It’s been so long since I read Cheerfulness Breaks In that it wasn’t as I remembered. Still, it was funny and affecting. It is also the first of Thirkell’s Barsetshire series to be set during the war.
The novel begins with the wedding of Rose Birkett, whose shenanigans occupied Summer Half, set three years earlier. Rose is still as selfish and stupid as she is beautiful, and her parents are terrified until the last minute that the wedding won’t go off. Thankfully, it does, due to the efforts of the groom, Lieutenant Fairweather. During the wedding, we encounter many of the characters who have appeared before in the series, particularly Lydia Keith.
No longer a bouncing 16-year-old, Lydia at 20 has stayed at home to help her father run his estate and to care for her mother, who is in poor health. As the novel begins in the summer of 1939, she is soon also involved in other activities related to the war. However, unlike her friends Geraldine and Octavia, she is too bound by her home situation to join the nursing profession.
Many of her friends, including her good friend Noel Merton, view her efforts with sympathy and concern. He notices how she has worked to become kinder and not quite so utterly frank, but appears not have noticed that she is in love with him.
This novel is full of the many activites that evolve from the war, but the amusing conversations and other events continue, as the full brunt of the war does not seem to have hit the community yet. Other couples get engaged, but in the romance department, the novel is mainly concerned with Lydia and Noel, each of whom thinks the gap in their ages is making the other uninterested.
I remembered Cheerfulness Breaks In as one of my favorite of this series, and although its plot is somewhat different than I remembered, it is lovely, funny, and touching. As an homage to Trollope’s series set in the same fictional county, I have been noticing more and more last names from the older series as I read along.
whatmeread 
As with you, this is one of my favorites of the series. Also, as with you, there was much I didn’t remember–or blocked out.
This time around, I was struck especially by the naivete (or is it bravado?) with which everyone seemed to want to get into the middle of the war. I know Thirkell wrote this at the time of the war, but did nobody ever recall just how horrific WWI had been? Did ALL the Brits really shoulder on? These scenes/conversations also had a special poignancy considering current events with Russia and Ukraine.
I’ve read other novels during the same time period which also showed that the country folk were not all that thrilled to have city folk billeted with them. It’s good to have a truer picture of just what the British had to endure. One minute bit of info that really startled me came in one conversation when Noel admits that he feels admiration for the way the folks at home are managing with food rationing when the soldiers have fairly decent meals. I haven’t read much–in either novels or nonfiction–that reveals a lot about the meals the fighting men got. Makes sense, though, that the troops would be well-fed. . .
I also found the interplay of political ideas very well done and, again, most interesting. The texture of the book was just very thorough, complex, and well done.
The piece de resistance was the romance between Lydia and Noel. Runner-up, though, had to be the first three chapters of getting Rose married and out of the house. Like her parents, I could only say, “THANK GOD!!!!!”
Am off to read “harlequin House”. . .
I would imagine that the people most eager to get into the war would be the young men, who couldn’t remember what the last war was like or weren’t even alive yet.
I really enjoyed this one but found it terribly poignant as I always do books that were finished before the war had ended. And had to mention some issues that are not so great these days. https://librofulltime.wordpress.com/2020/08/26/book-review-angela-thirkell-cheerfulness-breaks-in/
Well, yes, there were a few. I think the reason I like this one so much is its poignancy.
I thought this book was one of the best I have read so far. In spite of the threat of the war and the enthusiasm of some of the characters to get out there and fight which we I think shrink from these days with our knowledge of the horrors that await them I was really happy to catch up with so many of the characters we already know and love. Chapter three, describing Rose’s wedding, the church and the guests had me laughing out loud. Delightful.
Sorry to be late to comment but have been without internet access due to severe flooding in the my area. We were not flooded but surrounded and isolated for several days.
Oh, no, I hope the waters have gone back down! Yes, I loved the description of the wedding.
My review:
https://adarngoodread.blogspot.com/2022/04/cheerfulness-breaks-in-by-Angela-Thirkell.html
Thanks!
I posted your link to the wrap-up page.
Thank you!