Miss Candleford

The book on which the highly successful TV series was based! This novel is like a delicate - sometimes surprisingly sharp, accented with bold colors - pastel painting. It doesn't really have a plot, just a main character, Laura, whose life path we can follow - very superficially - from childhood to adulthood. We only sense what she's like from hints, but it's not really important. What matters is a vanished English, rural way of life that still existed in the eighties of the 19th century, which has disappeared overall, but its traces are still present in rural England today. From a tiny Oxford village - inhabited by agricultural workers who were already light years away from the Central European peasant in their poverty - through a wealthier, industrializing village to a small English rural town, we can get to know the lives of the people of that time. There is no story, only life pictures, descriptions of situations, all of which praise Flora Thompson's sparkling spirit. They are vivid, lifelike in their simplicity, and more interesting than any invented, fantasy-born story. Sometimes - when the author quotes old rhymes, songs performed at holidays, rhymes associated with folk games - they are soul-invigoratingly fresh. And let that be the first stone thrown at Flora Thompson, who - although she lives the most modern, most vibrant life - has never thought with nostalgia about a bygone era that perhaps carried not unnecessary values.