Making light comedy out of doing very little
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I reread this book recently and found it just a tad more irritating than funny. The 'diarist' is witty in that droll rather camp pre-war way but then she has a lot of time in which to dwell on life's absurdities. Maybe I read the book at the wrong time but the endless rounds of cooks, mademoiselles and housemaids - and boarding schools which still offer the option of guilt-free (if you're made like that) offloading of offspring - were less of an entertainment than a pointed lesson in how much harder life has become for what I suppose you'd call middle class women. Don't let me put you off reading the book. It is amusing in a 'Butterflies' (remember that?) kind of way. But then, as a bolshie early teen, I also hated that programme's spineless, drippy main character. fyi, I don't have a huge downer on fictional representations of the the leisured classes. Well, not all of them. I love Barbara Pym, for example. Am I protesting too much?
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Read it again and again - and still love it!
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"Robert says nothing". But what was he thinking?
The Provincial Lady fascinates me: her way of life, her comments about the social standards predominating before the last war. It could all be rather boring but somehow the way she talks isn't. And I catch something different everytime I re-read the book or listen to the audio cassettes.
There were still shades of the the PL's world left during my childhood in the early 1950's: the baker and grocer still called; my Mum wrote and posted copious notes to companies - ordering, complaining, thanking - as well as writing regular long letters to relatives and friends (she rarely used the phone as it was too expensive); the dreaded visit to the bank manager when finances got tight; everything paid cash and careful records kept of income and expednditure which had to balance every week.
My father was very much head of the house and everything was referred to him - unlike Robert though, he said a good deal, most of it critical.
I would recommend the Provincial Lady books to my future daughter-in-law as a good read, and I hope she would find them just as fascinating. The humour and the quality of the writing must surely appeal to any generation.
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Wickedly funny!!!!
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If you buy only one book in your life, make sure its this one. I have read five times (something I never usually do) and always find something in it that I missed previously. It makes me belly laugh out loud every time. Full of truly wonderful characters from Our Vicars Wife to Helen Wheels the cat. It's a real treasure and one that I will take with me through life.
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social and feminist history in a humorous package
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This diary, plus the later ones in which the author visits America and then works in a forces' canteen in wartime, is a fascinating glimpse of what life was like for a middle class woman in the 1930s. My favourite snippet, from ...Goes Further, is when she visits Boston and at a party asks a young man if he thinks television will ever become a part of everyday life. He looks at her as if she were mad!
The humour is intelligent and infectious and the narrative voice very real despite the 'diary' style.
Don't miss it!
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I just love this book......
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warm, witty and although it was originally published in the thirties I can still relate to the main character much more than I can relate to Bridget Jones. Some great episodes, especially with the trips to the pawnbroker! A really good bedtime book as it can be read in small chunks, and isn't too demanding of tired brains!
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