Yesterday I read a Miss Read book, another day of reading series based on England.  But after reading The Fairacre Festival, it’s time to get out of the British Isles and plunge headfirst into another nation’s work. I love the Aunt Dimity series, written by the Anglophile American Nancy Atherton and set in the Cotswolds, I love the Swallows and the Amazons books written by the true blue Brit Arthur Ransome, but I just did not like Miss Read’s writing.  That is just her pen name (her real name is Dora Jessie Saint) and the fact that she calls herself “Miss Read” sets the tone for her oeuvre: formal and brittle tales of village life.  Of course, I am judging her work based on this one novel.  Some people just love her: the singer Enya even wrote two songs based on her work.  But Miss Read just does not inspire me, in song or in words.

The Fairacre Festival reminded me of Jan Karon’s books set in Mitford but in contrast to Karon, Miss Read’s characters are one-dimensional, and the village life she portrays is just as flat.  There were one or two wisps of humor, a few scathing swipes of anger, and much too much piously smug back-patting.  There was no insight, ironic or otherwise, into village life, and not much in the way of evocative description of landscape, character, or history.  We’re told the little town dates back to Norman times but that’s it,; oh, yes, we also know about the chalice given to the local church during Queen Anne’s reign, an integral point of the plot.  What there is of plot.

There are such great books out there that evoke with wit and precision the British way of life, including ones I’ve reviewed here, the novels of Nancy Mitford and of E.M. Delafield, the mysteries of P.D. James, Agatha Christie, and M.C. Beaton (to say nothing of the wonderful mysteries of Carolyn Crombie and Martha Grimes), and the thrillers of John Buchan. With so many good books set in the British Isles to choose from, don’t read Miss Read.