Miss Clare Remembers by Miss Read, 275 pages

For her new book, "Miss Read" has returned to Fairacre. In it she tells the story of Miss Clare's long life, most of it spent in teaching at the Fairacre school. Miss Clare looks back across six reigns and two world wars, in one of which she lost her lover. She surveys a quiet life which, for all its outward serenity, has much personal drama. Her rural lifetime spanned a social revolution in the countryside.

We meet some old Fairacre friends as well as Dolly Clare's family -- Francis, her sturdy father , Mary, her valiant mother, and Ada, the flighty sister who everyone predicted would come to no good -- as well as the variety of original personalities to be found in a village like Beech Green.