Diary of a Provincial Lady by start-her-up (Kate/zombizombi)
This is December read, but I started late and was a slow reader. Sorry! But better late than never, am I right?
How many stars do you rate the book? ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ (4 out of five)
How many stars do you rate the author? ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ (5 out of five)
What is your favorite quote? “Am sorry to note that abuse and condemnation of a common acquaintance often constitutes very strong bond of union between otherwise uncongenial spirits.”
Do you like the ending? What would you change about it? One of the beauties of the epistolary novel is, in my opinion, that the reader does not come away from the book wishing it were different.
Any life lessons learned? Provincial Lady is not quite a lesson-teaching book. If anything, the only lesson to come away with is that many of us are more alike than we might ever suspect -- even through the ages and passage of time. For its time, it's quite subversive, with the Provincial Lady chafing against the restrictions placed on her by her gender and position. Delafield displays a marvelous ear for dialogue and a deft sense of the social requirements of 1930s Britain.
Final thoughts? It is evident why Delafield's work, published in the 1930s, has enjoyed an enduring popularity and the prestige of being able to say that it has never been out of print. It is hilariously done, the style is easy to read and vivacious, and the snapshot of 1930s life is irresistible. This is a novel in the epistolary style, which I'll explain because I love to explain things -- this means it's written as a series of documents, traditionally letters. Diary is obviously in a diary format, and as such it falls into the epistolary category. I have a weakness for epistolary novels because I find the inner thoughts of characters deeply interesting and because often the epistolary form lends itself to a greater sense of realism for the reader. Diary is a fictional diary (though largely autobiographical), not an actual one, but the reader might come away from the book feeling as though the Provincial Lady, her husband Robert, her children and neighbors, et al, are real persons.