Customer Reviews

DOUBLE AFFAIR.

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have to admit that I had never heard of Angela Thirkell, even though I enjoy English authors so very much. Someone suggested that I give her a whirl, knowing how much I enjoy Jane Austen and Miss Read, Elizabeth Cadell and DE Stevenson. I landed on this book, A Double Affair, and found myself completely absorbed in the characters from the very first. This book is almost the last in a long series, The Barsetshire series, so even though I was meeting everyone for the first time and there was gads and gads of past history I was unfamiliar with, I was not lost for context.

This woman is witty! If you are a fan of Jane Austen at all, you have just got to try this author. I found myself chuckling with her interspersed observations about her characters, as if she were sitting in a cafe watching their lives unfold before her and recording it for our enjoyment. The books are kind, there is friendship and courtesy, but there's nothing "high faluting" about them.

Now I have to go figure out which book is the first and start there. There are many many books in this series, so I should have plenty to enjoy for a good while.

Angela Thirkell's long-running saga is beginning to show signs of running down at the start of the story. Fortunately she peps it up by bringing in two new characters (grandaughters of the deanery)and making the newly grown-up Edith Graham the central female character. By doing this and judiciously mixing in our many old friends we get a story that moves the chronicles along very nicely.