It's such a pleasure to read Angela Thirkell, to have a high expectation of being entertained and for the novel to match that. High Rising is witty and charming, a comedic slice of life in 1930's England that became a celebrated classic.
Laura Morland and her young locomotive-obsessed son Tony have a flat in London as well as a home in High Rising. Turning to writing racy potboilers after being widowed, she has no illusions about literature - she writes to pay the bills and pumps out bestsellers. The latest town gossip has her neighbour George Knox (scholarly biographer) down in Low Rising hiring a new secretary who seems to have designs above her station, actively separating him from his daughter Sybil and his other friends. Seems Miss Grey wants to marry Mr. Knox! She is quickly nicknamed an 'Incubus' and plans are afoot by Laura, her agent Adrian, her secretary Miss Todd, her cook Stoker, Mr. Knox's helper Annie, Mr. Knox's Annie's mother, Dr. Todd, and her old friend Mrs Birkett (who has met the Incubus before this Christmas holiday) to jest Miss Grey, trick her with kindness, and move her on her way.
This is not the high society of Downton Abbey where the latest styles are actively featured, these are the regular folk of High Rising who are in each others business, from the cook and maid to the doctor, they all pull together. Laura is generous and never takes herself seriously, naturally as a writer taken to flights of fantasy, always there for her friends, and can spot ahead who should be romancing who - and is prepared with a little nudge to get that started.
High Rising is clever with the wit of a Noel Coward play - I'm looking forward to reading more of Thirkell's work. This was her first novel written in 1933, and her 29 other novels that take place in the fictional Barsetshire County send up village ways in rural England, in the halcyon days after the First World War.
Attention BBC and the producers of Call The Midwife: It's time for a series based on Thirkell's work!
A real gem, and entertaining throughout.
1933 / Tradeback / 276 pages
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