"You should be dubbed Sir Guy on the spot for outstanding service to all Mapp and Lucia lovers".
This was a quote from an earlier post on these marvellous books by Guy Fraser-Sampson and it was with great pride and delight I saw that this quote had been used to head up the press release for Au Reservoir. I deem that a honour and am thrilled to bits.
Last year Guy came to the first Felixstowe Book Festival and gave a simply hilarious and entertaining talk on the Benson menage who all sound as barking mad and as eccentric as the characters created in the Mapp and Lucia books. I had the pleasure of introducing this talk and when I admitted that I had only discovered E F Benson and Tilling a few years ago, there was an audible gasp of horror and disbelief by certain members of the audience. My reply was 'Yes, I know...' as I simply cannot understand how I left it so long to become acquainted with these glorious books.
("I might have gone to my grave without ever knowing about Lucia or Miss Mapp. It is not a risk anyone should take lightly" Auberon Waugh said this. Just think it could have happened to me)
Well, I now am and so grateful for Guy Fraser-Sampson extending the genre with his witty, spiky and marvellous stories about Mapp, Lucia, Georgie, The Wyses, Diva etc etc. I love them all and this latest, Au Reservoir, is as enjoyably hilarious as all the others.
We are now in post-war Tilling and the Mapp-Lucia rivalry is still as lethal as ever. Lucia is now fabulously rich, let us face it, sounds as if she was a war profiteer and is simply rolling in it. She wishes to become a Dame and starts to put her feelers out amongst high profile friends to see if this can be achieved. Georgie's friendship with Olga Bracely is still going strong and a suggestion that a donation to the upgrading of the opera house might help in this regard, leads to Georgie becoming more and more involved with the world of the arts.
Meanwhile, in Tilling, Lucia is being challenged by Mapp regarding her 'friendship' with Noel Coward and her promise to ask him to open the summer fete. The reader knows that Elizabeth is right, that Lucia has exaggerated her friendship with The Master (in fact he thinks she is a dreadful woman) and should be exposed as a fibber, but we also know that somehow she will win out and trounce Mapp once again. I do try to feel sorry for Mapp as she never wins, but she is so eaten up with jealousy and spite that I fail to do so, even though I acknowledge that Lucia can be pretty intolerable at times. Yet, somehow, I sense a vulnerability in Lucia that I do not find in Mapp and I find I am so fond of her despite her awfulness and her snobbery.
What can I say about Au Reservoir except that I think it is simply wonderful, I loved every word, reduced me to laughter and to tears, and that if Benson could read this author's books on the residents of Tilling, he would shake Guy heartily by the hand and congratulate him. He might even invite him for dinner and 'un po di mu'.
Glorious.
However, and there is a however, this is the last Mapp and Lucia book form this author. He says they are very difficult to write and I am sure they are, but oh I do wish he would continue to produce one a year for ever. I am so disappointed that this is the end of his foray into the maelstrom that is Tilling. In fact, so disappointed am I that I feel like rescinding my request for his knighthood.
Only joking....
Thank you for all the pleasure and fun Guy. It has been a privilege to read this trilogy.
Au reservoir.
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Links to earlier posts on Mapp and Lucia
http://randomjottings.typepad.com/random_jottings_of_an_ope/2008/07/mapp-and-lucia.html
http://randomjottings.typepad.com/random_jottings_of_an_ope/2008/08/lucia-and-mappe.html
