Phoebe Waller-Bridge, but over 90 years ago! ( )

I enjoyed reading this book in which the narrator is self-deprecating while dealing with life events that we all must have at some point: expenditures greater than income; unruly children (with occasional showing of good manners); want for fulfillment; poor domestic outcomes; and trying to keep up pretenses when classes are valued. The narrator tries to balance honesty with civility which is very difficult at times. The lens through which this diary is written finds humor even when life isn't what was expected. ( )

A between-the-wars journal of a middle class British housewife, very funny at times and self-deprecating. ( )

A diarist writes of everyday life in interwar rural England, where she and her husband live above their means with their two children, a governess, a cook, a maid, and a gardener. I am not sure if Robert, the husband, works or if they’re a member of a social class that doesn’t work. The author’s humor is sometimes self-deprecating, and other times directed at others. The work feels like it’s written for insiders in the author’s social group, and I felt like an outsider. There seemed to be a distance between the author and myself that I couldn’t cross. While I did enjoy some of the episodes recounted in this book, I can’t see myself going out of my way to track down any of this author’s other works. ( )

Gentle inter-war humour from the English shires (Devon) with beautiful observation of the social hierarchy, and the difficulties of managing life with only a cook, house maid, gardener and au pair for her younger child.
Written for magazine publication as a series of diary entries, this book is enjoyable, but not as timeless as Wodehouse nor as surreal as Cold Comfort Farm, which were written around the same time and in a similar English upper-middle class milieu. It is, however, a very easy to read and more-ish book, making you want just one more day’s diary entry.
Having read a 2005 New Yorker article, The Diarist, about Delafield, on further reflection I can see her characters’ similarities to those of Rose Macaulay, and her creation of the fictional humorous diary genre.

James Mustich in his book 1,000 Books to Read before you Die refers to a 2005 New Yorker article, The Diarist, about Delafield, and as I have access to the archive I looked this up and it is well worth a read if you can. In particular, I had not appreciated that Delafield is credited as creating the genre of the fictional humorous diary (which I associate with Sue Townsend’s Adrian Mole, and which has more recently been used by Helen Fielding).
The Diary was originally published weekly in Time and Tide (a left leaning feminist magazine, which I had previously come across as it published Orwell) and later in Punch. There were three sequels and a travel book, Straw Without Bricks: I Visit Soviet Russia, was renamed The Provincial Lady in Russia for US publication. ( )