Miss Buncle's Book (1934) by D.E. Stevenson #SpinsterSeptember

✍🏼 September is the month dedicated for #SpinsterSeptember, a Twitter and Instagram reading event created by Nora @pearjelly_. The idea is to read books in which the main characters are spinsters. My first contribution is a brilliantly written novel by D.E. Stevenson. In Miss Buncle's Book, Stevenson wrote a book about a woman who writes a book about a woman who writes a book. Confused? Let me elaborate...

✍🏼 Miss Barbara Buncle is a spinster in her late thirties, who lives in a small town of Silverstream. When the dividend, on which she was depended her financials, was decreased in both quantity and frequency, Miss Buncle was forced to do something. This something turned out to be writing a book. But Miss Buncle has a handicap - she doesn't have imagination. Thus, she wrote a book about what she knows well - Silverstream and its residents.

✍🏼 Mr. Abbott, the publisher, read Miss Buncle's manuscript, and loved it. He agreed to publish it under title of Disturber of the Peace. The title became a prophecy when, intrigued by this new book penned by John Smith (Miss Buncle's pseudonym), the Silverstreamers procured and read the book, and.... found themselves in it! Peace has been disturbed alright. And it is the chaos the book has stirred that forms the center of this amusing book.

✍🏼 The best part of the book is learning how different each individual's reaction is towards the Disturber of the Peace. Yet, it is easy to remark that their reactions are always in accordance with their personal characters. It can be said that their reactions reflect their true characters. Mrs. Featherstone-Hogg is the strongest opponent of Disturber of the Peace. She hated both the book and the writer, John Smith. So much so, that she went to London to bully Mr. Abbott into withdrawing the book from publication - which at this point had become a bestseller - and regarded it as libel. Of course Mr. Abbott refused to do that and there's no lawyer willing to take the case. Mrs. Featherstone-Hogg was so adamant, that she decided to take the matter by herself. She invited some residents whose name were included in the book, to gather and discuss the real identity of John Smith - for they realized that he/she must be their fellow resident - and what they'd do to punish this person. 

✍🏼 This action only revealed Mrs. Featherstone-Hogg's true personality: hypocrite. She recognized the character in the book as herself, but she denied vehemently that there is any similarity between the character and herself. Funny, right? But there are also those who saw the book as amusing, like Colonel Weatherhead. The book even inspired him to do something he would have never thought possible, but in the end it actually made him happier. To another male character, the book had opened his eyes of his wrongdoings towards his family, that he tried further to correct it.

✍🏼 In short, this is a hilarious story that satirized the hypocrisy in any society in our world. What we see outside is not always the same with what lays inside. People see Miss Buncle as a rather foolish or stupid woman, that they never suspect her as John Smith. Among the Silverstreamers, only Sally Walker, the 17 years granddaughter of Miss Buncle's neighbour, who really appreciate Miss Buncle as she is. Interestingly, Sally is the only one who could describe Disturber of the Peace in accordance with its literary merit. The moral of the story is, that sometimes it's good to see one's reflection from other's mirror - there might lay the truth one doesn't often realize about one self. However, only they who are conscientious enough who can see it as it is. 

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐