Based on her own life, author Angela Thirkell provides a light-hearted look at entertaining in the English countryside. Seasoned with irony, a summer party attracts hoardes of houseguests and hangers-on as they embrace moonlight and madness for hilarious intrigues.
This was really good! I'd read High Rising last year and enjoyed it; enough to buy the next couple of books, obviously. But then they languished on the pile for awhile, because High Rising wasn't that good.
But this was great! If you like family pandemonium (the kind where you sit back and wonder at the chaos as each member lives in their own orbit, occasionally bumping up against each other, while all somehow working as one eccentric unit), a smattering of light romance, a lot of tongue-in-cheek stereotyping and a story line that really meanders and goes nowhere in particular, this is a book worth checking out.
It's a historical piece, so there is at least one cringe worthy use of language, but in the context of the time it was written it, it doesn't come across as painful or nasty.
Mostly, it's just a wonderfully silly book. I closed it thinking "that was fun!".
Reading updates
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28 February, 2017:
Finished reading
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28 February, 2017:
Reviewed