Reading: Living Alone

[white_hart]

Originally published in 1919, Stella Benson's Living Alone is a charming fantasy set in World War 1 London and dealing with the effects on several members of a Committee on War Savings of an unexpected encounter with a witch, who is never named but turns all of their lives upside down, for a little while at least (and in the case of one member, the withdrawn and unhappy Sarah Brown, permanently). It's a whimsical book, not particularly plot-driven, and reminded me of some of Chesterton's more fantastic novels and Sylvia Townsend Warner's Lolly Willowes; it also contains some delightfully acerbic and witty social comedy, some of which feels just as apposite now as it did almost a century ago ('I suppose if you didn't have this big label sticking up in your harbour, you Americans might forget that America is the Home of Liberty' felt particularly on the nose in the current climate). I liked it a great deal.