From the lady who brought us Cold Comfort Farm comes a slightly more serious, but no less sarcastic, novel. Gibbon has the happy ability, shared by so few (Dickens and Austen come to mind), of being able to deliver a Work of Literature in a way that feels more like sitting in a sunbeam eating fairy floss.
There’s no Flora Post in this one, but it’s still populated with eccentric and memorable characters. There’s Mr Wither, the patriarch, who “liked to feel money on all sides of him, like a stout fence”; his wife, of whom we are told, “Mrs Wither came in, but he took no notice of her because he had seen her before”; their elder daughter Madge, who wondered, “Who’d want a baby when they could have a dog?”; younger daughter Tina, who at 35 read a book on feminine psychology, looked into her soul, and discovered that she wanted to be sensible, but not as much as she wanted the family’s (much younger) chauffeur; and Viola, the young widowed daughter-in-law, who “did not look quite a lady, which was natural; as she was not one.” Between all the zingers there are some taut observations about the nature of happiness and family relationships, and it all adds up to a proper treasure of a novel.