Miss Read's books about Thrush Green and Fairacre don't particularly have plots to follow--it's more the ebb and flow of village life in the Cotswolds in the 1950s and 60s. This book is primarily narrated by Miss Read, the head teacher of the two-teacher village school at Fairacre, and gives lip service to the title by relating various stories of the doughty and disagreeable Mrs. Pringle, the school cleaner whose bad leg only acts up when she takes umbrage at something (so has a permanent limp). Many other stories about life in Fairacre creep through, however, in the gentle flow of your grandmother telling you about her early days. While Mrs. Pringle is the local grouch and sometimes hearing about her is unpleasant, still, these books make good bedtime reading.
Oh the inimitable Mrs. Pringle! A robust, albeit rotund woman who knows her mind and reminds her fellow citizens of this fact as often as she likes. I'm quite sure that we all have had a Mrs. Pringle in our life whose very existence makes cringing and scowling an involuntary response.She is a character who is simultaneously brings foreboding and entertainment. Miss Read recounts a year's worth of interaction with Mrs. Pringle, initially harking back to her own first encounters as well as adding village incidences from both years gone by and current ones. It is a short novel but it contains some of the vintage Mrs. Pringle that endears her character to us.
