Customer Reviews

The Market Square

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Amid the trying times we live in, curl up with a simple but rewarding story of long forgotten times in an English village
called Caxley. Life revolves around the Market Square even when
the weekly open air market is not in full swing. The Howards and the Norths live in homes facing onto the Square,dominated by its statue of Queen Victoria - who has just died as the book opens (1901). We come to know and care about the two families as they cope during the years leading up to WWI, when many of the young men who went off to war so proudly did not return. The resilience of the villagers warms the reader and makes us wish
we could time-travel back for a few days to those simpler times when friends and family meant everything. A book, like all Miss Read's stories of Caxley, Fairacre and Thrush Green, to be savored with a cup of tea on a rainy evening. It seems this writer is becoming a cult figure among those who enjoy English village life stories. Reminiscent of Jan Karon in Mitford.

I actually haven't read "The Caxley Chronicles" yet, but thought Miss Read fans might like to know that "The Market Square" is the first in the two-book volume "The Caxley Chronicles." It is followed by "The Howards of Caxley." The two books are about characters (the Norths and the Caxleys) that occur in the Fairacre series, but these particular books are prequels to the Fairacre series.
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong! (info from Wikipedia's entry on "Miss Read")