Miss Mapp

Miss Mapp rules the tiny English village of Tilling- that is she rules those who matter. It is a tiny circle of people who have enough class to rate her attention - but she manipulates and lauds over them with machiavellian schemes, and intelligent surmises - and she is intelligent.Benson has written a village with a range of gorgeous characters - from Diva who is Miss Mapp's great rival, to Irene the local artist who keeps embarrassing Miss Mapp with her prosaic pronouncements. Then there is the local Vicar who talks in a combination of Shakespearian English and Burnsian dialect. There is also Mrs Poppit who is an up and coming social climber (hardly worthy of Miss Mapp's notice) and the novel begins with Miss Mapps machinations to the Poppitt Bridge party.Village life you see seems to run around Bridge parties. In this petty world of card games there is a great deal of opportunity to expose one another's weaknesses and Miss Mapp, in order to be the center of village life in Tilling finds no object too petty to exploit. This is a novel of small things made into huge issues because of the smallness of the village. There is Miss Mapps constant running battle to dress better than Diva, the competition over Mr Wyse's attentions (with his supposed comtessa sister), and the ever pressing desire to be the First To Know all the gossip in town.The physical descriptions both through the characters minds and from Benson's pen are wonderful for instance Diva is always depicted as whirling around the place - her legs circling. Mrs Poppit is ever present in a huge and weighty sable coat.This is a wonderful book, and beautifully written. Benson seems to me to be very influenced by Austen - there is the small and claustrophobic atmosphere of village life - the characters (Miss Mapp seems so like Mrs Norris of Austen's 'Mansfield Park') to me - and then there are the odd Austen Names (in this case the Coles feature strongly as a family that is not quite up to snuff - just as the Coles are in 'Emma'). If nothing else Benson writes of English village life in the 1920's with the same Ironic pen as Austen did of village life in the early nineteenth century.Highly recommended if you want a couple of days of laughter.

Well, after meeting Queen Lucia, I quite enjoyed learning all about Tilling and its dear Miss Mapp. You will wonder who she visited in Riseholm, and you will die from the anticipation of the two ladies meeting up in subsequent books (you won't be disappointed!). The characters are fantastic, the situations are comic, and I absolutely loved this book! I am officially hooked on the entire series! I hope you will try it and love it just as much as I.

The wonderfully acute social comedy in this novel needs no further recommendation but there are many other virtues. Take for example its apercus on 1920s Britain. Here is a world lacking a whole generation of young men ruled by single and independent women. References to supertaxes, strikes and rationing make clear that this is a Britain on the slide. Equally enjoyable are the insights into how "alternative lifestyles" were regarded and tolerated before our supposedly emancipated age. Benson makes it fairly clear that Irene is a good deal more than simply "quaint" (the same can be said for Georgie who appears in other novels of the series: a warm and likable character but not, in the words of Major Benjy "a manly sort of man"). Finally, pace some of the reviews here and on the other Mapp and Lucia books, Tilling is most surely not a village idyll. Spying eyes lurk behind every twitching curtain and there is often an air of real malice in the air. There is steel to Benson's satire and it amazes me that at the end of a long (and occasionally undistinguished career in letters) he could produce something so modern, so perfect in conception and execution and so very funny.

Halfway through his Lucia series, Benson, probably realizing what a tedious phoney Mrs. Emmeline Lucas was turning out to be, decided to fashion a worthy adversary for her: a formidable old fadge named Miss Mapp. This required a change of venue, as well: from Olde Englysh Riseholm to the seacoast hamlet of Tilling. It's an inspired move (possibly due to Lucia's conspicuous absence; she does not lock horns with Mapp until the next book, Mapp & Lucia). Benson dissects a small sector of the British upper-middle class -- monied drones -- with such surgical skill that it's like sitting down to a strawberry high tea. From Major Benjy to Diva Plaistow and Barbara ("I think we can all squeeze into the Royce") Wyse, O.B.E, these self-infatuated twits spin out their days doddering from bridge game to garden party, from fad to diversion, all deliriously anxious about their place in the town's, and the Empire's, pecking order. This is a trival subject treated as drily and wittily as one could hope for, and written as the sun began to set on England's ambitions and literary heritage. Biographical note: Benson bought Henry James's house in Rye (the model for Tilling), and when showing it to visitors used to announce, "This is Miss Mapp's garden room. And I am Miss Mapp."

Miss Mapp is a fitting opponent for EF Benson's Lucia. She's calculating, manipulative, underhanded and Oh, so funny. I have read and reread this, and the other books in the Lucia series over and over. I love them all.