The mighty power of the pen

    
     Its publisher, Persephone Books, says of Miss Buncle's Book by D.E. Stevenson, that it is "undemanding, fun and absorbing ... well-written and intelligent", and - delightfully - it is all that.
     Barbara Buncle's dividends are dwindling, and discovering that ends cannot be made to meet, she must find another source of income. The least detestable idea is to write a novel (what else?), but being a woman of little imagination, Miss Buncle uses her friends and neighbours in the unremarkable village of Silverstream as her material. What she produces under a pseudonym becomes a bestseller and quite horrifies most of those who are portrayed in it and scandalises others, as she describes faults and unflattering foibles, and exposes what its subjects had thought were their carefully hidden true natures.

    Miss Buncle herself is ingenuous and artless, and her motives innocent. To her surprise and delight, her book provokes happy outcomes as well as outrage as some of her real-life characters begin to take their cues from their fictional counterparts. But as the village tries to identify the author of the aptly-titled "Disturber of the Peace", so life becomes more difficult for Miss Buncle who is by then caught firmly in the grip of "the writing vice" and well on with her second novel which takes up where her first left off, her influence apparently undiminished.
    This is an appealing book, and one in which a simple, benevolent justice allows all to end well for those we like, while others get what's coming to them. The 1930s world of Silverstream is, as you might imagine, a well-ordered, comfortable and cosy one (you can even find a plan of the village here, click on 'potpourri'/maps/etc.), but the book's charm is in more than its setting and its sense of what is fitting: Barbara Buncle, who starts off as vague, feeble and literally and figuratively hopeless, is transformed by the power of her own creation into her soignee, confident fictional alter ego and finds a future she could never have imagined for herself. The pen is indeed mighty!

Comments

[Elaine]

Well my dividents are non existant and am now living on a pension so perhaps I ought to try and right a novel too....

Loved this book - sheer fun from start to finish though some of the residents in the village were EVIL

[Simon T]

It was a fun, cosy, very enjoyable read - and apparently there's a sequel out there somewhere! Can't remember the title, but Elaine bought it a while ago...

By the by, I love your top photo, Karen.

[Cornflower]

Aren't they just!
Lots of fun, though.