Miss Buncle’s Book, D.E.Stevenson, UK, 1934

Miss Barbara Buncle lives in a small English village called Silverstream where nothing much happens and where everyone knows everyone else’s business. She begins writing down observations of her fellow villagers and then decides to develop her observations into a book (with changed names of course). Her publisher, Arthur Abbott, is delighted with his bestselling author and insists on Miss Buncle writing a second book.

In the meantime the inhabitants of Silverstream have been drawing connections between their own village and the fictional Copperfield of John Smith’s Disturber of the Peace (it is probably unnecessary to add that Miss Buncle did not publish the book under her own name), and some of them have also been drawing uncomfortable connections between a number of characters in the book and themselves. Unbelievably, even though they are condemning the book as a pack of lies, they also recognise themselves.

Stevenson very cleverly parallels and weaves Miss Buncle’s observations of Silverstream with what is actually happening in the village, creating a delightful, funny and at times, thought-provoking novel. In the end, it is not how we think we are but how others perceive us that really matters.

Stevenson’s book might be a decade short of a century, but it shows that people are basically always the same and that their ways of acting and relating to those around them remain the same in spite of all the advances in technology and science. A delightful little book that definitely needs to be more readily available.

It is not an easy book to find, and you may have to do some serious searching. To my knowledge, Amazon carries it as does Awesome Books (UK), but I have been unable to find it at Booktopia, Angus & Robertson’s or Dymocks. This could simply be a temporary ‘glitch’; in the meantime it could be worthwhile checking with your local library or a secondhand book shop.