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.
My introduction to the world of E.F. Benson's Mapp & Lucia novels was via the BBC TV adaptation broadcast in the UK in late December 2014. E.F. Benson's Mapp & Lucia novels were also recommended to me on GoodReads. I am writing this review having just finished Queen Lucia, the first book in the Mapp and Lucia series. The novels, in chronological order, are:Queen Lucia (1920)Miss Mapp (1922)Lucia in London (1927)Mapp and Lucia (1931)Lucia's Progress (1935) (published in the US as Trouble for Lucia (1939))There are also five other books based on the same characters written by other authors.In this first book in the series we are introduced to Mrs Emmeline Lucas, known by all as Lucia (due to her penchant for using Italian phrases), along with a host of other memorable characters.Whilst I am not convinced Queen Lucia should be taken at face value, it is a satire after all, it does give broad hints at the lifestyle of the idle rich in 1920's English society. For a book that was written almost a hundred years ago, it also feels remarkably fresh and readable.One character, the gullible Mrs Daisy Quantock, is prone to embrace some of the era's health crazes and as such we get a short but interesting exposition of the tenets of Christian Science, and then an amusing dalliance with yoga - taught by her personal guru; and then onto another splendid infatuation with spiritualism via the services of a Russian medium known as Princess Popoffski. The arrival of Mrs Quantock's Indian guru prompts Lucia to ensure she can utilise the guru's social currency in the competitive world of the village of Riseholme, a pretty Elizabethan village in Worcestershire, where Lucia vigorously guards her status as "Queen" despite occasional attempts from her subjects to overthrow her. Lucia’s dear friend Georgie Pillson (another fantastic character) both worships Lucia and occasionally works to subvert her power. I did a little research to try to establish the pronunciation of Riseholme (apparently based on Broadway in the Cotwsolds) and understand it is pronounced "rizzum", which sounds credible.E.F. Benson appears to simultaneously have affection for his Riseholme characters and hold them in mild contempt. None of the characters is especially likeable however their foibles and absurdities became more endearing as the book progressed, and their frequent humiliations become ever more amusing. This comedy of manners captures the social order of 1920s England for those fortunate few who had the money to spend their time enjoying dinner parties and other social events, painting, writing letters, giving music recitals, parading their social status and exchanging gossip, whilst their servants facilitated their lives of ease and comfort. This premise, in the skilled hands of E.F. Benson, is the foundation of some beguiling comedic moments as he nails the snobbery and competitiveness of village life, and especially Lucia's ludicrous affectations. I will admit that I was slightly bored during the first couple of introductory chapters, then my feelings changed to ambivalence, however by the final third I was enjoying every page. By the end of Queen Lucia I was thoroughly charmed and now appreciate how these books have inspired so much affection and devotion in their readers. I'm a convert and I look forward to reading the rest of E.F. Benson's Mapp & Lucia novels.4/5
Do You like book Queen Lucia (2003)?
The first of half a dozen books in the Lucia series, a gentle (though hardly subtle) satire of English small country town life in the 1920s. The first volume introduces the handful of main characters, their milieu and pretensions - among the most absurdly memorable is the classification of formality of dress into "hightum, tightum and scrub" (fully formal dress, fancy dress for more ordinary occasions and relatively casual), the appropriate designation printed on party invitations on so on.Though I was fairly certain the author had invented this preposterous terminology, a little Googling suggests the terms may actually have been in use in late Victorian England http://digital.library.upenn.edu/wome...
—Bob
i knew about e.f. benson because ben had read some of his ghost stories, and i am wont to read ghost stories just about any where i can get my hands on them. it is not at all astonishing that i would read, for example, a collection of edith wharton ghost stories after i had forsworn reading any more of her novels (for the foreseeable future) because every time i read one i am even more depressed than i was when i started, and that is not why i want to read. that i feel that wharton's novels are wonderfully written is beside the point. in any event, even though i was looking for ghost stories i picked up this first novel in the lucia series (which is nothing at all like any ghost story i have read -- well maybe like wilde's canterville ghost, but that's it) by benson which much more like another favourite: wodehouse. i would like to transcribe a portion of the book here: Dear Georgie: It was such a lovely day that when we got to Paddington Ursy and I decided to bicycle down instead, so for a lark we sent our things on and we may arrive tonight, but probably tomorrow. Take care of Tiptree; and give him plenty of jam. He loves it. Yours, HERMY P.S. Tipsidoozie doesn't really bite: it's only his fun.Georgie crumpled up this odious epistle, and became aware that Tipsidoozie, a lean Irish terrier, was regarding him with peculiar disfavour, and showing all his teeth, probably in fun. In pursuance of this humorous idea he then darted towards Georgie, and would have been extremely funny, if he had not been handicapped by the bag of golfclubs to which he was tethered. As it was, he pursued him down the platform, towing the clubs after him, till he got entangled in them and fell down.Georgie hated dogs at any time, though he had never hated one so much as Tipsidoozie, and the problems of life became more complicated than ever. i will be back to give you the rest of my review, but i must say i have a weakness for this kind of silliness: my favourite bits from robert benchley are those where he carries on a war with birds, even though i like them myself. i just think it's funny to set man up with some other animal nemesis. i have one myself. i acknowledge its right to exist but i set myself at odds against the raccoon.
—Maureen
No es que no me haya gustado, pero hasta yo tengo un límite con el humor muy british que habla de las clases altas en la Inglaterra rural y donde la trama consiste en que no ocurra nada.Que no se me entienda mal, algunas partes son muy graciosas, y el retrato de ese pueblo con sus habitantes cotillas y ultra pretenciosos está muy conseguido, pero las primeras 100 páginas son solo ese retrato. Que tampoco es algo malo, porque hay algunos personajes muy, muy bien retratados, como Lucía, que cree saber mucho más de lo que sabe y chapurrea el italiano aunque no sabe hablarlo, o Daisy, que es esa típica mujer que siempre está siguiendo una moda, sea esta el Cristianismo Científico, el yoga o el espiritismo. Pero claro, durante mucho tiempo no pasa más, hasta lo que sería el momento en el que la trama se pone interesante, que es con la llegada de Olga Bracely. Porque también ocurre que la novela más parece una sucesión de anécdotas, o 3 grandes historias que van una detrás de otra y dejan un conjunto algo deslavazado. Ahora bien, esa parte de Olga Bracely y cómo Lucía se va poniendo poco a poco en ridículo, es magnífica y una gran comedia de lo incómodo, porque al final Lucia hasta te da un poco de pena, aunque se lo haya buscado.En definitiva, si se quiere un gran retrato de personajes a los que al final coges cariño, un retrato sobre la snob burguesía rural de principios del siglo XX, este es vuestro libro. Si os gustan libros en los que haya drama y ocurran cosas importantes o impactantes... no tanto, porque probablemente os aburriréis soberanamente. Y aquellos a quienes no les guste Jane Austen deben alejarse de este libro como si quemara, porque lo van a odiar.
—Libros Prestados
