Mapp and Lucia is the first of a series of books by E. F. Benson about Miss Elizabeth Mapp and Mrs Emmeline Lucas, known to her friends as Lucia. Lucia lives in the fictional village of Riseholme, somewhere in Worcestershire. She and her friend George rent houses in the fictional village of Tilling in Sussex. The house Lucia rents is owned by Miss Mapp, a woman regards herself as the queen of Tilling society and is used to running the show. Lucia is used to doing the same in Riseholme, and sets about taking over from Miss Mapp whether she likes it or not. Needless to say, Miss Mapp doesn’t like it one bit!
The eponymous characters in Mapp and Lucia should be unlikeable, but somehow they aren’t. Lucia sometimes seems pretentious with her baby talk to George, and her fragments of pseudo-Italian. She doesn’t speak Italian, she just likes to sound like she can. This leads to an interesting episode when a woman who lives in Italy comes to stay in Tilling for a week. Each time Mapp tried to get the better of Lucia, I knew the attempt would misfire and thoroughly enjoyed Lucia getting the better of her.
The focus is so much on Mapp and Lucia that the peripheral characters don’t really get developed at all. In a way, this doesn’t matter. I wasn’t interested in the Padre or the Wyses. I just wanted to read about what Mapp and Lucia got up to. I pictured Mapp as Prunella Scales and Lucia as Geraldine McEwan, because those actresses played the roles in a TV adaptation in the mid-1980s. Those images worked well for me.
I read this book straight after reading Lucky Jim, and the difference for me was huge. This book was a joy to read and by the end of the book I wanted to read more about Mapp and Lucia. If you enjoy the works of P. G. Wodehouse, you’ll probably enjoy this.
