Just before we went away to Bath, I finished reading Elizabeth von Arnim's 1922 novel 'The Enchanted April'. This really is a delightful book, full of poise and elegance. Lotty Watkins, a sort of Holy Fool, despairing of grey and wet London and her equally grey and wet marriage, is suddenly enraptured by a 'small ad' in 'The Times' - castle to rent on the Italian coast. (In those days such advertisements, and announcements - births, marriages & deaths, etc, were on the front page of the paper.) She dreams of a month away by the Mediterranean, but money being scarce, she enlists an acquaintance, Rose Arbuthnot in sharing the cost of the rent, but even combined their meagre resources are not enough. They take the expedient of sub-renting to two other women: the haughty Mrs. Fisher, and the unhappy socialite Lady Caroline Dester. A comedy of manners ensues as the genius loci begins to weave its enchantments. A sly, clever novel, well worth reading.
Currently reading a novel of a rather different strip, 'The Garrick Year', by Margaret Drabble. Sharp, witty, acerbic if not downright bitter.
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