E. F. Benson is familiar to most of us as the author of the immortal Lucia novels which have been brought to our TV screens every now and then, most memorably in a mid-1980s production starring Prunella Scales. Around the same time, a few of Benson’s other novels were re-issued, among them Praying Guest a purely British commedy, rich in humor of understatement, dry as a bone.
We are at “Wentworth,” a guest house in the fictional town of Bolton Spa, which offers baths and nasty-smelling waters to a group of permanent invalids. Wentworth is terribly genteel, recognized not only for the comfort it offers but also for the social standing of its guests. Who — this being a Benson novel — are silly at best, stupendously annoying at worst. The stars of the show are the pompous, self-regarding Colonel Chase, a former Indian Army officer who lords it over the other guests at Wentworth, bragging incessantly about his excellent health and bullying them all at the bridge table, a pair of middle-aged spinsters who later become a couple and a Mrs. Bliss who espouses Mental Science, a thin disguise for Christian Science...
This gathering of weird, whimsical, self-centred characters is the premise of a series of hilarious situations which makes this book a really entertaining and humourous read.
We are at “Wentworth,” a guest house in the fictional town of Bolton Spa, which offers baths and nasty-smelling waters to a group of permanent invalids. Wentworth is terribly genteel, recognized not only for the comfort it offers but also for the social standing of its guests. Who — this being a Benson novel — are silly at best, stupendously annoying at worst. The stars of the show are the pompous, self-regarding Colonel Chase, a former Indian Army officer who lords it over the other guests at Wentworth, bragging incessantly about his excellent health and bullying them all at the bridge table, a pair of middle-aged spinsters who later become a couple and a Mrs. Bliss who espouses Mental Science, a thin disguise for Christian Science...
This gathering of weird, whimsical, self-centred characters is the premise of a series of hilarious situations which makes this book a really entertaining and humourous read.
