A while ago Verlyn Klinkenborg wrote about Angela Thirkell in his column and I was jealous that he liked her so much because I had tried to read her stuff years ago and found it annoying and twee. But my friend Jeanette recently hunted up a bunch of the novels and passed them on to Janet and me and…they’re so good. One of the things I love that I could not appreciate twenty years ago are the sons. There are so many sons in their early twenties. They come home, leave their tennis rackets and hiking boots and clothes and books everywhere, immediately get on the phone to their friends, disappear after bestowing a distracted kiss on the parental forehead, stay out late, then jump on the back of a friend’s motorcycle and leave. And the mother? She is in ecstasy, gazing at the clothes strewn everywhere with deep, motherly happiness. So on mother’s day, I recommend Angela Thirkell, who understood a lot.

Also, I have discovered a glorious site to buy her books and every other English novel you might might to get your hands on. Anglophilebooks.net

Happy Mother’s Day!

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