“Did someone die in here or what?” ….
“Yes,” she told Andy, “somebody die die in here but I have, of course, since changed the sheets.”
I read about this book here, and felt smugly certain that I would not be, as Powell’s review suggested some would be, “deaf to this novel’s considerable charm”, thus would not have “wandered away long before those scenes [the ones with plot in them] arrive.” They said it was like Jane Austen, and I suppose I thought that meant gently satirical and not very exciting in a Scarlet Pimpernel way, but nevertheless containing various things for its well-drawn characters to do.
It’s all about a family of Hills, and they all come to live with their Aunt Lily in her large house. Lily’s brother Harvey comes, and he doesn’t like damn liberals; and histrionic Ginger with her teen daughter Betsy; and out-of-work Alden and his wife Becky and their four children; and Arthur and Phoebe, who are someone’s nephew and his girlfriend but I can’t remember whose because my brain doesn’t have the capacity for all this; and finally a distantly-related sociology student called Andy who wants to study the Hills. And I think that’s all of them.
I got on pretty well for a while. The characters were indeed entertaining, if too numerous to be bothered keeping track of (Ms. Clark appeared to feel the same way), and the dialogue could be funny, and everyone thought a number of humorous thoughts, and all. But seriously, nothing ever happened. I mean nothing. They would eat breakfast and go into town and come back from town and talk, but there was nothing ever actually happening. I appreciate having characters at whom the author pokes gentle fun, and at the same time, that doesn’t make a book. After a while I found myself flipping through pages trying to discover whether anything, ever, was going to happen to induce change, and when I had pretty well figured out that nothing ever would, I returned the book to the library.
Oh well. Then I no longer had it to worry about, and I settled down instead and read Tom Finder, which I liked a very great deal more.