Miss Plum and Miss Penny

I admit to a weakness for stories of small villages, especially small English villages harboring near-eccentrics set in beautiful Arcadian surroundings.Well-to-do spinster Miss Penny rescues the hapless, homeless Miss Plum, intending only to perform a (short term) good deed. What could go wrong? Well, plenty: no good deed can't become problematic.As Miss Penny seeks to solve the problem of Miss Plum, readers get to know the characters in her life: her fussy bachelor friend who is beginning to think perhaps marriage is a good idea, and the vicar who has no idea what to do about his obstreperous teenaged son, but who has made himself available to Miss Penny should she need assistance and advice. Then, there is Miss Penny's housekeeper, who is suspicious of Miss Plum. Finally, what will Miss Penny do, now that the only man she ever wanted to marry has suddenly come back into her life? She has actually been enjoying her life--her friends, her activities, her home, and now an act of charity and and caring seems to have led to an unwarranted upheaval of a cozy life!I thought this book worked well as a comedy of manners--I found myself smiling over the pages, and I laughed aloud a few times. Books like these are intended, I think, to shed light on some of the odder aspects of human behaviors and interactions, and I think Miss Plum and Miss Penny does an entertaining job of bringing a reader's nose close to the interweavings of a small community. Good entertainment for an afternoon!

Miss Penny, the heroine in the title of this charming,interwar English novel, saves Miss Plum, also of the book’s title, from drowning herself the duck pond of their village. Such is the central event.Miss Penny, as is so often the case, having saved Miss Plum’s life,becomes responsible for looking after the perpetually weeping Miss Plum AND her life. Miss Penny and Ada, her former nanny, now her housekeeper, set up a dripping—from the duck pond, with tears—Miss Plum in the well-furnished little guest room within the well-ordered confines of their house.Thus the tale of a too-good woman and her too-helpful friend and servant forced into harboring an increasingly unbearable and unwanted, “self-effacing,” always willing to help yet incompetent,young woman is set into motion.How will Miss Penny and Ada cope as Miss Penny must introduce the burrowing Miss Plum into her circle of close friends as well as, it turns out, to her rejected fiancé George, gone for twenty years, yet always posting a card to Miss Penny on her birthday, who has suddenly come back to the village to carry Miss Penny off?Will Miss Penny ever succeed in divesting herself and Ada of Miss Plum? Or will Miss Plum return the favor and save Miss Penny’s whole life for her?Dorothy Evelyn Smith’s seeming soufflé of a novel explores, more meaningfully than the reader may be aware, the choices people make to bring about lives suitable to their natures.

I'm in an strange but fun English village book read of late (no doubt inspired by my mom and Miranda Mills YouTube videos). They are so simple, take me away from my cares and worries and have beautiful English countryside settings of places I would love to see some day. This one is about a middle-aged woman and her very confusing love life....or lack of one. 2 men in the village of interest and 1 from her past that she hasn't seen in 20 years. I really just wanted her happiness in the end,men he damned. Read it to find out if she achieves her happiness.

We all have had a MISS PLUM in our lives. Miss Penny is stuck, feeling life is just boring and what would have happened if she had married her former boyfriend, the one her parents refused to let her marry. She finds out the answer to that question, and that life as it is, and most certainly without MISS PLUM, is indeed happy. We've all tried to help the Miss Plum's. True helping is a two way street, and Miss Plum has only one way .....it's a funny book but also delightful, that someone can find happiness just the way things are.

Such a fun and enjoyable read. Just what do you do when you find yourself lumbered with an unwanted guest? I couldn’t find any basis for the idea that if you save a person's life, then forever after you will be responsible for them, but regardless, Miss Penny finds herself in that unfortunate position with Miss Plum.The eccentric characters in Miss Penny’s village add colour and fun to this story, and when George returns the sparks fly, though not in a way you might imagine. Recommended.

This book is a delightful novel, so interesting that you may read it quickly, as I did. Such turmoil in a small quiet English village in the 1950s. Some bachelors and the unmarried Miss Penny lead a life of quiet pleasures, of ice skating and sharing tea, when Miss Plum bursts on the scene. She is a complete mystery and Miss Penny saves her from drowning in a pond and takes her home to recover. Miss Plum apparently has no talents, no money, no family, and Miss Penny can’t get her to leave. A fun tale. This book is brought back to print and Kindle by Furrowed Middlebrow Publishers, and they have a good list of novels from the 1930s, 40s and 50s. I am deciding which of their books to buy next, lots of them look great.

Well, this is a good example of a book one enjoys reading despite one’s literary preferences. Pleasant characters, although George seems a bit of a stereotype, good writing. The general message of the book is also quite good: happiness is nothing more than the deep desire to keep things as they are.

Glad to find this on kindle. When will more books by Dorothy Evelyn Smith be available? Pleased to find a new author from the mid-twentieth century. Pleasant and charming.

It was funny, with delightful characters and sly humour. Of a time that has well and truly gone, but the characters, although very much types, and the situation Miss Penny finds herself is still here today.

I have been wanting to read this for a long time so I was very pleased to see that Furrowed Middlebrow were bringing it back into print. It was worth the wait. Miss Penny is celebrating her 40th birthday in the opening of the novel. She is a spinster, but perfectly contented with her life, though not so much with the bed jackets that her live-in servant Ada makes for her every birthday. Her day takes an unexpected turn when she stops a woman from trying to drown herself in the village duckpond, and takes her home. Miss Penny is a very likeable character, despite wishing at times she'd left Miss Plum too it, (after all, she wouldn't really have been able to go through with it). Miss Plum arouses people's sympathies but also their frustrations. Again in this novel, the characters seem very real, not the idealised characters that we often come across in these cosy village novel, and the novel itself is not as cosy as the opening scene would suggest.

I really loved this book up to a point, but it was ruined for me by having an excess of American spellings and phrases (e.g. 'trunk' rather than 'boot', 'maneuver' rather than 'manoeuvre', and a lot of references to women being 'dolls', and so many other instances) used out of context. Also, I noticed there appear to be several typos and random words, as though the sub-editor or proofreader had become a little bored... On a positive note, it has a good - if predictable - storyline that is oh so easy going.

A lovely gentle story. Loved reading it.

I loved this book! What fabulously drawn characters, I loved Ada, and deliciously, sly humour. Treat yourself!