My second read by the wonderful Ms Jolley- and, as expected, it's weird, hilarious and unputdownable.
Miss Peabody is a sad old London spinster, her life devoted to a job in an office and caring for a sick mother. One day she writes to the Australian author of a novel she just enjoyed...and receives a reply.
The enthusiastic letters from the other side of the world include instalments of a story- an Australian boarding school headmistress, a couple of lesbian colleagues- one as much of a wet weekend as Miss Peabody- and a couple of the "gels" embark on a European tour
As the group hit London, Miss Peabody is so caught up in the story that she looks for them in the crowd...
Quite fabulous. ( )

More than a few reviews of this delightful novel deduct points because the characters are mostly lesbians. To which I can only shake my head in bafflement. Who are these people?

Anyway, this is a wonderful comic novel wrapped up in a meta-fictional frame that adds just enough to justify itself. First, the comic novel: Miss Arabella Thorne (note the hyper-Trollopian name) runs a boarding school in Australia, falls for her students, takes one to Europe, is generally unpleasant to her jealous life-partner, then gets taught a lesson in jealousy herself. It's wonderful, it's funny, it's moderately thought provoking. It's Oscar Wilde.

The meta-narrative features the Australian novelist writing the above book in letters to a fan in England. The novelist (fairly obviously Thorne) is not so subtely seducing her reader (somewhat like the student, somewhat like the life-partner) from afar. Literary critics, here is your mud; go to it like pigs, but beware the ending.

There's even a joke about writing in the present tense, something I've previously complained about in Jolley's work. Touche, Liz, touche. ( )