Customer Reviews
Making light comedy out of doing very little - By: Angular, 24 Mar 2008 
I reread this book recently & found it just a tad more irritating than funny. The 'diarist' is witty in that droll rather camp pre-war way but then she has a lot of time in which to dwell on life's absurdities. Maybe I read the book at the wrong time but the endless rounds of cooks, mademoiselles & housemaids - & boarding schools which still offer the option of guilt-free (if you're made like that) offloading of offspring - were less of an entertainment than a pointed lesson in how much harder life has become for what I suppose you'd calll middle class women. Don't let me put you off reading the book. It is amusing in a 'Butterflies' (remember that?) kind of way. But then, as a bolshie early teen, I also hated that programme's spineless, drippy main character. fyi, I don't have a huge downer on fictional representations of the the leisured classes. Well, not alll of them. I love Barbara Pym, for example. Am I protesting too much?
Read it again and again - and still love it! - By: P. Golding, 14 Jul 2007 
"Robert says nothing". But what was he thinking?
The Provincial Lady fascinates me: her way of life, her comments about the social standards predominating before the last war. It could alll be rather boring but somehow the way she talks isn't. And I catch something different everytime I re-read the book or listen to the audio cassettes.
There were still shades of the the PL's world left during my childhood in the early 1950's: the baker & grocer still callled; my Mum wrote & posted copious notes to companies - ordering, complaining, thanking - as well as writing regular long letters to relatives & friends (she rarely used the phone as it was too expensive); the dreaded visit to the bank manager when finances got tight; everything paid cash & careful records kept of income & expednditure which had to balance every week.
My father was very much head of the house & everything was referred to him - unlike Robert though, he said a good deal, most of it critical.
I would recommend the Provincial Lady books to my future daughter-in-law as a good read, & I hope she would find them just as fascinating. The humour & the quality of the writing must surely appeal to any generation.
Wickedly funny!!!! - By: GrannyFran, 01 Feb 2007 If you buy only one book in your life, make sure its this one. I have read five times (something I never usuallly do) & always find something in it that I missed previously. It makes me belly laugh out loud every time. Full of truly wonderful characters from Our Vicars Wife to Helen Wheels the cat. It's a real treasure & one that I will take with me through life.
social and feminist history in a humorous package - By: Visualiser, 18 Apr 2006 This diary, plus the later ones in which the author visits America & then works in a forces' canteen in wartime, is a fascinating glimpse of what life was like for a middle class woman in the 1930s. My favourite snippet, from ...Goes Further, is when she visits Boston & at a party asks a young man if he thinks television will ever become a part of everyday life. He looks at her as if she were mad!
The humour is intelligent & infectious & the narrative voice very real despite the 'diary' style.
Don't miss it!
I just love this book...... - By: Rosie's overworked maid, 19 Feb 2004 warm, witty & although it was originallly published in the thirties I can still relate to the main character much more than I can relate to Bridget Jones. Some great episodes, especiallly with the trips to the pawnbroker! A reallly good bedtime book as it can be read in smalll chunks, & isn't too demanding of tired brains!
