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5.0 out of 5 stars
Miss Read's Simple Charms Shine Through, Jun 3 2000
Miss Read wrote about the virtues of voluntary simplicity long before it became a movement or seminar topic. Her Fairacre books use a single school teacher in a small English village as an observer of a richly realized provincial life. One is tempted to wax on about the influence of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens in her work, or to somehow disparage Jan Karon, who has created a Readesque world from a North Carolina milieu. No doubt one day folks will write their masters' theses discussing how Ms. Read and Muriel Spark headed for many of the same places, and yet reached such different destinations. But really, all that folderol would be missing the point completely. Miss Read writes warm, sentimental gentle English provincial satire, which is really all you need to know.The Fairacre characters are ordinary folks, burnished up a bit, as novels tend to do, so that they are entirely believable in their own universe, but not necessarily a part of our own "real world". Miss Read is not a pollyanna, nor does she set out to teach us some social lesson. Instead, she sets out for the reader a solid meal of good characterization, gentle wit, and a solid dessert of warm-hearted sentiment. Storm in the Village deals with a dilemma all too familiar to anyone from a small town--the town church is damaged, and money must be found to repair it. The book exists in a world of happy endings and wonderful good fortune, but the straightforward plotting is beside the point. We do not live in suspense about the ending--we just enjoy with pleasure how our characters make the ending happen. Miss Read is not out to convert us to move to Fairacre, or even to cause us to create our own Fairacres. But she does offer us a chance to peek through the gauze into a middle-class life whose virtues and foibles we recognize and appreciate. Perhaps someone out there now is toiling away on rescuing our suburban stories from the smug modernisms of the latter-day aesthete. In the meantime, though, Miss Read shows us that the ordinary life, well told and brushed up a bit about the edges, can make a darn good read. Storm in the Village is not going to make you pause and ponder life's inner contradictions. But it may allow you to sigh with relief on a rainy Saturday afternoon. What could be wrong with that?
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