Books When You Need Something Light, Nourishing But Easy to Digest

When you’re stressed, convalescing, tired of winter, feeling weary or blue, when you’ve overdosed on the news or dystopian fiction 

“I have tried in my time to be a philosopher, but,
I don’t know how, cheerfulness is always breaking in.”
~James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson

Cheerfulness Breaks In by Angela Thirkell is the first of the Barsetshire Chronicles, a long series of novels set in England, the best of them (to my mind) set just before and then during the second world war. The home front figured particularly in Cheerfulness Breaks In and Northbridge Rectory, painting a vivid picture of the courage and resourcefulness, the resolute “cheerfulness” of British women during the war which pulled their settled world out from under them.

Anything by Jane Austen. During a particularly difficult and anxious time in my own life some years ago, I—the inveterate avid, not to say compulsive, reader, who inhales books as necessarily as air—could read nothing at all except Pride and Prejudice. I was so well acquainted with the Bennet family especially that I did not tire of spending time in their company. I eventually was able to re-read the other novels in Austen’s all-too-small canon: they contained no surprises in a time I could tolerate the unknown not at all—but more importantly Austen’s quiet voice, sharp eye and satisfying endings were exactly what I required through that long unsettled season. Sense and Sensibility gives us Elinor Dashwood, second only to Anne Elliot in Persuasion and Lizzy Bennet as the Austen women I most admire and enjoy. P. D. James considered Emma to be the prototype of English detective novels, long before the so-called Golden Age of Agatha Christie et al. I try to like Emma, and of course I love Mr. Knightley. I confess I find Mansfield Park’s Fanny almost impossible to like, but that novel is fascinating for its otherwise uncharacteristic (in Austen, who tended to avoid political or social themes) subtext of English wealth dependent on Caribbean sugar plantations and therefore on slavery. I further confess I am not nor have I ever been a fan of Northanger Abbey, but by all means like it if you can.

Anything by Elizabeth Gaskell, an eminent Victorian novelist, and the close friend and first biographer of Charlotte Brontë. Her Cranford is a sweet, sad and amusing account of life in a fictional English village composed almost entirely of valiant distressed gentlewomen. Gaskell gently but shrewdly chronicles a time of great changes (the coming of the railroad and factories) in mid-Victorian England. North and South deals more deeply and sharply with the clash between the tranquil rural South and the bustling industrial North of England amid industrialization and its wake of noise, pollution, and brutal working conditions for the poor. Gaskell is often dismissed as sentimental and nostalgic, but all her novels contain devastating critiques of social injustice. So her books are “light” only in their tone: serious themes and social commentary are delivered with engaging characters and vivid prose.

Anything by Margery Sharp, whom I first discovered through her Rescuers series. Yes, these are children’s books and yes the heroine Miss Bianca is a white mouse who leads a pampered life in a gilded cage, the pet of the ambassador’s young son, but she is also a feminist, a community organizer and social activist on behalf of those imprisoned or enslaved. Both wise and charming; find the editions illustrated by Garth Williams if you can. Sharp is perhaps better known for her humorous and delightful adult novels, mostly published in the 1930s, but some of them recently reissued: Something Light, which gives its title to this particular list, is absolutely delicious; Cluny Brown and The Nutmeg Tree are as well, also presenting engaging and witty women protagonists who tend to be “inordinately fond of men.” Find The Lost Chapel Picnic and Other Stories if you can. And see this New York Times essay if you want another vote for her in addition to mine: In Praise of Margery Sharp.

Anything by Barbara Pym. The acerbic poet Philip Larkin was Barbara Pym’s unlikely champion, announcing in a London Times interview in 1977 that she was one of the most underappreciated novelists of the age, precipitating a national rediscovery of her writing. Often compared to Jane Austen in her acute and witty observation of village and parish life, her novels are delightful in their own right as well as bearing the comparison well. Excellent Women and Jane and Prudence and Some Tame Gazelle are probably my favorites, along with No Fond Return of Love, but you can’t go wrong.

Anything by Mary Stewart, whose trademark lyrical prose, smart and bold young heroines and swoon-worthy men appear in one exotic locale after another. No one writes suspense romance as well as she does; she sets the bar high for that genre with her intelligent young damsels in distress and her beautiful writing. Nine Coaches Waiting is perhaps the most unabashedly Gothic, set in France with a smoldering mystery man, heir to the castle, and a plucky governess; Madam, Will You Talk? features splendid Provençal scenery and atmosphere. This Rough Magic (my absolute favorite Stewart), along with My Brother Michael and The Moonspinners are evocatively set in Greece. Wildfire at Midnight takes dramatic flame in midsummer on the Isle of Skye in the Cuillin mountains in the Scottish Hebrides; The Ivy Tree’s descriptions of the landscape along the remains of Hadrian’s Wall in the north of England will transport you there (and the ingenious plot will beguile you); Airs Above the Ground, set in Austria, made me long to see the famous Lipizzaner horses of Vienna’s Spanish Riding School, and to find the remote castle she describes so magically. I have read every one of her novels many times; there are certain times when absolutely nothing else will do. (Her superb Arthurian series I admire elsewhere in these lists.)

Anything by Anne Tyler, of whom I’ve been a fan since first reading The Accidental Tourist many years ago. I think she has just gotten better and better since then. These novels—all of which could also appear in the lists for books about families and other odd relationships—are keenly observed, beautifully written, compassionate and funny and wise stories of quirky people and how they navigate their lives (invariably lived in Baltimore). Some of my favorites are Breathing Lessons, Back When We Were Grownups, Saint Maybe, Ladder of Years, and Clock Dance but they are all wonderful. 

Peking Picnic and others by Ann Bridge seem dated now (Peking Picnic was published in 1932), but for that very reason fascinating glimpses of a now-vanished world. And the Julia Probyn series, starting with The Portuguese Escape (1956) and moving through others published into the 1960s (The Lighthearted Quest, The Numbered Account, etc.) introduce Julia, dauntless and elegant journalist-sleuth-spy, who charms her way through various Cold War adventures. Very popular in their day (my mother had a full set), Bridge’s books have been largely forgotten for decades, but are worth remembering —in fact some titles have recently been reissued. The author mined her experience as a diplomat’s wife for her settings and her characters. (Interestingly, in her youth she was also a close friend and mountain climbing partner with George Mallory, who died on Everest in 1924.)

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows (aunt and niece; sadly the aunt died before the book was finished) is a captivating epistolary novel revolving around the friendship that develops amid letters exchanged between a London writer and a Guernsey farmer just after World War II. The characters are well-drawn amid the history of the Nazi occupation of the islands; the small heroic acts of resistance and solidarity among friends and neighbors make for a poignant as well as a charming read.

The Bookshop on the Corner is by far my favorite (and I think by far the strongest) of the romantic comedies by Jenny Colgan. This one features delightful characters and a clever premise of an unemployed librarian who realizes her dream of a mobile bookshop and finds meaningful work as a literary matchmaker, finding the perfect book for each of her patrons and true love in the Highlands of Scotland.

Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson could also be seen as a romantic comedy with two strong main characters, but in its light and witty way is also a shrewd look at changing social structures in a multi-cultural contemporary Britain: a stiff-upper-lipped wholly conventional retired military man falls in love with a charming Pakistani widow tea-merchant: adventures ensue.

Mrs Queen Takes the Train by William Kuhn is a deliciously witty and affectionate novel which imagines what might happen if a bored monarch borrowed a sweatshirt from a stable girl at the palace and wandered off in disguise on an impulsive holiday to be free for a bit of the constraints of palace life. The royal household is thrown into disarray, and improbable (and improbably moving) new alliances are forged in the search for the fugitive sovereign.

In the same vein, Alan Bennett’s delightful novella The Uncommon Reader celebrates the power and pleasure of books (and pokes gentle fun at the monarchy) by imagining what might happen if the Queen, in search of her errant corgis, discovers the mobile book van that visits the palace kitchen and begins to borrow and read books the palace would never have recommended—or countenanced. 

Marisa de los Santos’ trilogy begins with Love Walked In, continues with Belong to Me and finishes (so far! may there be many  more!) with I’ll Be Your Blue Sky, all of which could also be cross-referenced in the category of books about family/friendship relationships. My adult daughters and I all loved these books and continue to re-read them periodically for the joy of the characters and for the writing and the themes of literature and love and finding and losing our way in life, and losing and finding each other and ourselves.

Josephine Tey’s books are technically detective novels (and some of the finest, to my way of thinking) but they have so little of the police-procedural in them—they are in fact sometimes criticized by the blood-thirsty for their lack of violence—and there is so much that is charming in them that they stay here with “something light” recommendations for now. (I also list one of her books in “detective novels with a twist,” and among “books about books” I recommend the clever homage series of “Josephine Tey mysteries” by Nicola Upson.)  The Man in the Queue, A Shilling for Candles, The Franchise Affair, Brat Farrar, The Singing Sands, To Love and Be Wise, The Daughter of Time all rely on Inspector Alan Grant—one of detective fiction’s most attractive and compelling sleuths—for their solutions, and give us other unforgettable characters as well, while serenely breaking every rule in the formulaic book of writing mysteries laid down by the Golden Age giants (Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Ngaio Marsh and company). There is mention of an Alan in Miss Pym Disposes, but he is peripheral to the real action, a mystery Miss Pym solves all by herself. These are, every one, excellent novels by any standard, in any genre, and Miss Tey (pseudonym for Elizabeth MacKintosh) remains herself an enigma to this day, so little is known of her private—and all too short—life. 

The Young Visiters, or Mister Salteena’s Plan by Daisy Ashford. No that’s not a typo in the title: this charmer was written by a clever young English schoolgirl in an exercise book in 1890 when she was nine; the author forgot about it, discovered it many years later in a box in the attic, and impulsively lent it to a friend recovering from the flu. It circulated privately but widely in early 19th century London and ended up being a classic. As a character in Josephine Tey’s Miss Pym Disposes observes, it’s a book the sight of which makes anyone who has read it smile. And it’s still the perfect companion to help one get over the flu.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night, Son of It Was a Dark and Stormy Night, Bride of Dark and Stormy, and Dark and Stormy Rides Again proudly and hilariously present “the best of the worst” in the Bulwer-Lytton Bad Writing Contest, in which contestants try to outdo each other with deliberately awful writing. This 2018 grand-prize winning entry by Tanya Menezes gives a taste of the kind of thing submitted: “Cassie smiled as she clenched John’s hand on the edge of an abandoned pier while the sun set gracefully over the water, and as the final rays of light disappeared into a star-filled sky she knew that there was only one thing left to do to finish off this wonderful evening, which was to throw his severed appendage into the ocean’s depths so it could never be found again — and maybe get some custard after.”

Maybe only English majors really love this stuff, but it doesn’t just make me smile, it makes me laugh. Which is sometimes the best medicine of all.

Literary Recommendations for All Sorts of Times and States of Mind