After reading Interview with the Vampire and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, it was lovely to read a "calm" (see Mustich's take on the book below), sweet, and easily understood book. I just finished watching the Downton Abbey series and movies. So, I had a visual picture of the "village school," even though the one in Downton Abbey was in the 20s and this school is in the 50s
Here is why James Mustich thinks it should be one of the 1000 Books You Read Before You Die:
Calm is not a virtue much prized by literary critics, yet, as many readers are well aware, a wisely calm book can be both restful and, paradoxically, deeply stimulating. That is the case with the “Miss Read” books, a modest yet addictively absorbing series of novels by Dora Jessie Saint. Saint was a teacher herself, and her working knowledge—and patience with learners young and old—pervades these thoughtful and generous accounts of the vibrant though unspectacular life of an English country schoolmistress and the denizens of Fairacre, her village. Everyday animation fills her pages, and there’s fine irony in the narrator’s gentle but perspicacious eye as it roams over a slow, small, well-measured life that, like high adventure, is no doubt best experienced in books.
