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Miss Buncle's Book (Miss Buncle #1)

D.E. Stevenson

Start date: April 1, 2018

Finish date: April 30, 2018

Discussion: Group Reads

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What Members Thought

Dec 28, 2012 Mir rated it it was amazing

Shelves: books

I loved Miss Buncle. I loved Miss Buncle's Book*. I loved Miss Buncle's book. I loved the book within Miss Buncle's book.

Barbara Buncle is in serious need to some income to support herself and her elderly nurse. What's a genteel spinster to do when she has no skills and women don't get jobs? Write a book? Keep chickens? She hates chickens! A book it is, then.

Having, by her own assessment, no imagination, Miss Buncle decides to simply record the daily life of her small town, changing her neighbor
I loved Miss Buncle. I loved Miss Buncle's Book*. I loved Miss Buncle's book. I loved the book within Miss Buncle's book.

Barbara Buncle is in serious need to some income to support herself and her elderly nurse. What's a genteel spinster to do when she has no skills and women don't get jobs? Write a book? Keep chickens? She hates chickens! A book it is, then.

Having, by her own assessment, no imagination, Miss Buncle decides to simply record the daily life of her small town, changing her neighbors' names but otherwise portraying them faithfully. Hey, what's the chance of any of them ever reading it, right? To make it more interesting, she adds in some adventures, romances and travels for people she likes and punishments and embarrassments for those she doesn't (desertion for the local abusive husband, for instance).

But Barbara Buncle is a better writer than she gives herself credit for, and soon her "novel" is a best-seller! Half the town is up in arms, and everyone wants to know who the culprit is. Meek and dowdy Miss Buncle doesn't occur to anyone as a suspect, but how long can she keep her secret?

This is Stevenson at her best, funny and satirical and kind. This was the first book of hers I'd read and it was far cleverer and more humorous than I expected. And despite being very approachable, the prose is also amazingly controlled. Stevenson can be very subtle. Miss Buncle is more observant than she herself is aware, and the gap between the things she writes and says and her understanding of their implications provides some of the funniest and most insightful moments.

For instance, it's never totally clear whether Barbara doesn't realize her two "spinster" neighbors are lesbians, or doesn't realize that other people will disapprove of them when she accidentally outs them. Stevenson clearly has no problem with lesbianism (they get to vacation in Egypt! In trousers!), which was a little surprising to me in a book written for middle class women of the 1930s. I especially liked that one lesbian and the married doctor who were childhood best friends are still friends and hang out talking about their relationships.

Stevenson is also very kind to her less, um, intellectually gifted characters. The Major, for instance, has no introspection, can hardly follow a conversation, and thinks in cliches. Many authors would make him a stock character, a buffoon and probably a bigot, but just when the reader is judging him (man, what an idiot!) Stevenson gently points out that he is also one of the kinder and more decent people in town. Do the stupid and simple deserve happiness any less? Let him have his happy ending, even if it is a maudlin one.

Stevenson is very charitable: few of her unsympathetic characters are irremediably bad. Some of them just need a wake up call. Where the inexperienced Miss Buncle takes pleasure in giving her characters what she thinks they deserve, Stevenson gives hers what they need.

*Except for the cover. In addition to being hideous, um, the main character is supposed to be 32. I understand that 32 used to be considered an "old maid" but that doesn't mean she looked 65! ...more

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May 18, 2014 Julie Durnell rated it really liked it

Shelves: england-uk

A sweet and slow read of village life, where some things never change, the characters are a slice of timelessness! Looking forward to reading Miss Buncle Married and other books by Stevenson!

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Apr 04, 2018 Barb in Maryland rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: general-fiction, historical-fiction

3.5 stars for this gently amusing book from 1934. It was a very early book by this author and this shows in some pacing issues and at least one plot element.
While I was amused as I was reading and definitely wanted to know how it all worked out, at no time was I convinced I was reading about real people. Everyone was right from a Central Casting call for residents of the stereotypical English Village. Miss Buncle is the mousy spinster who is living on the financial edge, the new, young vicar, Er ...more

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Dec 08, 2012 CLM rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: uk, fiction, 20th-century, re-read

Enjoyed this reread and the delightful new cover!

https://perfectretort.blogspot.com/20... ...more

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Jul 13, 2012 Susan in NC rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Fun, light comedy of manners

4/2/18 - still 3.5-4 stars; I enjoyed Stevenson’s gentle, dry humor, and got into Miss Buncle, Sarah, Dr. John, Sally and Ernest (the vicar) more as characters. I’m still haunted by comparisons to the rural, British village comedies of Benson and Thirkell, which I enjoyed more, and frankly, I’m firmly in Mr. Abbott’s camp - the twins’ kidnapping from the party and the doctor doing nothing about it was ridiculous, and threw me right out of the story.

I had forgotten a Fun, light comedy of manners

4/2/18 - still 3.5-4 stars; I enjoyed Stevenson’s gentle, dry humor, and got into Miss Buncle, Sarah, Dr. John, Sally and Ernest (the vicar) more as characters. I’m still haunted by comparisons to the rural, British village comedies of Benson and Thirkell, which I enjoyed more, and frankly, I’m firmly in Mr. Abbott’s camp - the twins’ kidnapping from the party and the doctor doing nothing about it was ridiculous, and threw me right out of the story.

I had forgotten all about that until Sarah was telling Miss B. that Vivian was a “snakey” sort of person, and I remembered it was something do with the beloved twins. I’m sorry, Mr. Featherstone-Hogg, despite his chorus girls, did nothing about this? In an era when there had been a terrible child kidnapping splashed across international news, this was a plot device? Sorry, bridge too far for me, lost a star there...

2016 reading: 3.5-4 stars - I couldn't help but be reminded of E.F. Benson's witty, sparkling Lucia novels, or even Angela Thirkell's gently rambling, charming Barsetshire series, and I'm afraid Miss Buncle came in a bit of a poor second to those brilliant gems...Benson could wield his stiletto-like pen with the best of them, and Thirkell often makes me laugh out loud!

However, this charming, funny, easy and fast read offered several delightful characters and a lot of my favorite bone-dry British humor, and I did appreciate Miss Buncle's well-deserved skewering of her self-satisfied, pretentious neighbors. I grew a bit impatient when I felt the book dragged a bit in the middle as if Stevenson herself wasn't sure when/whether/how to reveal John Smith's true identity.

I found the resolution satisfying, though, and appreciated how she finally tied up all the loose ends. I did find the portrayal of Miss Buncle somewhat uneven though - first Mr. Abbott reads her book and says she's either imbecilic or has a sharp satirical eye, and later he becomes attracted to her and she's smart and funny and bright (but not too bright). Her neighbors seem to think she's simple one moment and sly and sneaky the next - although that is more understandable, considering what she wrote about them! I couldn't decide how I felt about Barbara Buncle - I liked her for the most part, even if she seemed a bit drippy at times; I appreciated her dreamy, introspective nature and could relate to it (as many introverted bookworms can, I'm sure!) ...more

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Jan 29, 2015 Alexandra marked it as to-read-own

Shelves: unread-own-on-kindle, own-on-kindle, kindle-daily-deal

1/29/15 this one and the next one $1.99 today for Kindle.

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Feb 03, 2019 Shareen rated it liked it

Shelves: chick-lit, brit-lit

An English woman finds herself in need of money and somehow turns to novel-writing as her solution. Her problem is that she has very little imagination so her characters are strikingly similar to the people she knows in her village. So similar that her fellow-villagers easily recognize themselves and become determined to root out the culprit. Cute little vintage story of life in an English village.

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Oct 30, 2015 Michelle rated it it was amazing

This book was like a confection -- delicious and easily gobbled up. This was written in the mid-1930s and set contemporaneously in a village outside London. Miss Buncle is short of cash and writes a novel -- but only about things she knows, meaning about all of her neighbors. It becomes a hit bestseller and her enraged neighbors scramble around trying to figure out who wrote it. Wacky hijinks ensue. Really so adorable.

I had never heard of Miss Buncle or DE Stevenson before seeing a review of a s ...more

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