The Caravaners (Virago modern classic) (original 1909; edition 1998)

This is a story of a married, aristocratic German couple. The Baron is the narrator of his caravaning holiday which he participates in rather than shares with among others, his wife Edelgard and two other couples. Von Arnim allows his didactic manner and pedantic patriarchial opinions to draw the reader into imagining a holiday very different from the one he experiences. The reader reaching conclusions above and beyond anything imaginable by the Baron himself .

It is true that there is much of von Arnim's gentle wit and humour on offer, but a whole story devoted to satirising the Baron was too much for me. ( )

This story is written from the perspective of Baron Ottringel, a Prussian military officer, who goes on holiday to England with his wife, Edelgard. To save money, they decide to caravan--the early-20th-century version of an RV trip. They go with another lady from their town whom the Baron admires greatly, her sister and English brother-in-law, and four other English people. The Baron has very decided ideas about life a(nd about women and the English in particular), and he shares them freely both with the reader and his traveling companions. Essentially, he thinks women should be seen and not heard. Under the influence of the other travelers, his wife pays less and less attention to his demands. The others mock him, but he doesn't realize it. Soon, they begin to leave every time he turns up, which he notices but doesn't understand.

The book is absolutely hilarious. Sometimes, in a book in which a main character is supposed to be annoying and unlikeable, the character becomes so much so that the reader is too annoyed to keep reading. Von Arnim avoids this by making the Baron more ridiculous than annoying. He makes statements like, "I could only conclude that, pasty and loosely put together as they outwardly were, they must be of a very great secret leatheriness" (speaking of two of his traveling companions). The writing is clever, and the other characters have such a realistic and natural reaction to the Baron that it makes the story seem believable, even though he is completely over-the-top. ( )