MENFREYA IN THE MORNING

by Victoria Holt ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 25, 1966

Victoria Holt is back where she belongs in the Never Never Land of hansom cabs, flickering gaslight, Cornish castles and the nobs, the snobs and the havenots. Her narrator is so blushingly, gushingly feminine that ""narratoress"" seems the more accurate designation. And the book is filled with lively, hoity-toity names--Bevil and Endelion Menfrey, Jessica Trelarken, Benedict Bellairs. Harriet Delvaney, catching her breath in many a little sob, tells all about life in late Victorian England from the time she was thirteen up to her young matronhood. She limped. Papa hated her because Mama died bearing her. Poor little wren. She was set down amongst the gorgeous plumage of the madly glamorous and aristocratic neighboring Menfreys. Bevil, handsome devil, was supposed to marry her for her money to repair the tumbling turrets of mouldering Menfreya. She adored him of course. And through an entertaining Mellowdrahmah, everything that can happen to Harriet happens--deaths by misadventure, old legends coming to life and the darling Cornish peasantry being terribly Cornish about ghosts (i.e., ""How did 'ee know 'twas a ghost? We did know, didn't us Jen?""). But could Bevil be true to Harriet? She natters on about could he? would he? will he, until, it seems, he may. When the author tried the same vaporous approach in a modern setting, it was so bad we tittered over our typewriters--and watched it careen up the bestseller lists. It do take your mind off the atom bomb, don't `ee think?

Pub Date: March 25, 1966

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1966

Categories: FICTION