Genre: Fiction
Page Count: 335 and 323
Publication Year: 1934 and 1936
Publisher: Holt, Rinehart and Winston
Summary for book one: A book causes much excitement in a small village.
Summary for book two: Love and friendship bloom in the English countryside.
I have found a new favorite author. Anyone who can make something marvelous out of a plain story and capture me so completely deserves all the praise.
It follows Barbara Buncle (which is a great name) as she decides to write a book to make some money. But since she has no imagination, she uses the people of her village, and their lives, as a template. When the book becomes a bestseller and her neighbors read it, their reactions soon become a problem and they cause Barbara more trouble than she thought possible.
The second book sees Barbara happily married and settling into a new home. With her sharp sense of observation and whole bevy of interesting neighbors, she soon finds plenty to occupy her mind, and perhaps the inspiration for another book.
That sounds like the most boring and unfulfilling story ever. But what makes it the opposite is its vivid characters and bright, cheery British charm and humor, all wrapped in straightforward yet engaging prose. There’s something undeniably fantastic about a book that has such an obvious trajectory, no ulterior motive or hidden message, and is a delight to read. It’s like a Miss Marple Mystery, but without the murder.
Even though the whole thing is uncomplicated, it has nuggets of wisdom and truth sprinkled throughout that make it even more of a delight to read:
They were exactly like sheep…following each other’s lead, neglecting one book and buying another just because other people were buying it, although, for the life of you, you couldn’t see what the one lacked and the other possessed.
Johnson’s dictum that nobody but a donkey wrote for anything except money was as true to-day as it had ever been and always would be, but how few authors owned to the fact so simply!
Few of us have the necessary unselfishness to hear with gladness the talents of others extolled or to listen with patience to the successes of those whom we despise…
“I don’t suppose he’s happy being horrid—nobody is…”
It was amazing that anybody could have contemplated the filming of such a thing and of course the sum spent upon the production was stupendous—he didn’t need the programme to tell him that—but the story was so puerile that it would not have contented an average child of ten years old…most of the audience was too drugged by the really amazing scenery to have any critical faculty left.
“I cannot allow that cubism is art, for here we find the technical devices, instead of being aids to the transmission of experience, becoming the aim and end of their users…It lacks soul. Technical proficiency is not enough, If a man has the virility to break away from the main stream of tradition he can be forgiven for his boldness if he has something important to say—but not otherwise—not otherwise.”
Just where does talent merge into genius? If talent is a natural aptitude for creation with an outlook on life peculiar to oneself, then genius is to have an outlook on life, peculiar to oneself, which yet appeals to everybody. Talent is for oneself and a few others, but genius is universal.
Barbara (aside from having a fun name) is great. She’s unassuming, solid, somewhat blunt in speech, and a bit naive about the world, but not in an annoying way. People find her rather simple and yet she sees into people’s innards and has the talent to display her findings in writing. And the way she talks about writing speaks directly to me:
The truth is that authors have no idea at all how or where they garner their harvest [ideas]. The harvest is garnered by some busy imp that watches and garners daily, hourly, keeping the barns full, so that when the day of threshing comes, and the wheat is winnowed from the chaff, there shall always be enough and to spare for the making of the bread.
“It isn’t like building—not a bit. In building, you see, you know beforehand what it’s going to be like—at least I suppose you do. I mean it would never do to start off building a house and find you’ve built a bridge, or something, when it was all finished. It’s more like hunting, really,” said Barbara, warming to her subject. “Yes, it’s really rather like hunting. You start out to hunt a stag and you find the tracks of a tiger. It’s an adventure, you see, that’s the beauty of it. You don’t know a bit what you’re going to find until you come to the end, and, even then, you don’t know what you’ve found—at least you know what you’ve found for yourself but you don’t know if you’ve found anything for anybody else—but that doesn’t matter, really, the only thing that matters is that you must find something—some sort of—well—prey. Otherwise it’s no good, of course. You go questing about, like a—like a hound, and sometimes you get lost, of course, and sometimes you find things you never knew were there…”
I could not put it any better and it makes me feel vindicated in my own writing style. Also, Barbara loves crumpets and was still frightened of “bright” people, and of thunder, and big dogs, and dentists… I need a friend like her; we have so much in common.
The cast of characters over the two books is quite large and at first I was drowning in names. But we get introduced to each one as they take over the narration and by the end I had a complete picture of most everyone, and they’re real. Because I’m familiar with older British stories, I’ve seen most of these types of people before: the fortune seekers, army men, esteemed patronesses, gossips, vicars, maids etc. So even though I sorta know these people already, they’re interesting and I easily became invested in them. Their old-fashioned Britishness is something I never tire of.
The dialogue is 1930s British, so of course I love it.
The prose is quite basic and it does put a dint in my enjoyment by seeing lots of stagnant words like “was” and “had been,” and adverbs telling instead of showing a person’s emotions. But the simplistic style does make the reading faster and easier to absorb, so it goes with the overall tone of the story. However, I know it could be better with some editing.
The punctuation is off. As I read it I had to put in periods and commas just to make more sense of what’s happening. It didn’t bother me so much later on, but punctuation exists for a reason.
Minor quibbles aside, this is the cutest, sweetest, warmest blanket of a book you could possibly want. It’s a trilogy and I haven’t gotten the third one yet, but I’m very much looking forward to it. For now, though, it’s time to read more Stevenson and to leave you with some choice quotes.
He was even dirtier than he had been…his language might have set fire to the toolshed if it had not been so damp.
She did not allow her sense of humour to interfere with business; she only used it as a sauce to make the boiled fish more interesting—so to speak.
“If I’m not back in two hours you can ring up your friend Sergeant Capper and tell him to search for my dead body in the cellars…”
There are very few people in the world with courage enough to admit that they do not care for music (dogs and children come into the same category) and so brand themselves for ever as Philistines in the eyes of their friends.
The result, to a fanatic upon the subject of architecture, was perhaps somewhat unfortunate; the kind of man who prefers candles to lamps, and powder closets to bathrooms might have torn his hair and called the Chevis family vandals and goths.
She was like good wholesome wheaten bread, spread thickly with honest farm butter; and the thought crossed his mind, that a man might eat bread for ever and ever, and not tire of it, and that it would never clog his palate like sweet cakes or pastries, or chocolate eclairs.
He had never envisaged the possibility of Spring getting lost, so to speak. He agreed, however, that it was a frightful thought—a positively nightmare thought.
My review for book three.