This is the 3rd Angela Thirkell I've read so far (and finished - I DNF'd one last year), and it is, by far, the most biting, painfully hilarious of the lot yet. I say painfully because all those moments you wish would happen in books, when the evil/nasty/rude character is at work, happen in this book. But I almost dnf'd this one too, because it doesn't start off well at all.

At the opening, it appears that the narrative (3rd person omniscient, btw) is going to focus primarily on Alice Barton, a character so Mary Sue that the Mary Sue trope should have been named Alice Barton. She is ridiculous; frankly, she's barely functioning. As I write this, it occurs to me that in current times, she might have been thought to be agoraphobic; she isn't, she's just terrified of everything beyond belief.

Fortunately the biting humor was making me laugh or giggle too often, so I kept on and discovered the story rapidly becomes an ensemble, and even though Alice continues to get more page time than the rest, her growing confidence makes her a tiny bit more bearable. Tiny bit. Fair warning, by the end of the book she's still pretty ridiculous.

But along the way, Thirkell does something interesting with Alice; something very unexpected from what I know of her Barsetshire books. She uses Alice's character to sniff around the edges of masochism and emotional abuse. Just the edges, mind you; events that would seem inconsequential or pathetic on their own start to add up to a disturbing pattern, and Thirkell writes a scene or two where her friends discuss her pattern of behaviour quite frankly. This doesn't go anywhere, of course; this book's destiny was to be a frivolous, entertainment, so of course everything works out in the end. But given the time it takes place (~1930), I found it to be an unexpected and interesting thread and raised the story's merit in my estimation.

The end was a tad trite, and could only be expected, but my rating stands because, man, this book was funny. ( )

Alice is invited to a weekend house party by Lord and Lady Pomfret. She is very shy and would rather stay home and paint in her studio, but her parents make her go and she has a surprisingly enjoyable time, falling in love with the appalling Julian.

This is my least favourite Thirkell Barsetshire novel to date, mostly because I found Alice very young, being both naive and lacking in self confidence to a degree that made it hard to relate to her. Mrs Rivers was entertaining, as was Julian, but I think Gillie married the wrong woman... ( )

Pomfret Towers is about a house party and its aftermath. I didn’t find it quite as funny as Summer Half, but it’s just as cosy and delightful. It was a perfect book for a rainy day.

Alice Barton is invited, along with her brother and her two friends, to spend the weekend at Pomfret Towers. Alice has had a secluded upbringing and is painfully shy, and much of the story is about how she navigates this first taste of wider society. However, Alice isn’t the only guest to have problems. Most of the others’ problems involve Mrs Rivers, who is annoys her daughter with her matching-making, and her publisher with her demands, and the other guests with her attempts to arrange entertainment.

I really appreciated that, although there’s the potential for the party to be a crushing disaster for Alice, it’s a success - a realistic success. She doesn’t magically transform, like the ugly duckling turning to a beautiful swan, into a sophisticated and self-assured socialite, but people are mostly kind and some go out of their way to put her at ease, and she comes away with more confidence and more friends than she had when she started.

I also appreciated that it isn’t easy to predict how the various romantic subplots will resolve. This seems to be a strength of Thirkell’s.

Mrs Barton was well known as the author of several learned historical novels about the more obscure bastards of Popes and Cardinals, with a wealth of documentation that overawed reviewers. Owing to living so much in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, she sometimes found it difficult to remember where she was [...] she only had to go into her sitting room and take up a paper or a book, to be at once engulfed in the ocean of the past, re-living with intensity the lives of people about whom little was known and whose very existence was dubious. When the tide ebbed, leaving her stranded upon the shores of everyday life, she would emerge in a dazed condition to preside at her own table, or take a fitful interest in her neighbours. ( )

Pomfret Towers is the story of a house party at the estate of the same name and the effects it has on the members of several Barsetshire families. The Earl of Pomfret's wife is back home from the Continent and her husband has decided to throw a house party full of young people to amuse her. Shy little Alice Barton is among them. Most of the book consists of her (mis)adventures while away from home, along with the attempts of Hermione Rivers to outwit her publishers and to get the earl's heir for her daughter. If you've read Thirkell before, you can imagine much of what goes on, but it is a higher level than most of her work and by far the best, I think, since High Rising. Recommended for Thirkell fans and those who enjoy stories about the things people get up to at house parties. ( )

A weekend party at a country house, Pomfret Towers, Barsetshire seat of the earls of Pomfret, is the setting for this story in Thirkell's Barsetshire series. It is a light, humorous read, perfect for vacation. ( )