would talk, but mostly we would just sit, as he dragged on a bottle of cheap scotch. I didn’t much like the man, and I don’t think he cared much for me, neither. Ever since the war, he had the devil in his belly, and drink only stoked the flames. One September evening when he’d once again overindulged, he locked me with his sluggard’s eyes and said “Sammy, I shot a surrendering Kraut in the back during the war, and I don’t feel bad about it neither”. Yes sir, Uncle Billy had hate in his gut…”

The emotional core of the book, however, kept me reading: the relationship between Moystn and Grace

The emotional core of the book, however, kept me reading: the relationship between Moystn and Grace bears the heavy burden of carrying a book so inclined to wildly oscillate from theme to theme. The emotional climax of the film comes towards the end in the famous Tractor Heart scene between the couple as love struggles to overcome the pain Bill has been through. Here Holmes is in her element: the line “My heart is like a tractor… It’s all broken down, Grace. And I’m not sure even I can fix it” heart-wrenchingly harkens back to the Bill we knew at the start of the book, before he was changed by the war.

The front cover of Jenny Holmes’ Wedding Bells for Land Girls asks the reader a question – Can love stand the test of war? The book’s clear response is uplifting as it is reassuring: it can. While at times Holmes seems more interested in brutal than blitz, she effectively tells a compelling story that on the whole, balances the levity of romance with the seriousness of war, very well. I recommend any reader gives it a go.

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