Beware of the endearing story populated by charming and quirky individuals, particularly if they happen to live in English villages.

Helen Simonson left the country life in the UK a good quarter of a
century ago, and her perception of the goings-on in rural England seem to have frozen when she left for the university. Actually, I don't think the UK she portrays in this novel--and certainly Major Pettigrew--really existed even back then. I met a fair amount of British officers when my husband was serving in England, and I can't think of any middling-grade officer who would insist on being called by his rank. It's all too Colonel Blimp-ish--what era did this guy serve in--the Boer War or Northern Ireland? But Ms Simonson is an equal-opportunity panderer--let's give the Americans the clueless class-bound Brits (whose obtuseness defy reality) and for our cousins across the pond, the crass loud American; that way everyone can feel smug and superior. Then, to keep the reader from falling asleep over the endless ruminations over the damned Purdy guns ( a clumsily created symbol of an England that only exists in the writer's mind) just throw in a slapstick panto-like dinner dance production, and an absurd melodramatic finish. It's fitting that the author's vocabulary is all over the place--half British and half American--which suits this odd mish-mash of a book.

N.B. I originally had the book ranked as an inoffensive three star read, but my annoyance, instead of fading into a it-wasn't-that-bad lull, has only sharpened into a growing dislike of this insufferably twee tale.