ALL IN GOOD TIME

The long deferred sequel to Ormondroyd's Time at the Top (1963) comes in a year when the combination of Victorian melodrama and time travel sophistication is no longer quite so novel. But Sue Shaw's third trip takes her up the elevator that runs from her contemporary apartment house back to the 1881 household of widowed Mrs. Walker and her two children. This time Susan brings her father along for the express purpose of pairing him off with Mrs. Walker, and Mr. Shaw adapts with good grace to the shock of finding himself flung into the 19th century, not only falling in love on schedule but repelling the blackmailing blackguard Mr. Sweeney and dispatching Mrs. Walker's harpy aunt, Jane Clamp, on a one-way jaunt into the future. The mechanics of time paradoxes are formidably complex (and we're still not sure they make sense) and we pay for the wonderful surprise of Jane Clamp's descent into the 20th century in the unconscionable amount of maneuvering it takes to explain how she gets there. The machinery of fantasy is creaky here, but Ormondroyd's gingerbread Victorians have as much charm as ever.