The Demon in the House by Angela Thirkell

A funny thing happened to me on the way to finishing Angela Thirkell's Barsetshire novels - I realized that there was an early work that I had missed - The Demon in the House.  This book was actually the third to be published following High Rising and Wild Strawberries.  In some ways it is a continuation on the first book, focused on the mystery writer novelist Laura Morland and her 12 year old son, Tony - actually more on the latter.  In fact, the book is really not so much a novel as a series of short stories or episodes of Tony's misadventures during his vacations from Southbridge School. I say misadventures because Tony is a particularly difficult child (a kind way of putting it), he never stops talking, knows everything and is always doing exactly what he has been told not to do. 

Other than Tony's escapades there is not a lot of additional content to this book other than something of interest regarding Dr. Ford, the long time country doctor.  In the last part of the book, he falls in love and The Demon in the House actually ends with an announcement of his engagement.  This is of special interest because of something I had just read in Close Quarters.  In talking with Margot MacFayden, Ford mentions that he had only been in love once in his life - with Ann Todd, Laura Morland's assistant, who marries George Knox at the end of High Rising.  Here I thought that Angela Thirkell had been caught leaving a loose end - an inconsistency with the future novels.  That feeling of smug satisfaction lasted only until I began reading Love at All Ages which follows Close Quarters and wherein Ms. Thirkell mentions that engagement and its ending by mutual agreement.  So if there was a loose end, our author found it and corrected it herself very quickly. 

While I didn't think there was a lot to this book, it once again reminded me of why I read these novels.  All of the sudden at one point of following Laura Morland's trying to parent a 12 year old boy, I was reminded of another 12 year old boy and a similar experience almost 20 years ago.  There is little or nothing that is similar about the two situations - a fictional widow in the 1930's in rural England and a happily married father in suburban New Jersey in the last decade of the 20th century, but some how, in someway, Laura's experience reminded me of my own.  Perhaps that is a big part of Ms. Thirkell's gifts - we are reminded of ourselves in her stories in many different and important ways.