I guess I wasn’t completely accurate when I told you, dear reader, that I don’t read books you would find shelved in Fiction/Literature in the bookstores. Because I do own about 40 linear inches of Angela Thirkell.
I discovered* Angela Thirkell’s Barsetshire novels when I was visiting my mother in Paris. She had been encouraging me to visit her there – “come, we can explore together!” – and I finally gave in. Upon my arrival, she announced that she was leaving the next day for Bangkok and wouldn’t return until after I had departed and could I feed her cats. Being a confident, independent woman with a Michelin Green Guide, I set out to enjoy Paris without her. I went to museums, castles, Galleries Lafayette, parks, and tourist attractions. I walked, I took the Metro, I conquered the bus system.
This lasted about 3 days before I had a complete breakdown. Exploring a city by yourself when you don’t know the language is a lonely experience. With the exception of a very kind cheesemonger who wanted to practice her English (I think she must have been from the countryside and not a natural Parisian), I couldn’t get anyone to talk to me. (Someone told me later that it was because I am a New Yorker.**) And then I discovered the English Bookstore. Oh no, I told myself, you did not fly across the Atlantic to the City of Lights to read. You can buy just one book, to read in bed, and then back to the sights!
I returned the next day for another of Thirkell’s books. And the following day. And then I gave up, bought a whole stack, stocked up on croissants on my way back to Mom’s apartment, and spent the rest of the week holed up, reading.*** One Thirkell led to another and, without really trying, I ended up with a whole shelf.
Thirkell’s books are populated with a lot of people you probably wouldn’t encounter in Paris. The books wander through the English countryside, gently poking fun at the people who live there and, less gently, at the people visiting from other countries. The novels started in 1933 and marched through the decades, one per year, until 1961. They are, like Jane Austen, gently humorous, and somewhat romantic; and, like Agatha Christie, often deal with the theme of change coming to small towns in the form of strangers who bring in new ideas, new class mores. (If there is a single person of color in the series, I can’t remember it – and I think it would have stood out – and the Eastern European WWII refugees are treated very insularly.)
Each book wanders through one area of an imaginary area of the fictional county of Barsetshire, focusing in on the people and their stories. Northridge Rectory, set during WWII, follows two main tales. The first focuses on the wife of the rector, who faces the general upsets that war brought to the countryside: food shortages; an invasion of military officers quartered in a good part of her large home; and proximity of people outside her usual social circles. At one point, the narrator says she “had realized long ago that one of her war duties would be to make friends with many people whom at other times she would have been able without discourtesy to avoid except as acquaintances”**** and this is very much the tale of how she cheerfully keeps calm and carries on. Never complaining or arguing or giving in to wanting to bite people who refuse to ignore her physical weaknesses (“you look so tired”, people keep telling her; she is clearly recovering from a heart attack or a bad case of the long flu or something), and let her do her job.
The other tale circles around two academic writers who have been thrust together by the war: an older woman, who is the better and more popular writer; and the middle-aged man who has taken refuge in her home. In theory, they are working together on an almost unreadable dictionary of medieval French. Cared for by the women of his family – who have all now died – he accepts the hospitality of his hostess as a matter of course; and her spartan discipline (born of an almost non-existent income) provides the structure necessary for him to be productive. But, as the war grinds on, he is drawn to the siren song of a cheerful young widow who has a house full of food, fire, and merry chaos, unlike what he receives at home. This causes discomfort to all concerned and spills over to others in their circle.
I sometimes wonder if Patricia Wentworth was thinking about Barsetshire when she had her detective, Miss Silver, confirm the selection of the book she is picking out for her family-obsessed niece, Ethel Burkett, by checking the last few pages of the book to find the family cheerfully gathered around a Christmas tree. But that would be a little unkind to Angela Thirkell, to whom death is not a stranger. Characters in her books die of old age, disappear into the maw of war leaving their wives wondering if they are dead or alive, kill their parents with a blow (blows?) to the head and pitch themselves down the well, and get hit by cars without warning. Hm, I realize that make her sound a little grim, and she is not, but she is not above killing someone off to move the plot forward, and you do not always find the main characters gathered cheerfully around a Christmas tree on the last page.
You’d like to think that all ends well in the end, but that isn’t always the case: like life, sometimes bad people are punished and receive their comeuppance. Sometimes they go merrily on their way without consequence to continue creating chaos elsewhere. Sometimes the lovers get together; sometimes hearts are broken. Sometimes the happily-ever-after romances of early novels fester into something less happy as men’s hearts wander from the wives who are ill or unhappy or burdened by children. Sometimes a relationship that starts – and seems to end – in one novel, resurfaces in a different novel years later, and comes to fruition.
These novels are addictive and well-peopled by places and characters, large and small. This creates a feeling of familiarity akin to a child watching Blue’s Clues. When a character from a previous novel appears, it creates a lift, like meeting an old friend.
Thirkell’s writing has been compared to Jane Austen, which you can see just from the phrase I quoted above. I enjoy them for that reason, and for the vivid world she creates and the characters she populates it with – characters she is not afraid to poke sometimes ungentle fun at, even when she sympathizes with them. And her observations about life feel spot on to me – her description of Christmas in this book is priceless. I think she describes the war, for the people of England, as one part deprivation coupled with long stretches of boredom, and punctuated by moments of terror – which feels like the second quarter of 2020 to me. I read through the entire series again during the pandemic, even the later books which became even more formulaic as she grew older. (Thirkell even pokes fun at herself through one of her characters, an author who supports herself and her sons by writing a book a year.) It felt reassuring.
So if you like Jane Austen or Anthony Trollope (who originated the Barsetshire novels in the previous century), or if you like Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple not for the mystery but for the people and St. Mary Mead, give Angela Thirkell a try. You can start with this one – or with Cheerfulness Breaks In – and then work your way to earlier and/or later novels.
But beware, oh reader, beware. For, like chocolates, you will not want to stop with one.
There, that ought to keep you busy for a while.
*It was more of a personal discovery. After all, to say I had “discovered” an author who had been around for ages and that thousands if not millions of people already knew existed, seems a little wrong. Like Columbus.
**Tourist tip: if you want to ask a local for directions in New York, do not phrase your request thusly: “Pardon me, (sir or ma’am), but I’m wondering if you could help me. I wish to visit the library to retrieve the pen of my aunt. Could you perhaps provide directions?” This approach will not cause natives to stop and provide assistance because this is how people who want money start their requests and we will assume that you are going to a) ask us to sign a petition, b) ask for a handout, c) con us, or d) mug us. New Yorkers just ask strangers, “Where’s Grand Central?” or “Didn’t there used to be a bagel store here?” without prelude. Addressed thusly, you may find that New Yorkers will take time to reply, “Turn left, go through the tunnel under that building with the lights on it, cross the street, go through the lobby that looks like you shouldn’t be there, and down the escalators” or “Well there used to be but it closed 18 months ago and now you have to go 10 blocks uptown to Ess a Bagel for a halfway decent bagel.” In Paris, I was told, it is different and I came off as rude, which caused the lovely people of Paris to be rude in return. You may believe that, if you wish. Me, I’ll spend my time elsewhere.
***I did return to Paris later with my husband. And I will say that there’s a lot of France outside Paris that I look forward to visiting.
****Something useful to remember at work, especially these days, when we all want to kill people who think differently than us. And what is with me and footnotes this morning?
Change+Management 