Product Description

In High Rising, Mrs. Morland, a widowed author, must attend to the deeper problems of country life while her son Tony drives everyone to distraction with his amazing combination of toy trains. Here Mrs. Thirkell demonstrates the characteristic style for which she is known and for which readers love her. This is fiction replete with gentle irony, grave absurdity, and urbane understatement.

"You read her, relaxed and smiling, from the first word to the last."-Chicago Sun

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #388325 in Books
• Published on: 2008-06-01
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .72" h x 5.68" w x 8.43" l, .73 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 248 pages

From Amazon.com
The unmarried Anne Todd, a wonderful secretary as well as a devoted bedside nurse to her decrepit mother, is an archetypal Thirkell heroine: plucky, determined, resourceful, but acutely aware that being safely married would be a better alternative. The current resurgence of interest of Thirkell, several of whose 40-odd novels of life in imaginary "Barsetshire" before World War II are being reissued, has awakened a nostalgia for the sharp glittering surfaces of her work. High Rising is Thirkell at her warm, easygoing best.

From AudioFile
From the 1930s to the '50s, Angela Thirkell specialized in absurd, astute novels of manners set amongst the landed gentry and townsfolk of England. Think of Jane Austen transmuted to the twentieth century. HIGH RISING is the story of Mrs. Moreland, a novelist, and her youngest son, Tony, during their Christmas holidays in the village of High Rising. All heck breaks out when an untrustworthy secretary tries to seduce a neighboring writer, Mrs. Moreland's publisher falls in love with the neighbor's daughter, the doctor proposes to Mrs. Moreland's own secretary, and throughout, young Tony talks only of his expanding model train collection. It's silly and heartening and, despite the dated anti-Semitic references, enormous fun. Jilly Bond reads with enthusiasm and a clear understanding of the story's counterpoint social observation and humor. One voice occasionally slips into another, but that doesn't matter, as the characterizations are spot-on. Even her 10-year-old Tony is perfect. A.C.S. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Review
"You read her, relaxed and smiling, from the first word to the last."