I picked this one up at the library , intrigued by the title but didn't really have any intention of reading it. (Ask my librarian and she will tell you I read about a tenth of what I cart home) But once I got into the story I couldn't put it down. What a charming book! It is written as a series of letters in 1946. The letters have several authors and it takes awhile to figure out who is who, but the heroine of the story is Juliet who wrote columns for a newspaper during the war and they have been put into a book and she is on a book tour at the beginning of the story. I was totally hooked when she hurls a teapot at an impudent interviewer who asks her why she broke off her wartime engagement the day before the wedding. Drink? A bit of the "ol' Oscar Wilde??" We are left hanging until a few letters later it is revealed that she broke it off because of....books! She came home to find him moving some things into her flat and he had boxed up all of her books (eight boxes!) and replaced them with his sports trophies! Obviously they had nothing in common and it was good to find out now and not tomorrow!! I loved this book. I wont give away any more of the plot but it is a much richer story than you would expect from a series of letters.
2 comments:
Way behind commenting ... I spotted this in Borders a week or so before you posted and thought it looked interesting, but was dragged away by a child before I got a chance to peruse it properly. There is supposed to be a copy on the shelf at the library - hopefully it will still be there tomorrow. I'm looking forward to reading it. I've also reserved The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett. Lissa recommended it on her blog, and it sounds right up your street too.
I read The Uncommon Reader last summer. It was a quick and quirky read. I enjoyed the first half better than the second when the author started playing make believe politics with the Queen.
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