Jane is a vicar’s wife, preoccupied a lot by her friend Prudence that is nearly 30 and still single. Prudence works in London and has a free life even though she is enamoured by her old boss. Jane is not an excellent vicar’s wife, she is a little bored by the roles she should endorse and is always happy that older women of the parish are ready to do the tasks : organising meetings, autumn celebrations, … There is a handsome widow in the village, Fabian Driver, and Jane tries to patch him with Prudence, but this doesn’t really succeed because there is some competition. A funny and quite ironic description of the life of the vicar’s wife and the contrast between the town and the country.
“Oh, but it was splendid the things women were doing for men all the time, thought Jane. Making them feel, perhaps sometimes by no more than a casual glance, that they were loved and admired and desired when they were worthy of none of these things – enabling them to preen themselves and puff out their plumage like birds and bask in the sunshine of love, real or imagined, it didn’t matter which.”
Listened to as an audiobook