Imprint: Vintage Classics
Published: 04/08/2011
ISBN: 9780099528722
Length: 464 Pages
Dimensions: 198mm x 29mm x 129mm
Weight: 319g
RRP: £9.99
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY LYNNE TRUSS
'Stella Gibbons is the Jane Austen of the twentieth century' The Times
Set in wartime London, Westwood tells the story of Margaret Steggles, a plain bookish girl whose mother has told her that she is not the type that attracts men. Her schoolfriend Hilda has a sunny temperament and keeps her service boys 'ever so cheery'. When Margaret finds a ration book on Hampstead Heath the pompous writer Gerard Challis enters both their lives. Margaret slavishly adores Challis and his artistic circle; Challis idolises Hilda for her hair and her eyes and Hilda finds Gerard's romantic overtures a bit of a bind. This is a delightfully comic and wistful tale of love and longing.
Imprint: Vintage Classics
Published: 04/08/2011
ISBN: 9780099528722
Length: 464 Pages
Dimensions: 198mm x 29mm x 129mm
Weight: 319g
RRP: £9.99
Westwood captures the heart, right from its opening pages… as an account of what it was like to be an ordinary young woman in wartime London - no stockings, no chocolate, no men - it can hardly be bettered. How did it, I wonder, evade fresh new soft covers for so long?
A wartime masterpiece
Stella Gibbons is the Jane Austen of the 20th century
Gibbons was an acute and witty observer, and her dissection of the British class system is spot-on
You show up a group of characters, all of whom are discontented and unhappy. Yet the feeling that comes through very powerfully is that life is wonderful, in spite of individual bitterness and frustration.