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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
"This latest book is clever, as all that [Benson] does is clever, light, amusing, satirical, written in the smooth and easy style his earlier books have made familiar to us. Its people are real: one acknowledges their verisimilitude, and is deeply, humbly grateful to that beneficent fortune which was so kind as to cast one's lot elsewhere than in Tilling, the home of Miss Mapp." -- The New York Times
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
From the Publisher
Like his famous Lucia character, E.F. Benson's Miss Mapp is a strikingly original comic creation, an arch-schemer and social climber from the British town of Tilling. A fortyish spinster, "anger and the gravest suspicion about everybody had kept her young and on the boil." Elizabeth Mapp spends her days looking out the window of her home, using opera glasses and a notebook to chart her neighbor's affairs. Nothing escapes her as she spies on Major Benjamin Flint (who she has been trying to marry for years,) Captain Puffin, "Quaint Irene", a free-spirited artist, and the underhanded Miss Susan Poppit, a woman plotting to purchase the ingredients of Miss Mapp's secret iced red-currant recipe. Miss Mapp is a hilarious, sharply-observed satire that lovingly--but pointedly--pokes fun at the feuds and foibles of English high society.
--This text refers to the
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
38 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not just froth,
By A Customer
This review is from: Miss Mapp (Paperback)
The wonderfully acute social comedy in this novel needs no further recommendation but there are many other virtues. Take for example its apercus on 1920s Britain. Here is a world lacking a whole generation of young men ruled by single and independent women. References to supertaxes, strikes and rationing make clear that this is a Britain on the slide. Equally enjoyable are the insights into how "alternative lifestyles" were regarded and tolerated before our supposedly emancipated age. Benson makes it fairly clear that Irene is a good deal more than simply "quaint" (the same can be said for Georgie who appears in other novels of the series: a warm and likable character but not, in the words of Major Benjy "a manly sort of man"). Finally, pace some of the reviews here and on the other Mapp and Lucia books, Tilling is most surely not a village idyll. Spying eyes lurk behind every twitching curtain and there is often an air of real malice in the air. There is steel to Benson's satire and it amazes me that at the end of a long (and occasionally undistinguished career in letters) he could produce something so modern, so perfect in conception and execution and so very funny.
26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hilarious fun in a small English village,
This review is from: Miss Mapp (Paperback)
Miss Mapp rules the tiny English village of Tilling- that is she rules those who matter. It is a tiny circle of people who have enough class to rate her attention - but she manipulates and lauds over them with machiavellian schemes, and intelligent surmises - and she is intelligent.Benson has written a village with a range of gorgeous characters - from Diva who is Miss Mapp's great rival, to Irene the local artist who keeps embarrassing Miss Mapp with her prosaic pronouncements. Then there is the local Vicar who talks in a combination of Shakespearian English and Burnsian dialect. There is also Mrs Poppit who is an up and coming social climber (hardly worthy of Miss Mapp's notice) and the novel begins with Miss Mapps machinations to the Poppitt Bridge party. Village life you see seems to run around Bridge parties. In this petty world of card games there is a great deal of opportunity to expose one another's weaknesses and Miss Mapp, in order to be the center of village life in Tilling finds no object too petty to exploit. This is a novel of small things made into huge issues because of the smallness of the village. There is Miss Mapps constant running battle to dress better than Diva, the competition over Mr Wyse's attentions (with his supposed comtessa sister), and the ever pressing desire to be the First To Know all the gossip in town. The physical descriptions both through the characters minds and from Benson's pen are wonderful for instance Diva is always depicted as whirling around the place - her legs circling. Mrs Poppit is ever present in a huge and weighty sable coat. This is a wonderful book, and beautifully written. Benson seems to me to be very influenced by Austen - there is the small and claustrophobic atmosphere of village life - the characters (Miss Mapp seems so like Mrs Norris of Austen's 'Mansfield Park') to me - and then there are the odd Austen Names (in this case the Coles feature strongly as a family that is not quite up to snuff - just as the Coles are in 'Emma'). If nothing else Benson writes of English village life in the 1920's with the same Ironic pen as Austen did of village life in the early nineteenth century. Highly recommended if you want a couple of days of laughter.
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
she's worse than you mother-in-law, but more fun to read,
By "soonerlover" (Duncan, Oklahoma United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Miss Mapp (Paperback)
Well, after meeting Queen Lucia, I quite enjoyed learning all about Tilling and its dear Miss Mapp. You will wonder who she visited in Riseholm, and you will die from the anticipation of the two ladies meeting up in subsequent books (you won't be disappointed!). The characters are fantastic, the situations are comic, and I absolutely loved this book! I am officially hooked on the entire series! I hope you will try it and love it just as much as I.
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