Cranford

A modern soap opera aint' got nothing on Crawford. A wayward son who leaves home abruptly, and his mother dies in her grief at his departure. A bank scandal and a rich woman loses everything. A high-and-mighty woman arrives, townspeople are kept from her because they are not good enough, and it is learned that the woman wasn't even rich enough to ever see the queen.

A fabulous picture of small-town England in the mid-1800s.

Strangely enough, brought to mind Nick Jenkins's sometimes-ironic sometimes-breathlessly-enthusiastic observations in Dance to the Music of Time (especially since the narrator isn't directly involved in the action or even given a name until quite late in the book), but this was a little gentler and more compassionate. I loved the opening image of Cranford as a village of Amazons – not ultimately entirely accurate but it gives the place a funny mythical quality which sets off the narrator's tone. It's actually quite funny for most of the book before it gets all sentimental by the end. Also some interesting Johnson-Dickens arguments and juxtapositions about which certainly several articles have been written.