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Years ago, I'd read a few of Benson's Mapp and Lucia books. On the face of it, this is something similar -- a comedy about charming, witty, but small-minded people in a struggle for social dominance in a small English village. But the book also deals interestingly with women and their fear of aging. (It's interesting that a 29 year old man chose to write about forty- and fifty-something women.) There's a point when Mrs. Ames has gotten involved with the suffragette movement and found herself genuinely engaged with the issues when the novel seems on course to transcend itself; will her pointless life find a real purpose? Alas, it shifts back into a comedy of manners when the Tory candidate she needs to protest against turns out to be a relative. It's a pleasant enough book, but I grew tired of the complacency of these well-off and narrow people. I received this book as part of the Early Reviews Program on LibraryThing.