The denouement of Philip Winter's ill-begotten engagement to featherbrained Rose Birkett is enacted in full view of Southbridge School's extended family during a holiday break. Everyone, including her parents, is rooting for Philip's escape which occurs when Rose breaks it off as the utter dullness of being engaged overwhelms her. Along the way, we enjoy the tea party where Rose, "through sheer want of personality bring(s) the talk to her own level" and confounds her audience by insisting that Hamlet and Shakespeare are both names of plays (and probably the same one). As in many of Thirkell books, the characters refer to a body of literature, both classic and modern, with a casualness that would be improbable today; the assumption of a shared background and culture having been lost. The ceremony of the "Cleaning of the Pond" by Lydia, Eric Swan and a much improved Tony Morland brings the holiday to a satisfactory conclusion as does a match between Kate Keith and Everard Carter.
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About the Author:
Angela Thirkell (1890-1961) was the eldest daughter of John William Mackail, a Scottish classical scholar and civil servant, and Margaret Burne-Jones. Her relatives included the pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones, Rudyard Kipling and Stanley Baldwin, and her grandfather was J. M. Barrie. She was educated in London and Paris, and began publishing articles and stories in the 1920s. In 1931 she brought out her first book, a memoir entitled Three Houses, and in 1933 her comic novel High Rising - set in the fictional county of Barsetshire, borrowed from Trollope - met with great success. She went on to write nearly thirty Barsetshire novels, as well as several further works of fiction and non-fiction. She was twice married and had four children.
Review:
Angela Thirkell is perhaps the most Pym-like of any twentieth-century author, after Pym herself
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherCarroll & Graf Pub
- Publication date1991
- ISBN 10 0881847844
- ISBN 13 9780881847840
- BindingPaperback
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Rating