Wild Strawberries

By: Angela Thirkell

Narrated by: Hilary Neville

Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins

Publisher's summary

Pretty, impecunious Mary Preston, newly arrived as a guest of her aunt Agnes at the magnificent wooded estate of Rushwater, falls head over heels for handsome playboy David Leslie. Meanwhile Agnes and her mother, the eccentric matriarch Lady Emily, have hopes of a different, more suitable match for Mary. At the lavish Rushwater dance party, her future happiness hangs in the balance....

©1934 The Estate of Angela Thirkell (P)2015 Rockethouse Productions Ltd

Critic reviews

"Angela Thirkell is perhaps the most Pym-like of any twentieth-century author, after Pym herself." (Alexander McCall Smith)

"Appealing." ( Glasgow Sunday Herald)

Sense And Sensibility Meets Frazier!...

I cannot say enough good things about this novel and do not know what was in the head of the person who gave it a bad review. This is, so far, my favorite Thirkell novel, and that is saying something. Characters that leap out from the page and into your heart. Austenesque misadventures in love. And wickedly funny humor. I almost never laugh out loud at a book, but I must have laughed several hundred times at this one. Absolutely marvelous!

A historical novel

Books written in the 1930s have a similar flare and this one certainty did not disappoint the romantic. Somewhat slow and sometimes silly, the crushes and loves that progress throughout the summer are beautifully described. This is an honorable romance because everyone keeps their pants up and zippers zipped.

An English setting with some Victorian influences.

Palls. . .

Much ado about nothing. . . . but not as pleasant as her usual fluff. Too much time spent in the brains of people getting worked up about foolish things. Good but not stellar performance, and a weaker-than-normal-story.

For Trollope fans

If you like Anthony Trollope but have read them all, pick up Angela Thirkell. Witty repartee and a good story.

Excruciatingly dull and repetitive satire

About halfway through this book, I realized what its problem was: lengthy and repetitive descriptions of the foibles of the kind of people that Jane Austen demolishes as minor characters in her books. Imagine an entire novel with Mrs. Bennett at the center instead of Elizabeth Bennett. No one in this novel is interesting, all are embarrassing, and I felt like I was being hit over the head with social satire that is best when subtle. I don’t need eight examples to comprehend a French character’s nationalistic snobbery about French food—one or two would suffice. A waste of energy, unfortunately.

Slow and gets slower

I wanted to read an old English story to get a feel for what it would have been to live in a castle. The story may give that but it sounds very boring. There were a lot of characters but none were interesting enough to want to follow.