The Demon in the House (1934) by Angela Thirkell

🚲 Having read the first in Angela Thirkell's Barsetshire series: High Rising, I tried to enjoy the third one, still about the Morland family. Unfortunately, it focused more on the Morlands - especially Tony Morland, a monster of a child! - while the other supporting characters only acted as, well, supoorting characters. They provided neither new interest nor parallel plot to make the story more entertaining. No, this one is all about Tony Morland and his exploits.

🚲 If you hadn't been acquainted to Tony Morland, he's a child of thirteen year old, the youngest of Laura Morland, a widow. They lives in an English countryside of High Rising, Laura - the mother and writer of 'good bad books' (trash to some, but bestseller to others); her exasperating and spoilt son - the demon in the title; and Stoker, the cook and only servant. Tony is a chattering little brat, who's always bragging about his superiority in every subject; whose exploits never failed to give his mother a terrible headache and anxiety; and whose nonstop condescending monologues exasperated others. Well, except maybe, Master Wesendonk, or Donk as Tony always calls him, who always seems to listen to Tony, and do what he was told to. There could never have been a more unsuitable pair of boys you'll ever see in your lifetime! 🚲 The story starts one summer holiday, when Tony asked her mother for a bicycle. He got a borrowed one, which he used it mostly to boast his skillful bike-riding to his two friends: Rose and Dora, whom he always patronizes. However, Tony and his bike give his mother apprehensions - she even imagines all sort of disastrous scenarios that could have happened to her son. Beyond Tony's exploiting his mother and two friends, we are also entertained by some recurring characters like Adrian Cotes, Laura's kind publisher, whom she successfully matchmade into a happy marriage in High Rising. George Knox, Laura's neighbor and close friend, also returns with his Victorian style of conversation, which always made me smile, because he often loses in his own flow of sentences, and then forgetting what he originally wanted to say. 🚲 And that's all about this book, a book about nothing but funny anecdotes of British upper-class lives in the 1930s. Readers might found Tony's 'terrorizing' people around him cute, but it was the one factor that's dampening my enjoyment of this book. If I had had a son like that, either I would, either kill him or else, kill myself! He really got me strung all the time, and it tired me after reading this book. I guess it's not a good one for an introverted people. I still want to read more of Thirkell's, but maybe not the Morlands story for the time being. Rating: ⭐⭐⭐1/2