This is much like The Other Side of the Fire, but longer and a touch more cruel and more constantly funny. The funniest bit is probably the tutor pitching himself into an affair with a student, mostly out of bored vanity, and then being horrified at the thought that divorce would make him so uncomfortable; he doesn't see that she isn't interested in anything but talk:
She knew exactly how she ought to feel, for she was well read in our greater and lesser English poets, but the unfortunate fact was that she did not really like being kissed at all.
The introduction is written by . Now I see why Holt's cosy mysteries are unsatisfying; her sees-all character is nice where she should be kind. The classic characters see the foibles of their neighbors and are kinder because of it, avoiding the cruelties that a true innocent would say unknowingly.
isn't cruel even when he's dissecting a really hopeless character, as in Cousin Henry. I wonder how. I wonder why.
ISBN: 0452258162
So wrote clew in Fiction (20th c.). | TrackBack