Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, by Helen Simonson, had been on my to-read list for a while. And no, it has nothing to do with Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day.
I should have taken the hint from Alexander McCall Smith's blurb on the front, "A beautiful little love story."
As AMcS says, it's a love story, set in a village in Sussex, typically English (including the underlying currents of xenophobia and a healthy dose of NIMBY).
Major Pettigrew reminds me a little bit of my mom's cousin, Charles - extremely well-mannered, chivalrous to a fault, and very distinguished. I loved the character, and found his hapless son deliciously bad.
My only complaint about the book was the continuous rant against Red Brick Housing Estates Built On Former Fields. Well, I'm sorry, English Countryside peeps, but not all of us can afford to live in country houses.
Harumph.
My mother-in-law makes the Best Pies Ever - I helped with this one (I made the decoration) last weekend at a big family supper that we had. YUM.
On my Kindle, I've been plodding through Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles. I quite liked the first half, but have now given up. Hardy just put one block after another in front of poor old Tess - I got tired of it. I was bad and gave up and read the Wikipedia entry about the plot and will now be moving on to the next book. Sorry, Tess.
1 comment:
My friends in college thought Tess was so bad when they had to read it for a class that they burned it outside our residence hall at the end of the semester.
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