Dora Jessie Saint, aka Miss Read, wrote two popular series centered on the fictional English villages of Fairacre and Thrush Green. Former teacher Miss Read gave her pen name to the schoolmistress who narrates the Fairacre books, which begin with Village School.
Middle-aged and unmarried, the observant Miss Read displays a sharp eye and sometimes sharp tongue as she relates the goings-on in and out of the classroom in the small, rural village in the 1950s. The setting is pastoral, but Fairacre has challenges. The residents are mostly poor. The children are being taught in a two-room schoolhouse with a pot-bellied stove for heat and an outhouse.
Village School proceeds through one school year and has little in the way of a plot. The book contains mostly vignettes and characterizations. A standout character besides Miss Read and the children is the school's curmudgeonly cleaning woman, about whom Miss Read tosses out her most pointed barbs. The schoolmistress's sometime acerbity is more funny than stinging, and her deep compassion for her charges is evident.
Village School introduces many characters who would reappear in the 19 Fairacre novels that followed over four decades. Miss Read's books remain popular with those who want occasional escapes to a less complicated time.
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