Miss Mapp
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Miss Elizabeth Mapp might have been forty, and she had taken advantage of this opportunity by being just a year or two older. Her face was of high plain colour and was corrugated by chronic rage and curiosity; but these vivifying emotions had preserved to her an astonishing activity of mind and body, which fully accounted for the comparative adolescence with which she would have been credited anywhere except in the charming small town which she had inhabited so long. Rage and the gravest suspicions about everybody had kept her young and on the boil.
She sat, on this hot July morning, like a large bird of prey at the very convenient window of her garden-room, the ample bow of which formed a strategical point of high value. This garden-room, levelheaded and spacious, was built at right angles to the front of her house, and looked straight down the very appealing street which debouched at its lower end into the High Street of Tilling. Exactly opposite her front door the road turned sharply, so that as she looked out from this projecting window, her own house was at right angles on her left, the street in question plunged steeply downwards in front of her, and to her right she commanded an uninterrupted view of its further course which terminated in the disused graveyard surrounding the huge Norman church. Anything of interest about the church, but, could be gleaned from a guide-book, and Miss Mapp did not occupy herself much with such coldly venerable topics. Far more to her mind was the fact that between the church and her strategic window was the cottage in which her gardener lived, and she could thus see, when not otherwise engaged, whether he went home before twelve, or failed to get back to her garden again by one, for he had to cross the street in front of her very eyes.
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This is a well-written, extremely light bit of satire. The ensemble cast live lives comprised of bridge games, golf, and gossip, with very small else to occupy them. After a hundred or so pages, but, I yearned for some excitement not involving who wore what to whose party. Back to the hi-jinks of Wodehouse, I suppose. Incidentally, the additional reviews not more than mine seem to refer to another book, as Lucia does not appear in this one.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
Since human scenery is the right theme of these books, it doesn’t matter a whit if the Riseholme-Tilling world is not our own. These books are as fresh as the day they were written and will be for a excellent, long time to come.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
I had the same initial difficulty getting into this book as I did Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster. But, once fully immersed in it, I became wholly converted to the cult of Mapp and Lucia. This volume only has Mapp but Mapp is reasonably enough on her own! This is tiny town life as depicted with a sly wit by E.F. Benson. The time period is between the two world world wars and it is set in England. There is no tv so life is one endless round of get togethers with one’s townspeople with the favorite past time being bridge. This book opens by exploring how ideally Mapp’s house is situated so she can spy on all of her neighbors and quickly moves into the one-upmanship practiced by virtually everyone. If one is in any way slighted, the plotting for revenge is intricate and then executed with the vehemence of a hard won military push into enemy territory. This reminded me very much of my New England grandmother and her hey day in her tiny town.
I also listened to this on audio as read by the wonderful actress Prunella Scales. She played Basil Fawlty’s wife in FAWLTY TOWERS. Listening to her interpretation helped me momentously on easing into this whole world.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
Preposterus, silly, vain and oh so human the characters all remind you of people you know far too well. Reading this book is settling down for a long and wicked gossip.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
Miss Elizabeth Mapp — malicious, snooping, miserly and snobbish — serves as the social center of Tilling, a thinly veiled portrait of the English town of Rye, Sussex, in the 1920s. Determined to maintain her position and to one-up her neighbors, Godiva Plaistow and Susan Poppit, MBE, Miss Mapp resents others’ success and devotes hours to preparation how to elevate herself. Aside from social-climbing, bridge parties and farming, Miss Mapp’s only additional concern is the long-shot scheme of entrapping her national, an Army captain and middle-aged bachelor named Benjamin Flint, into matrimony.
Sounds like an outdated bore? In fact, E.F. Benson’s biting satire on upper-middle-class pursuits proves hilarious, sort of a more cynical version of a P.G. Wodehouse novel. If you’re a fan of M.C. Beaton’s Agatha Raisin series or of Julian Fellowes’ “Snobs,” you’ll like all of the books in the Mapp & Lucia series.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5