Cliche though it may be, it is always a joy to revisit the pretentious, social-climbing, class-obsessed, bitingly funny world of the towns of Riseholme and Tilling. Queen Lucia, the first book in Benson's series, introduces us to part of this world - although the full glory of the series would not become apparent until the fourth novel, when Emmeline "Lucia" Lucas, demented heroine of this one, finally comes face to face with Elizabeth Mapp, determined heroine of the next.

For lovers of classic British comedies of manners, especially if you're seeking someone as laughter-inducing as Wodehouse yet more savage to the characters than he, and as carefully studied as Austen yet far less serious.

The 2014 TV adaptation, with Miranda Richardson, was pleasant enough although - to my mind - overdone. The 1980s adaptation with Geraldine McEwan and Prunella Scales is languid at times, but well worth seeking out for its picture-perfect portrayal of the novels. ( )

4.5 stars

Nadia May does a marvelous narration of this satire of the social maneuvers in English village life during the 1920s. If you like Gaskell's Cranford, you will probably enjoy this. ( )

NOTE: This review applies to the entire Mapp and Lucia series.

This appears to be one of those series that people either love or hate. Set in the early decades of the 20th century, E.F. Benson skewers the frivolous lives of the elite in rural English villages. The heroine is Mrs. Emmeline Lucas, known to all as Lucia (the Italian pronunciation, if you please). Lucia rules the village of Riseholme with an iron fist in a velvet glove, ruthlessly running the social lives of the others in her social class. Despite their occasional resentment and attempts to break free of Lucia's influence, the village invariably finds life gray and boring without their benevolent dictator in residence.

The second book in the series, Miss Mapp, at first appears to be a completely unrelated book, as Lucia does not appear and instead the main character is Elizabeth Mapp, a never-married woman "of a certain age" in the village of Tilling. Like Lucia, she rules her social class with a strong will, although with somewhat less grace than her counterpart in Riseholme. The third book, Lucia in London, leaves Mapp and Tilling behind and returns to focus on Lucia, this time on her adventures during the social season in London.

Finally, in Book Four (Mapp and Lucia), the irresistible force (Lucia) meets the immovable object (Mapp) when Lucia decides to move to Tilling. This town is not big enough for both of them to rule, and the schemes and shenanigans that ensue are delightfully sharp and witty. Their tussles continue in the final two books in the series, Lucia's Progress and Trouble for Lucia.

The lives of the people spotlighted in Riseholme and in Tilling are spectacularly shallow. The biggest intrigues involve who is paired with who at the evening bridge games, and gossip is traded freely during the morning marketing, when anyone who is anyone gathers on the High Street with their baskets and their cutting observations. Scarcely a reference is ever made to world wars or depressions, even though both raged throughout the time period of these books. To read such accounts written in a serious manner would be intolerably smug, but Benson's writing is slyly cutting, as he appears to take all of the plotting with the utmost sincerity even while winking at the reader with his asides.

Readers who prefer their heroes and heroines to be a bit less shallow and a bit more kind will find the Lucia series less than enjoyable, as will those readers neither old enough to remember the early 20th century nor with any interest in life among the middle class (being, in those days and in that country, truly in the middle between the poor and working classes on one end and the aristocracy on the other). Those who, like me, enjoy a sharp bite to their fiction will find themselves alternately rooting for the downfall of Mapp and Lucia and cheering their subsequent rise back to prominence. ( )

I'm putting this one aside for now. I'm sure at some point I'll be in the mood for a story about snobs who run around trying to outdo each other. I can see the humor in it. I'm just not in the mindset for it right now. ( )

Mrs. Emmeline Lucas, self-renamed Lucia, together with her husband, Philip, whom she calls Peppino, has used his wealth to buy and refurbish three adjoining cottages in the sleepy village of Riseholme. Lucia christens the resulting villa The Hurst, whose rooms all bear names of characters in Shakespeare’s plays. She plants the front garden with all the flowers mentioned by the Bard. Located not far from Stratford, The Hurst serves as a setting for her to create an ideal world, far removed from the banality of modern industrialization. A world in which she is the undisputed queen.
A queen needs a court. In addition to her consort, Peppino, with whom she shares their few phrases of Italian, there is Georgie Pillson, her Georgino, an effete middle-aged dabbler who seems not quite to have grown up, who serves as her lord-in-waiting.
A queen must take care; there may be a pretender to the throne. In this case, it is Daisy Quantock, as short and round as Lucia is tall and imperious. Daisy’s interest in a succession of fads — Christian Science, yoga, spiritualism — poses a sometime threat to Lucia’s dominance whenever other villagers enthusiastically take one of them up. Lucia deals with each in turn, at times with haughty dismissal, although she is also not above co-opting the fad as her own.
The more severe threat to her sovereignty arrives not in the form of a quack or a charlatan, but in the energetic presence of Olga Bracely, an opera diva, whose humble origins have left her as fresh and spontaneous as Lucia is pretentious and calculated. Worse, her genuine cultural accomplishments can’t help but make Lucia’s deficits in the area of her greatest pride all too evident. Olga unwittingly destabilizes the ideal world Lucia has painstakingly created for herself.
Will Lucia recover her eminence? Can she regather her court and have them once again emit a sigh as she finishes her rendition of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata (solely the first movement, of course, the other two being too formless and too fast to truly edify)?
This book is an entertaining read, well-suited for commuting, or just before bedtime. Yet beneath the laughs, there is the disquieting feeling that Benson, the author, is a perceptive observer of human nature. ( )