Absolutely charming between-war romantic novel. Unlike the rest of the novels I've read set in the period between the wars in Britain, this one was actually written then. It was fascinating to see what contemporaries thought of that time period, and of the shifting social classes before the fin...
Merry old EnglandDie seit drei Monaten verwitwete Viola Withers soll aus London zu ihren Schwiegereltern aufs Land ziehen. Mr. und Mrs. Withers, die 39jährige Madge und die 36jährige Tina machen ihrem Namen alle Ehre. Sie kommen der erst 21jährigen Viola reichlich verwittert vor. Dennoch sieht si...
Really enjoying this getting to know Stella Gibbons--her abundant humor, the generosity of her vision. In each of the books I've read so far there hasn't been one main heroine--the focus shifts throughout and you feel as though no one has special priority. Her vision has a wholeness to it. There ...
The Christmas pudding at Cold Comfort Farm will foretell the doom that is to happen in the coming year. Just pray you don't get the coffin nail. In sixteen stories staring everyone from the Starkadders to a young rich girl obsessed with a dancer, to a librarian who thinks she's in love with a wri...
Margaret’s family had spent a quiet Christmas, for her brother had been unable to get leave and they had as yet no friends in London except Mrs Piper, who was busy with her own family’s Christmas plans, while Mr Steggles’s journalist friend, Dick Fletcher, was working over most of the holiday. Ma...
This was a wish almost unprecedented, with her. At home, no one had shown much interest in what she had to say or listened for long if she had begun hesitatingly to confide any of her small private worries, few as they were, because her brothers and sister were all livelier and a little more arti...
Bicycling, at least, was better than hanging about for buses or stifling in the Underground, though – his practical eye considered the landscape as he wheeled swiftly along – the winter-bleached grass looked dirty and there was a dismal scatter of litter everywhere. But the children of the age of...
Jean was undressing Meg and putting her into bed, while Jenny and Louise, with many whispers and grimaces, were moving their pillows and pyjamas into one bed in their room in order that Jean could sleep in the other. Alda was hastily preparing something more solid than the tea that had been await...
Three hundred laughing, chattering people in their best clothes were there, exhilarated by swift movement to music and by the Dovewood Cup, which had been tasted by Mr Joe Knoedler and the Boys and pronounced, in amazed voices, to be not so bad. (Alcohol, in short, could be detected therein.) The...
Each morning, at nine o’clock, Flora watched Mrs Beetle stagger upstairs with tray laden with sausages, marmalade, porridge, a kipper, a fat black pot of strong tea and what Flora caustically thought of as half the loaf; but when once Mrs Beetle had entered Aunt Ada’s bedroom, the door was shut f...
Auntie must be dead. Was that all? – And her voice quite ordinary. How funny her eyes looked. And her face . . . She heard the door open. ‘I think she’s dead,’ she said, not lowering her voice and without turning round. She continued to stare at the unrecognizable face. Behind her there was a sof...