fbone's review against another edition
3.0
Basically, this is about the happenings of an English village in the 1910s. Humorous and silly. It's really surprising the topics that concerned people back then.
verityw's review against another edition
3.0
I'm really enjoying reading these books after having seen the BBC adaptation to see where the latest TV version got some of its plots from. Lucia is much less sympathetic in this that I found her in Mapp and Lucia. I need to read some more of these!
jlmb's review
4.0
What a fun read! A satire of English village life, focusing on social climbing "mean girl" Lucia and her gay BFF/ wingman Georgie. Even though it was written a hundred years ago, the shenanigans described read as fresh and relatable.
Daisy is your friend that is always gung-ho about the latest trend. Lucia's husband reminds me of the IG account "Boyfriends of Instagram" which consists of images of browbeaten boyfriends taking photos of their narcissistic girlfriends. And Lucia? Well, she is the person you know who can never, ever admit that they don't know the answer. Ok, the way I describe it makes it sound unpleasant, but trust me, it's a funny book.
Georgie is by far my favorite. The reader meets him as he is sashaying(literally that is how Benson describes him) across the croquet lawn to do a little dance with Lucia and talk baby talk. Georgie wears a cape(!) and a dyed toupee and loves to embroider and dust his Faberge cigarette case. He's a loyal right hand man to Lucia until a famous opera singer moves to the village who is super fun and fabulous. What is Georgie to do? Who will he hang out with?
That is the slim "plot" the novel hinges on. Really there is no plot; the book is a series of vignettes and that is a-ok with me. Not everything has to have a dramatic story arc. Sometimes it's fun to just read about characters and their daily lives.
#popsugar challenge 2020 - a book published in the 20th century
Daisy is your friend that is always gung-ho about the latest trend. Lucia's husband reminds me of the IG account "Boyfriends of Instagram" which consists of images of browbeaten boyfriends taking photos of their narcissistic girlfriends. And Lucia? Well, she is the person you know who can never, ever admit that they don't know the answer. Ok, the way I describe it makes it sound unpleasant, but trust me, it's a funny book.
Georgie is by far my favorite. The reader meets him as he is sashaying(literally that is how Benson describes him) across the croquet lawn to do a little dance with Lucia and talk baby talk. Georgie wears a cape(!) and a dyed toupee and loves to embroider and dust his Faberge cigarette case. He's a loyal right hand man to Lucia until a famous opera singer moves to the village who is super fun and fabulous. What is Georgie to do? Who will he hang out with?
That is the slim "plot" the novel hinges on. Really there is no plot; the book is a series of vignettes and that is a-ok with me. Not everything has to have a dramatic story arc. Sometimes it's fun to just read about characters and their daily lives.
#popsugar challenge 2020 - a book published in the 20th century
oldenglishrose's review against another edition
3.0
Queen Lucia introduces the village of Riseholme, its inhabitants and, most importantly, Lucia Lucas who presides over Riseholme’s social scene as benevolent dictator. In this first installment in the series, Lucia’s unspoken sovreignty comes under threat from an Indian guru, a Russian medium and a celebrated opera singer and we see how she deals with these attempts, whether intentional or not, to go against the status quo.
The appeal of Queen Lucia is explained rather well by Olga Bracely: ‘Oh, it’s all so delicious!’ she said. ‘I never knew before how terribly interesting little thingswere. It’s all wildly exciting, and there are fifty things going on just as exciting. Is it all of you who take such a tremendous interest in them that makes them so absorbing, or is it that they are absorbing in themselves and ordinary dull people, not Riseholmites, don’t see how exciting they are? (pp. 258-259) It is a novel about little things that happen and are only made interesting by the way in which the entertaining cast of characters treat them.
Lucia reminded me of no one so much as Mrs Elton from Jane Austen’s Emma: she is shallow, snobbish, pretentious and completely convinced of her own importance. In other words, she should be a rather unpleasant character but is absolutely delicious to read about as she lords it over her friends. The only facet of her character which I didn’t particularly enjoy was her fondness for baby talk with the men in her life; self-importance and snobbery, while irritating traits in real life, can be made great fun to read about, but adults trying to sound like infants is something that I will always find annoying.
Riseholme’s other inhabitants are equally as obsessed with social climbing, though in different ways. I enjoyed Daisy’s futile attempts to usurp Lucia’s prominence by launching the latest trend before Lucia can pick up on it and annex Daisy’s latest discovery, something which always ends in disaster. Georgie’s delight at having a secret from Lucia which gives him some sort of power over her is amusing and infectious as the reader spends more time with him than with Lucia. Although Benson’s writing is sharp and biting, it was without any particular malice. I felt that, although he mocks these silly social situations he also loves them and thrives on them, and that he would be behaving exactly the same as the other villagers if he were to live in Riseholme and would love every minute of it. He certainly has great fun writing about them.
To continue the Jane Austen comparison, there were times when this book felt like it needed a Mr Knightley. It has the intrigue of people being manoeuvred into relationships, the fast-fading fashions for particular activities and the carefully considered, smiling social warfare between the characters, but I would have liked to see someone with sense and morality who wasn’t taken in by all of this nonsense to provide some much needed contrast. While I know it’s a light, humorous novel and I enjoyed it for what it is, it felt a bit relentlessly shallow and breezy at times and I would have preferred an occasional change of tone. Hermy and Ursy, Georgie’s irrepressibly robust sisters, would have done this perfectly but they remained fairly marginal characters in this first book. I hope to see more of them in future volumes as I would love to see someone practical tell Riseholme to stop being so ridiculous. Nevertheless, it is an enjoyable ridiculousness and I look forward to continuing the series.
The appeal of Queen Lucia is explained rather well by Olga Bracely: ‘Oh, it’s all so delicious!’ she said. ‘I never knew before how terribly interesting little thingswere. It’s all wildly exciting, and there are fifty things going on just as exciting. Is it all of you who take such a tremendous interest in them that makes them so absorbing, or is it that they are absorbing in themselves and ordinary dull people, not Riseholmites, don’t see how exciting they are? (pp. 258-259) It is a novel about little things that happen and are only made interesting by the way in which the entertaining cast of characters treat them.
Lucia reminded me of no one so much as Mrs Elton from Jane Austen’s Emma: she is shallow, snobbish, pretentious and completely convinced of her own importance. In other words, she should be a rather unpleasant character but is absolutely delicious to read about as she lords it over her friends. The only facet of her character which I didn’t particularly enjoy was her fondness for baby talk with the men in her life; self-importance and snobbery, while irritating traits in real life, can be made great fun to read about, but adults trying to sound like infants is something that I will always find annoying.
Riseholme’s other inhabitants are equally as obsessed with social climbing, though in different ways. I enjoyed Daisy’s futile attempts to usurp Lucia’s prominence by launching the latest trend before Lucia can pick up on it and annex Daisy’s latest discovery, something which always ends in disaster. Georgie’s delight at having a secret from Lucia which gives him some sort of power over her is amusing and infectious as the reader spends more time with him than with Lucia. Although Benson’s writing is sharp and biting, it was without any particular malice. I felt that, although he mocks these silly social situations he also loves them and thrives on them, and that he would be behaving exactly the same as the other villagers if he were to live in Riseholme and would love every minute of it. He certainly has great fun writing about them.
To continue the Jane Austen comparison, there were times when this book felt like it needed a Mr Knightley. It has the intrigue of people being manoeuvred into relationships, the fast-fading fashions for particular activities and the carefully considered, smiling social warfare between the characters, but I would have liked to see someone with sense and morality who wasn’t taken in by all of this nonsense to provide some much needed contrast. While I know it’s a light, humorous novel and I enjoyed it for what it is, it felt a bit relentlessly shallow and breezy at times and I would have preferred an occasional change of tone. Hermy and Ursy, Georgie’s irrepressibly robust sisters, would have done this perfectly but they remained fairly marginal characters in this first book. I hope to see more of them in future volumes as I would love to see someone practical tell Riseholme to stop being so ridiculous. Nevertheless, it is an enjoyable ridiculousness and I look forward to continuing the series.
rebjam's review against another edition
3.0
Is it possible to Love Lucia? I know people love these books and i'm enthralled, reading them after viewing the BBC series starring Geraldine McEwan and Prunella Scales. But is the character of Emmeline Lucia Lucas really lovable? she's amusing and you enjoy watching her extricate herself from one social imbroglio after another but. . hmmm...?
If you like immensely well written books that are short on plot and full of fun, nonsense and jabs at social class warfare, this is for you.
If you like immensely well written books that are short on plot and full of fun, nonsense and jabs at social class warfare, this is for you.
yeahdeadslow's review against another edition
2.0
This was my first reading of a Lucia novel and I must admit I was less than enchanted. (Apparently my tastes are not on par with those of Auden and Coward.) I will try to read the next in the series or perhaps one of the later ones, but if I don't like it any better I doubt I'll continue on.
(Actually, my favourite part of the book was the introduction which detailed some of the humorous things that happened in the attempt to get the Lucia books re-published. The thing is, nowhere could I find mention of who wrote the introduction. His anecdotes amused me, whoever he was! Assuming, of course, that he was indeed a male...)
(Actually, my favourite part of the book was the introduction which detailed some of the humorous things that happened in the attempt to get the Lucia books re-published. The thing is, nowhere could I find mention of who wrote the introduction. His anecdotes amused me, whoever he was! Assuming, of course, that he was indeed a male...)
writerlibrarian's review against another edition
3.0
First novel in his Lucia series that has been praised since it was published. It's just an exquisite portrait of a society where pretentiousness, fake emotion, fake culture are the norm. A wonderful satirical view of a class of people that are still very much alive today. Human nature doesn't change that much. Best example the poor Mrs Quantock and her addiction to fads from yoga to medium to Christian diet and so on. There is no real plot but the incisive portraits of the people inhabiting this little quaint bourgeois village of Riseholme is very entertaining. The plotting of who's on top of the food chain and the sweet but hardly innocent artiste that moves to the village and runs to the ground Lucia's little castle offer quite a romp. These characters aren't bad, a little shallow, a little short in compassion but highly fun to read about or to listen to since Queen Lucia is available in audiobook at LibriVox (free to download)
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