Bewildering Cares: Introduction and thoughts on reading.

[Tania, Gloucestershire Wild Daffodil.]

Winifred Peck was a fairly prolific author from an interesting family, her niece is Penelope Fitzgerald, who has written a biography of them; I beleve it concentrates more on the brothers.

has been compared to The Provincial Lady in Wartime, Mrs Tim Of The Regiment and Henrietta's War: News from the Home Front 1939-1942 being written in diary format about WW2. Lets hope it lives up to that promise.

[Jess]

I'm diving into this one now. Camilla has given up her library subscription for Lent. She's either a far better Christian than most or setting the bar high as the vicar's wife!

[Jess]

Tania wrote: "compared to The Provincial Lady in Wartime, Mrs Tim Of The Regiment and Henrietta's War: News from the Home Front 1939-1942 being written in diary format about WW2. Lets hope it lives up to that promise.."

I can some elements of The Provincial Lady. In fact, Camilla Lacely mentions reading The Diary of a Provincial Lady and The Demon in the House and mentions Angela Thirkell as the author. She doesn't mention E.M. Delafield though? I wonder why. Unless it was very well known she penned the P.L. series?

I think I'm seeing more hints (it's not very similar) to P.L. with a mix of Excellent Women tones in theses beginning chapters. I probably am thinking Pym due to all the writing about the church committees and problems the ladies are encountering.

[Jess]

I'll add that I think Camilla Lacely manages with Kate a wee bit better than the P.L. manages her staff. Even if she has to turn a blind eye to Kate coming in well after the last bus should have brought her back from her date with Private Jenkins!

[Tania, Gloucestershire Wild Daffodil.]

I have started this one now.

Jess, I agree, giving up her library subscription does seem like quite the sacrifice; perhaps shes thinking of reading 'War and Peace' or 'Bleak House' during lent.

All those comparisons sound very promising. For some reason, The Demon in the House hasn't been re-published with the rest, I had to read a large print edition from the librsry, I don't remember any glaring "whoa, we can't publish THAT"! Moments.

[Tania, Gloucestershire Wild Daffodil.]

I had expected this to be more in diary form, with shorter daily entries. With the length of these chapters, I don't suppose it covers more than a fortnight.

[Jess]

That was unexpected for me as well, Tania. I wasn’t sure if it was the print format of my DSP edition that makes the entries so long or if that how it looked in the original edition.

[Tania, Gloucestershire Wild Daffodil.]

I see Dorothy Whipple gets a mention here as well.

[Sandybeth]

I have started this today as my second hand copy has arrived. I have only read Furrowed Middlebrow on kindle before so I was surprised how cheaply printed this book looks. The picture on the front cover is not centred and there are such narrow margins at the sides and top of the pages that it is not easy to read. My copy also says it is printed by Amazon. Have I got a dud copy or are the books all like this? If so then I will stick to kindle versions.
ps. I am enjoying it so far although I am listening to Barbara Pym’s Jane and Prudence on Audible too today and I am confusing my vicar’s wives!

[Tania, Gloucestershire Wild Daffodil.]

I wonder if it might be because these were the first ones to come out. Of the physical copies I have, the later batches look much better than the older ones, but they do have narrow margins. I can't find anything anywhere about them being printed by Amazon but I do know they're print on demand so maybe Amazon did the first batch.

[Sandybeth]

Thank you. Are the paperbacks not available in shops the. if they are printed on demand? The back page said ‘ printed by Amazon’ by the way. I suppose I am just a touch disappointed as I try to buy from Hive not Amazon and got this copy from Ebay.

[Tania, Gloucestershire Wild Daffodil.]

On the back cover of all of mine there is something about Light Source, looks like Amazon only did the first batch. My local bookshop stocks them, but if I order a specific title it takes longer because they are print on demand. They are increasingly being stocked in bookshops as their popularity grows. I think most books are p-o-d nowadays unless they have one of the big publishers behind them and a big marketing campaign, the technology has come on in leaps and bounds in the last decade, so better to do it this way than send thousends of unsold books into landfill, their binding makes them un-recyclable. So I'm told anyway.

[Sandybeth]

That makes a lot of sense Tania. No charity shop wants a repeat of the 100s of copies of 50 Shades of Grey do they!
I had another quick read this morning and I am struggling to get use to her writing style, she has a Dickens like habit of creating a paragraph of meandering thoughts into one long sentence.

[Tania, Gloucestershire Wild Daffodil.]

😀😀😀 A house guest left that book behind once, when I found it I put it in the recycling bin (this was before I was aware that they couldn't be). I don't agree with book burning, but...

[Pamela]

I’ve just started and can definitely see echoes of Provincial Lady. Such as the light hearted way they talk about their husbands - but Arthur seems to get more respect and to be more of an active worker (unlike Robert in PL who mainly seemed to read his newspaper and complain about PL spending money!)

I really like the chatty tone here - I read one of WP’s mystery novels Arrest the Bishop? and found it a bit heavy going at times, this is much lighter and amusing. She does use her knowledge of clerical life really well too.

[Tania, Gloucestershire Wild Daffodil.]

I have read 2 of her mysteries, that one and The Warrielaw Jewel; the latter was very gloomy, and I agree that Arrest the Bishop was quite heavy going; Bewildering Cares certainly has a much lighter touch than these ones.

[Jess]

I’m still working my way through this one but enjoying it. She references the PL book in this book. As I’ve been reading I’ve been catching the same tones at times too. It’s making me wonder if she was influenced a bit by PL when writing.