Delightful novel, dire title: DOROTHY LAMBERT, All I Desire (1936)

So, I am back, and, invigorated by my time in England—and especially my British Library and Bodleian experiences—determined to turn over a new leaf, with more disciplined reading (let's face it, for me, any discipline at all will be an improvement) and shorter reviews (a likely story) that I might even succeed in posting more frequently (yeah, right). We will see how that turns out, but I'm off to a decent start because I do have a new review for you!

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Hermia was discovering how inconveniently small the world was and wondered fretfully how it was that the very people she would have wished to avoid if she had remembered their existence should happen to inhabit the small and insignificant neighbourhood which she and Jeremy has selected for its remoteness from the world.

Readers might similarly wonder, at least in passing, at the odds of not one but two figures from romance writer Hermia Carlisle's slightly scandalous past in India turning up in the isolated English village of Holm Street, to which she has retreated with her daughter Jeremy (there's a story behind that name, of course) for absolute peace and quiet to write her books. But if they're at all like me, they won't fret about the implausibility for long, since the results are so completely delightful.

I've been meaning to get back to reading Dorothy Lambert (author, of course, of the wonderful Much Dithering, reprinted by Dean Street Press) for years, but her books are so hard to track down that I've been limited in my ability to do so. Happily, our recent trip to the British Library has opened up the prospects quite a lot, and it happens that—despite it's absolutely dire title (I'm already coming up with possible alternate titles in case we were to reprint it—something I usually disapprove of but which in this case would surely be justifiable!)—this was the first one I dived in to. As soon as I started reading, I knew I was in for a treat.

Hermia Carlisle, the widowed author of torrid romances set in exotic locales ("using the vast stores of her romantic past as subject matter for highly coloured novels"), is surely a very funny caricature of Lambert herself, à la Dame Agatha's Ariadne Oliver. One of my favorite scenes in the novel is one in which she gets herself roped into various commitments relating to the W.I.'s upcoming Shakespeare Festival, because she's working out a "situation" for a new novel in her head and just politely keeps saying yes.

Apologies for the angle here!

Of course, Hermia and Jeremy don't find Holm Street as restful as expected—in large part due to the presence there of Major Piers Southcote, an old flame from India whose heart she broke, and the thoroughly terrible Mrs. Fenwick, who "had long been regarded as a blight and a pestilence by her children" and who, alas, has a long memory in regard to Hermia's interactions with Mr. Fenwick in India. But there's also an array of other entertaining villagers, including the requisite vicar and his wife; Mr. Marsh, a wealthy shop-owner, and his family, who have decided to take up country life, including their maritally predatory daughter Chrissy, referred to by Daphne Fenwick as "the Marsh Mallow"; and the irresistible Mrs Maycock, proprietor of the village shop and gossiper-in-chief, who is proud of Mrs Carlisle's achievements and hopes her fame will lead the village to glory like Byron did the Lake District ("or it might have been Tennyson"), and who isn't afraid of speaking her mind:

"I like Major Southcote," said Mrs. March shrewishly, "but I'd never let a daughter of mine go away for a whole day alone with him."

"Very likely not," agreed Mrs. Hogbin; "he's never asked them, has he? Sugar, lemons, and ginger, you said?"

What luck that this is the Lambert novel I turned to first of my British Library stash, because it is possibly my favorite of all of hers that I've read, not excluding Much Dithering (which is saying quite a lot!), and has made me even more excited about reading other of her works.