For some reason, it was issued in January, not December, which seems just so wrong, but the days are still short and listening this month, in the sometime bleak midwinter, was a real pleasure. The solutions to everyone else’s problems are almost as pat (though not so ridiculous), and the prose occasionally reads like a bad script for a “WE” television drama.

This book is another wonderful story of Elfrida and her friend Oscar and all the drop-in guests they get for Christmas. Visiting her in Scotland, Tom suggested an altogether bolder, “door-stopper” novel that would include her wartime experiences.BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us. Rosamunde Pilcher is a famous author of romance novels who was born Rosamunde Scott on September 22, 1924 in Lelant, Cornwall (which is located in the United Kingdom).

Her breakthrough in the writing game would not come until the late eighties, when she released her twenty-third novel “The Shell Seekers”, a novel that sold over five million copies around the world. Her earliest books -- 10 in all -- were published in the late 1940s and early 1950s and credited to Jane Fraser.I love her books because she creates such a vivid sense of place that I can close my eyes and see it. You will find that over 98% of our reviews are five-star and as a result we have achieved TripAdvisor’s annual Certificate of Excellence and placement in their Hall of Fame! She is very poor, but has a tiny cottage, her four-legged friend Horace, and friendships of good neighbors. Seemed a little redundant in places this time but didn't affect how much I enjoyed Elfrida's and Oscar's lovely story. The novel describes the everyday details of what life during World War II was like for some of those who lived in Britain.

She draws the character of a young teenager troubled by the fact that she does not have an apparent place in life and that she is constantly dumped one way or another by the people she loves, until the moment when only through the innocence of her young age, she manages to get straight to the heart of a mature Oscar Blundell, suffering for the loss of his own young daughter Francesca. Pilcher was also in the Women’s Royal Naval Service from 1943 until 1946, and late in 1946, she married Graham Hope Pilcher (who also was in the service and was an executive in the jute industry). I loved that the two main lovers are in their sixties, long past the time for rebirth, or what the conventional wisdom would say.Oscar finally played Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" on the church organ in the snowy white world of Christmas Eve. Elegant reading in which Rosamunde Pilcher provides the two hallmarks of her writing: gentle, atomospheric recreation of English lifestyles and an appealing cast of interesting people whose lives come together for new experiences while theyre making other plans.