Customer Reviews

Marling Hall

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Angela Thirkell's novels are terribly dated and un-PC today, but if you can get past that, there's a lot of skillful observation of character and a reasonable amount of humor. This one is not quite out of the top drawer, but should be satisfying to her fans (like me).

Like most of her Barsetshire novels, it centers on a single family, the eponymous Marlings, but also updates us on other characters introduced in earlier novels.

The main topic is the inconveniences and tragedies of life in rural England in the depths of the war. Rationing is much on everyone's mind, and motivates a lot of the goings-on. Upper lips are of course very stiff, so naturally no word of complaint is heard from the Marlings when they have to reduce their staff from 8 to 4!

Thirkell's strengths and weaknesses are abundantly on display here. She genuinely cares for the county families who are her principal subject, and sensitively depicts the nuances of their behavior, feelings, and thoughts. Most appealing perhaps is the attractive war widow Lettice Watson, who is heroically bringing up two little girls all by herself, with the help of a nurse, a maid, and of course all her mother's servants when needed.

Thirkell also has sly fun with a quartet of female factotums -- the aforementioned nurse, an annoying French governess, and two characters familiar from other novels: Lady Emily Leslie's perfect secretary Miss Merriman, and the formidable ex-governess Miss Bunting.

But as usual, the main butts of Thirkell's jokes are those who for one reason or another don't fit into this tight little society. Mrs Smith, a widow whose manners are as appalling as her taste (Edwardian, of course), rents her house out to the equally dubious Harveys, a brother and sister from London, whose decidedly urban attitude make them inevitable outsiders in Thirkell's world.

Like many a busy writer of comic novels, Thirkell never bothers to to breathe life into her minor characters. Every time they appear, they exhibit the single tic that identifies them. Sometimes this is funny, and sometimes it's tedious.

So I guess my thumb is pointing at about 2 o'clock. If you're already a Thirkell fan, of course you'll read it. For those who haven't ventured into the Thirkell circle as yet, start elsewhere -- maybe one of the earlier novels, or Northbridge Rectory.