The Lark, by E. Nesbit

Some delightful whimsy for adults from much loved children's author Edith Nesbit

Jane and her cousin Lucilla have received bad news. Their guardian has blown their inheritance and they must now be pulled from school. All that is left to the girls - they are actually young adults - is 500 pounds and a small cottage. It's up to them to show pluck and resolve and thus make something of themselves. Jane and Lucilla are thrilled at the news. They disliked school anyway. Rather than fret over financial catastrophe they imagine the start of a great adventure. 

The First World War has just ended, and there are many people down on their luck. One of them is a Mr. Dix, a war veteran, whom the girls stumble across in a gallery. They take him on as a gardener. When the girls move into a bigger house - again, a good piece of luck - they start a market garden business, selling mostly flowers. Soon they are taking on lodgers, many with dodgy reputations. No matter, even when the girls lose money, it's all really just a lark, nothing to get too worried about. 

The novel ends with marriage and much good cheer all round.

The Lark was Edith Nesbit's final novel for adults, published in 1922. It's a difficult book to pigeonhole. It's neither really adult nor children's fiction, but more of a frolic, aimed at readers with a taste for the absurd and surreal, much like  Lewis Carroll or Stella Gibbons' Cold Comfort Farm.  Nesbit's exuberant, life affirming prose also reminds of Shakespeare's Midsummer's Night Dream.

A magic holiday read that is a tonic and a delight.

The Lark, by E. Nesbit. Published by Penguin. $29.99

OCT23