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Consider the Lily
Elizabeth Buchan
Introduction
Elizabeth Buchan is known to thousands of readers as the bestselling author of the novels Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman, The Good Wife Strikes Back, and Everything She Thought She Wanted. Now, fans are treated to a different side of Buchan with the reissue of her novel set between the two world wars—her prize-winning Consider the Lily.
The lily is a "flower that keeps its secrets," explains Harry, the wise and mysterious sometimes-narrator of this family saga. Indeed, secrets, both past and present, play a powerful role in the story, and shape the lives of its three main characters, Daisy, Matty, and Kit.
Kit Dysart and Daisy Chudleigh are both charming and beautiful, a natural match, and soon after meeting they fall in love. Their romance and obvious happiness together is difficult for Daisy’s cousin, Matty Veral, to watch. Matty is not blessed with Daisy’s beauty or charm and has lived her life thus far in Daisy’s shadow. But Matty does possess something Daisy does not: her parents’ fortune. And though Matty seems quiet and unemotional, there is a "dark edge to her spirit—a place where anger and jealousy met and cohabited" (p. 58). Perhaps this is why she asks Kit to marry her when the stock markets crash and Kit’s family is in danger of losing everything, including their beautiful estate, Hinton Dysart.
Kit agrees to marry Matty to save his family’s future but continues to yearn for Daisy, leaving Matty with a distant husband and a house that seems alive only with ghosts from the past. Matty fills her days restoring Hinton Dysart to its former glory and, in the process, discovers a neglected garden that she begins to tend and nurture, as she waits in vain to conceive a child.
In the meantime, Daisy must deal with her own demons. Knowing that Kit loves her is small consolation when faced with the reality that he is married to another woman. When she discovers she is pregnant with Kit’s child, she is faced with a very painful dilemma: she chooses to have the baby but knows that raising him alone will brand them both for life.
Back at Hinton Dysart, Matty brings both the house and garden back to life, and in the process unearths her husband’s family secrets. Opening this door to Kit’s past seems to bring him closer to her, and he begins to see Matty in a new light. When Kit brings home his newborn son, Daisy’s child, and asks if they could raise him together, Matty agrees, and it looks as if they may have a future together after all.
Consider the Lily is a beautiful story of loss and renewal, betrayal and loyalty, but perhaps most importantly, love—that powerful force that can cause us to act in destructive ways, or lead us to the most unselfish sacrifices. As Harry so eloquently states at the close of the novel, "in the end love can grant us a future . . . and the grace of a long, contented life."
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About the Author
Elizabeth Buchan is the author of several highly acclaimed books of fiction and non-fiction. She lives in London with her husband and two children.
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Discussion Questions
"When you boiled down into words the feelings and sensations, probing, speculations and dreamings of a love affair, they did not add up to anything much. That was the paradox. Or was it a tragedy?" Kit asks himself, upon reflecting on his own love affair with Daisy and that of his sister Flora with Robin Lofts (p. 327). Do you agree? Do you think Kit ultimately did the right thing by marrying Matty? What would have happened if he had said no to Matty and married Daisy? Could they have had asuccessful marriage? When, if ever, do you think it might be okay to marry for practical reasons alone?
The manor house, Hinton Dysart, is almost as a character itself. Discuss the role that the house plays in the story. How important are our homes, or where we live, in defining who we are? Daisy tells Kit that he is a prisoner of his home (p. 64). What do you think of her assessment?
Why do you think the author injects Harry's voice into the novel? Who is Harry, and what is his own history? How does that history influence his point of view?
After recovering from a personal tragedy, Matty returns to her work in the garden and "out of Matty's grief was born a moment of exultation, and the conviction that, at last, she had found her place. She was the garden, the garden was Matty, and they were both living" (p. 220). This is just one example of the author's use of the garden as a metaphor throughout the story.
How is it used in other places in the novel? Why do you think Matty never liked lilies, only roses (p. 43) and what do the two flowers symbolize? What is the meaning of the title Consider the Lily?
What other famously doomed relationships does Daisy and Kit's remind you of? Do such relationships have anything to teach the rest of us?
In addition to the three main players there are many secondary characters—Sir Rupert, Robin, Flora—who are very important to the story. Discuss a few of your favorite secondary characters and the importance of their roles in the story.
Do you think Hesther and Edwin were having an incestuous relationship? What do you think the exact nature of Rupert and Danny's relationship is? Harry and Thomas's? Why do you think the author leaves these questions ambiguous? Would it have made
a difference in the novel if these relationships had been clearly defined? If so, how?
When Matty finally tells Kit he is free to marry Daisy (p. 414), why doesn't he? And when Kit finds out Daisy has given birth to their son, why doesn't he leave Matty then?
Did Daisy do the right thing by handing over her child to Kit? If you were Matty, could you have taken the child in and raised him as your own?
By the end of the novel, with whom do you find yourself sympathizing with the most—Daisy, Matty, or Kit—and why?
If you are one of the many fans of Elizabeth Buchan's other novels, consider ways in which this novel is different. What are some similarities?
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