Recent Read

Warning: this is not a serious review.
I just finished The New Moon with the Old by Dodie Smith. It was a pretty decent book, enjoyable to read, and somewhat inventive in plot and structure. I found some of the characters a little hard to swallow, though, even for 1960's England. What 19 year old guy would really become a paid companion to an elderly woman, just to make a little money and get material for a novel? I was aggravated that the main narrator, an intelligent capable woman in her late 30's, decides to cherish an unrequited devotion to a man much her senior, whom she had never spent more than 2 hours time with. Please. Maybe she would keep the pleasant memory of a little crush, but I doubt she would really promise to be waiting at the prison gates for him, knowing that he would likely never return her affection.

Smith is also the author of I Capture the Castle, a thoroughly charming coming of age story, that I highly recommend. I have already enjoyed it several times, and will again, I'm sure. By contrast, The New Moon with the Old is a one-timer. It was fun to read something else by the author of a book I loved, but it's not worthy of a reread.