The Town in Bloom, Slade House and The Past

After having loved Dodie Smith's "I Capture the Castle", I wondered if this later novel could be as good. I needn't have worried, The Town in Bloom it is almost in the same class. Written in 1965, we visit London theatre land in the nineteen twenties as eighteen year old Mouse lands her first job at the Crossway Theatre. Her adventures are so well and wittily described, this is a real feel-good story.

Not everything is sweetness and light, an undercurrent of doomed relationships pervade the book. But Mouse is lucky when Miss Lester offers her a job as her assistant. Mouse hesitates with "I can't think why you should (want me). I'm not really efficient". To which the reply is "The truth is I rather like you. And I can't work with people I don't like, however efficient they are". Mouse describes Eve Lester as a faded beauty; "or perhaps only a dimmed beauty which might have shone if she helped it to".

I have never known a writer that can give you such a warm glow. The last half dozen pages, where Mouse contemplates her life are exquisite. If any writer can conjure up a lump in your throat, it's Dodie Smith.

After the disappointment of "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoot" and passing on "Cloud Atlas" and "The Bone Clocks", David Mitchell's Slade House is a far more mainstream and short easy reading fantasy. Every nine years .... but I've already said too much. Not so much five short stories as five witty visits to the mystery that is Slade House. More please Mr Mitchell.

Somewhere in The Past by Tessa Hadley, there was a great family drama trying to get out. It just seemed to be padded out with well written but uninteresting events and long descriptions of the landscape. I don't mind a bit of introspection, but not this much. "She believed that social occasions ought to be lubricated with agreed civility, limited and shallow". Nice writing but please. I did enjoy the relationship of the sisters and brother who meet at the old isolated family home for a short holiday. If only some tough editing had been deployed.