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Family Roundabout
 
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Family Roundabout (Paperback)

by Richmal Crompton (Author), Juliet Aykroyd (Introduction)
4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
RRP: £12.00
Price: £11.40 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
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Price For All Three: £29.69

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Product details

  • Paperback: 384 pages
  • Publisher: Persephone Books Ltd; New edition edition (1 Mar 2001)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1903155134
  • ISBN-13: 978-1903155134
  • Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 13.6 x 3.2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 85,645 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Product Description
Richmal Crompton created William, the pugnacious anti-hero of thirty books selling over 8 million copies in her lifetime; but their author once hinted that a 'Frankenstein monster' had ambushed her forty novels for adults. Persephone Books publishes a 1948 novel about the life of two families during the inter-war years. Instead of seeing William at odds with adults, we are shown the matriarchs around whom their families spin; but whether they direct their children gently or forcefully, in the end they have to accept them as they are.We see that families can both entrap and sustain; that parents and children must respect each other; and that happiness necessitates jumping or being pushed off the family roundabout.

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Customer Reviews

3 Reviews
5 star:
 (2)
4 star:
 (1)
3 star:    (0)
2 star:    (0)
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Average Customer Review
4.7 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars One of my favourite novels, 26 Feb 2004
By Simon Thomas "bookaholic" (Oxford/Somerset, UK) - See all my reviews
  
Richmal Crompton is one of the great publishing discoveries in a long time. Her William books are enjoyable and lastingly popular, but this book...

And, so you see, I am speechless. From the opening page, on which the 'central character' (if there is only one) Millicent Dorrington reveals how she behaved less intelligent than she was to please her husband, calling her witty self 'Milly' and her dutiful self 'Millicent,' I was hooked. Richmal has the ability to create a character in an amazingly brief number of words - and each character, from the matriachal but insecure Mrs. Willoughby to the eminent author-seducer, is perfectly and addictively drawn.

What could have been a depressing book, given its depiction of families separating and becoming lonely, is in fact extremely funny much of the time. Crompton uses the wit so well known from the pages of William (like all good childrens books, wasted on children) to both acerbic and fond affect within the pages of this, one of my favourite novels.

I can't recommend Richmal Crompton in general, and this book in particular, strongly enough.

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20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A tale of two mothers, 24 April 2001
By Lynette Baines (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)      
This is the story of two famillies, the Willoughbys and the Fowlers. Each is headed by a woman (the fathers are conveniently dead before the story begins). Mrs Fowler is initially the more attractive character, kind, bookish, understanding, while Mrs Willoughby rules her family with a will of iron. The novel spans nearly twenty years in the lives of these two famillies, brought together initially by the marriage of Max Willoughby to Helen Fowler. The mothers present two opposing methods of nurturing their children, but by the end of the novel, it's difficult to say who is the more successful mother. As Mrs Fowler says at one point, maybe she needed a bit more of Mrs Willoughby in her, and maybe Mrs Willoughby needed a little of her. As well as being a fascinating picture of family life,the novel is also very funny. Mrs Willoughby's control over her family is evident in everything they do (the episode of the black and pink versus the green mat is typical)until the day when she is defied by one of her grandchildren, and the whole edifice begins to crumble. Mrs Fowler seems unable to really help and advise her children. She doesn't interfere and is always supportive, but this hasn't made them happy. The Roundabout of the title is an appropriate image as the characters' fortunes change. Round and round and up and down they go, but knowing when to jump off the roundabout is the important thing.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Absorbing, entertaining study of English life between the wars, 1 Mar 2009
By Dr. Sarah A. Brown "Sarah Brown" (Cambridge) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Reading this novel by Richmal Crompton was a bit like reading a `William' story from the adults' point of views. Here too we have a sleepy interwar village with old fashioned shops, the county family and the nouveau riche family, teas and tennis parties. And you get similar character types - bossy young women, lovelorn young men, redoubtable elderly ladies, a solitary writer living in a cottage and a young wannabe socialist whose greatest act of rebellion is to wear orange socks. There are also children of course - whether engagingly rebellious or unattractively smug - but these remain in the background throughout.

The story is very absorbing, the characters are convincing and quite subtly drawn although we are never invited to delve too deeply into their inner lives, and, even though the subject matter includes adultery, death and disappointments of all kinds, the style is often very witty. Crompton's portrait of the self-indulgent, second rate novelist Arnold Palmer is particularly effective. `Mr Palmer spent a lot of time and thought impressing his modesty on people'. I do recommend `Family Roundabout', but if you want a 5* star novel along rather similar lines try Dorothy Whipple's wonderful `They Were Sisters'.
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