Before Lunch

As the title of this bright, unashamedly nostalgic novel suggests, Angela Thirkell had a genius for the quotidian. Published in 1939, Before Lunch was the last of Thirkell's books published before the darkening shadow of World War II made her glittering, reassuring portrait of the English countryside (embodied in "Barsetshire," her own Yoknapatawpha County) seem more and more anachronistic. The minor Thirkell renaissance currently proceeding has produced no more blessedly uplifting heroine than Lilian Stoner, the heroine of Before Lunch.