Lucia Victrix

Lucia Victrix is not a novel in itself; it's the compilation of the 4th, 5th and 6th Lucia novels. The first compilation (novels 1 - 3) is called Lucia Rising. Maybe I'm a dope; it took me a while to figure this out! My grandmother and mother have always raved about "the Lucia novels" and reread them again and again. Naturally, I was curious! Rather than Austen, I'd compare these to a very gentle version of P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves novels. Same time period, same class system, same loony characters. I found that I devoured the first three, but trying to read all six in succession? It began to get a little overwhelming... For one thing, Lucia and Mapp, the principal characters, are simply not nice people. Yes, their endless schemes to best each other are amusing, but after hundreds and hundreds of pages their actual characters are no more developed than they were in the first chapters. Having said this, it's an authentic picture of a time and place, and I found myself wishing I could spend an evening with these people (not much more!)