My Fellow Devils (1951) by L.P. Hartley

Book review by George S: At twenty-eight years old, Margaret Pennyfather is a model upright citizen. Unmarried, she looks after her father, does much local charitable and committee work, and is the youngest person on the local bench of magistrates. In this role she has come across crime and wickedness, but sees it as a … Continue reading →

We Are Not Alone (1937) by James Hilton

Book review by George S: James Hilton wrote this novel after he had moved to Hollywood, and it reads rather like a movie treatment. We begin with opening shots of a cosy English cathedral town. A house is being demolished to make room for a department store, and people are reminiscing nostalgically: ‘That was where … Continue reading →

Steel Saraband (1938) by Roger Dataller

Book Review by Sylvia D: Roger Dataller was the pen name for Arthur Eaglestone who was born in Rotherham in 1888 and started working in a steel mill at the age of thirteen. He then worked for a number of years as a miner and in 1925 published “From a Pitman’s Notebook” This won him … Continue reading →

Women Who Seek (1928) by Denise Robins

Book review by George S. This month at the Popular Fiction reading group we have been exploring the steamy world of Romance, by looking at early Mills and Boon novels. I read a book by one of the publishing house’s most successful writers – Denise Robins. Women Who Seek is an odd title for this … Continue reading →

Peter West (1923) and The English Air (1940) by D.E, Stevenson

Book review by Mary G: When I read that D. E. Stevenson came from the same family as Robert Louis Stevenson and wrote romantic novels, I immediately assumed, mistakenly, that she would have much in common with O. Douglas, sister of John Buchan and author of 15 novels some of which had romantic plots. They … Continue reading →

Summer Will Show (1936) by Sylvia Townsend Warner

Book Review by George S: Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Lolly Willowes (1926) is about a woman leaving an ordinary environment and developing in extraordinary ways (she becomes a witch). Summer Will Show also describes the extraordinary progress and liberation of a previously conventional woman, but this time the process of liberation is not magical but emotional … Continue reading →

Twenty-Four Hours Leave (1943) by Renee Shann (pen name of Carol Gaye)

By Helen N. This is an American edition (Triangle Books, New York 1944) of a 1943 British novel, which accounts for the cover which has a sketchy picture of a woman in uniform reading a letter. It is very much a “Woman’s book”, in that the story is written from the woman’s point of view, … Continue reading →

Uninvited Guests by Parr Cooper (1946)

This interesting novel is set around 1943/44 in a small settlement in rural India, which is dominated by an Army training camp. The soldiers, commanded by Colonel Davis, are awaiting orders to go overseas to fight, probably  in Burma. Apart from a number of officers and their families, the main characters are Dr Taussig, a … Continue reading →

Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple (1953)

Review by George S. Warning: I couldn’t write this one without including plot spoilers. Last month was Whipple month at the Reading Group. I had not read any of her novels before, but enjoyed this one greatly.

Whom God Hath Joined by Arnold Bennett (1906)

Review by Sylvia D: Whom God Hath Joined is one of Arnold Bennett’s Five Towns novels.  It is a powerful read with a strong social message.  It is also a novel that could not have been written today. Lawrence Ridware is a legal clerk in a small solicitor’s practice in Hanbridge (Hanley).  He and his … Continue reading →