Chatterton Square

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There is less levity than some of her others (no character leaps off the page like the lovable Miss Mole), and it perhaps requires more commitment from a reader than some.

The Blacketts live on a corner of Chatterton Square where on the opposite corner are the Frasers, an easy going family of five mainly- teenage children, their still beautiful mother and Miss Spanner, a sharp tongued spinster (but with an underlying heart of gold) who has moved in with her old friend. Herbert Blackett did not serve, and has managed to justify his staying at home as a matter of principle: “War!

As the story progresses, the female members of the Blackett family develop increasingly close friendships with the Frasers much to Mr B's consternation.

We are in familiar territory with many of the themes of this novel, those of marriage, provincial life and morality. I was sailing along and quite pleased with this book, and then it got bogged down starting in the middle of the 378-page tome (it seemed like a tome to me) so that by the end it was not an enjoyable read for me.Anyway, Herbert is aghast and at the same time titillated he is living next to a woman with loose morals because she is separated/divorced from her husband and it must have been her fault since her husband left her, right? It is no accident that the happier, more enlightened house contains both a women with an absent husband and a spinster.