You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.86 AVERAGE
3.86 AVERAGE
Five star glory, this. I kept thinking, "Oh, I wish Sissie [my aunt] were alive so I could read this with her." We shared deep affection for Dorothy Parker, Helene Hanff, Cornelia Otis Skinner, and Fran Lebowitz, all of whom, like E.M. Delafield, and my aunt, were ahead of and out of their times, insurgent seditionists, pointing out the absurdities of culture and society with spiky, barbed humour and trenchant observation.
E.M. Delafield had already published sixteen novels when she began writing the serial of "light middles" for the publication Time and Tide which became this novel. In the guise of the journal of a middle class lady in a Devonshire village --- a largely autobiographical persona --- the Provincial Lady contends with a disinterested, disapproving, and dourly grumpy spouse, a young daughter with a mostly disapproving French nanny, a worshipped favorite son away at boarding school and prone to showing up with or disappearing with friends on holiday, an overly fertile cat, a vexingly caviling household staff, and a chronic state of shortness of funds and excess of impatient creditors, all under the snoopy watch of the puffed-up pomposity of Lady Boxe and her hoity-toity snobbery.
Through it all, our heroine stays good-humored, often at her own expense, following the dictate of my dear Sissie who could often be heard telling me as I wept, "Better to laugh than cry, my dear." It is a life lesson I have yet to master, but the Provincial Lady has no such la incapacité. (Warning, the French nanny speaks an awful lot of untranslated French herein, which, for an uncultured dolt like me required either guessing at from context or looking up online as I read --- which I was loath to do as I read these ancients to get away from 2018, so, to Google is to gag on the present.)
Listen:
"Robert [her husband] startles me at breakfast by asking if my cold --- which he has hitherto ignored --- is better. I reply that it has gone. Then why, he asks, do I look like that? Refrain from asking like what, as I know only too well. Feel that life is wholly unendurable, and decide madly to get a new hat."
"Customary painful situation between Bank and myself necessitates expedient, also customary, of pawning great-aunt's diamond ring, which I do, under usual conditions, and am greeted as old friend by Plymouth pawnbroker, who says facetiously, And what name will it be this time?"
There is in those paragraphs both a comfortable acceptance of who she is and the life she's leading, and a healthy sense of the absurdity of it all. And, to me, her rhythms are very similar to Fran Lebowitz, the short sentences, the digressions and asides, the punch at paragraph's end.
In any event, I recommend this book with the following reservation: finding it and its sequels is not an easy task. Some can only be gotten used, all of which I am saving up for, and that's a damned shame because if ever there was a time for learning to accept and be good-humoured about the absurdity of one's life and times, this is sure as hell that time.
[Update: Since I have been writing this for well on a week now, I have taken some of my recent house-sitting funds and ordered the second in this series, The Provincial Lady Goes Further. I can't wait for it to arrive. From Britain, no less.]
E.M. Delafield had already published sixteen novels when she began writing the serial of "light middles" for the publication Time and Tide which became this novel. In the guise of the journal of a middle class lady in a Devonshire village --- a largely autobiographical persona --- the Provincial Lady contends with a disinterested, disapproving, and dourly grumpy spouse, a young daughter with a mostly disapproving French nanny, a worshipped favorite son away at boarding school and prone to showing up with or disappearing with friends on holiday, an overly fertile cat, a vexingly caviling household staff, and a chronic state of shortness of funds and excess of impatient creditors, all under the snoopy watch of the puffed-up pomposity of Lady Boxe and her hoity-toity snobbery.
Through it all, our heroine stays good-humored, often at her own expense, following the dictate of my dear Sissie who could often be heard telling me as I wept, "Better to laugh than cry, my dear." It is a life lesson I have yet to master, but the Provincial Lady has no such la incapacité. (Warning, the French nanny speaks an awful lot of untranslated French herein, which, for an uncultured dolt like me required either guessing at from context or looking up online as I read --- which I was loath to do as I read these ancients to get away from 2018, so, to Google is to gag on the present.)
Listen:
"Robert [her husband] startles me at breakfast by asking if my cold --- which he has hitherto ignored --- is better. I reply that it has gone. Then why, he asks, do I look like that? Refrain from asking like what, as I know only too well. Feel that life is wholly unendurable, and decide madly to get a new hat."
"Customary painful situation between Bank and myself necessitates expedient, also customary, of pawning great-aunt's diamond ring, which I do, under usual conditions, and am greeted as old friend by Plymouth pawnbroker, who says facetiously, And what name will it be this time?"
There is in those paragraphs both a comfortable acceptance of who she is and the life she's leading, and a healthy sense of the absurdity of it all. And, to me, her rhythms are very similar to Fran Lebowitz, the short sentences, the digressions and asides, the punch at paragraph's end.
In any event, I recommend this book with the following reservation: finding it and its sequels is not an easy task. Some can only be gotten used, all of which I am saving up for, and that's a damned shame because if ever there was a time for learning to accept and be good-humoured about the absurdity of one's life and times, this is sure as hell that time.
[Update: Since I have been writing this for well on a week now, I have taken some of my recent house-sitting funds and ordered the second in this series, The Provincial Lady Goes Further. I can't wait for it to arrive. From Britain, no less.]
Diary from the perspective of a housewife in 1930’s England. Delightful. Funny. And very British. I enjoyed it very much.
I couldn't even pretend to care about this woman, her life, or finishing this book.
Perhaps "quaint" and "slice of life" are the reasons I picked this up. I do adore a quiet and soft novel. This diary-entry-1930s-blogstyle-novel did a few things...
It revealed that privileged slice of life storytelling makes me want to barf; and, the quiet novels I adore (think Anita Brookner) need heart/soul/grit to them on some level- even if that level is purely psychological.
Our protagonist is silly, indulgent, boring, petty (and not in the good way), and I couldn't be bothered with reading yet another basic and boring diary entry of an upper class housewife with nothing to say.
I would have loved to read a Betty Friedan critique of this one. (Yes I know it was years before her time, but just saying).
Perhaps "quaint" and "slice of life" are the reasons I picked this up. I do adore a quiet and soft novel. This diary-entry-1930s-blogstyle-novel did a few things...
It revealed that privileged slice of life storytelling makes me want to barf; and, the quiet novels I adore (think Anita Brookner) need heart/soul/grit to them on some level- even if that level is purely psychological.
Our protagonist is silly, indulgent, boring, petty (and not in the good way), and I couldn't be bothered with reading yet another basic and boring diary entry of an upper class housewife with nothing to say.
I would have loved to read a Betty Friedan critique of this one. (Yes I know it was years before her time, but just saying).
A perfect follow-up to "Elizabeth and Her German Garden." Offhandedly hilarious.
So THIS was were the Brigit Jones diaries came from...
Thoroughly delightful. A perfect (and fast) spring break book.
Thoroughly delightful. A perfect (and fast) spring break book.
Me gustó. Es muy divertido, con un humor muy 'british', irónico y seco.
Básicamente cuenta el día a día de una dama de provincias en los años 30, por lo que tiene un estilo muy costumbrista.
Me recordó a 'Cranford' de Gaskell, pero con más mala leche.
Básicamente cuenta el día a día de una dama de provincias en los años 30, por lo que tiene un estilo muy costumbrista.
Me recordó a 'Cranford' de Gaskell, pero con más mala leche.
funny
lighthearted
relaxing
slow-paced