Screwball comedies of manners

Is there such a thing as a British postwar screwball comedy of manners? If so, then that is what I’ve been reading, and it’s as awesome as it sounds. 

If you don’t know Margery Sharp, and I didn’t really until this week, she is absolutely delightful, like a funnier Barbara Pym. She is most famous for The Rescuers, a children’s book that I really loved when I was a kid, but I didn’t ever think about re-reading it as an adult and never knew that Ms. Sharp wrote fiction for adult readers too. A few months ago, I stumbled across the Margery Sharp Collection, a little anthology of her novels and I just finished the first one in the collection, Something Light, which I can only describe as a 20th century Jane Austen romantic comedy of errors. Even though I predicted exactly how the book was going to end, I didn't know how Sharp would get us there. I was a little sorry to finish it and to leave Louisa Datchett and her many men behind, but the second book, The Nutmeg Tree, is just as good - hilarious and human and a bit of a page-turner. I’m really all agog to see what will happen. Julia knows that something's up with her future son-in-law, but she hasn't figured out exactly what yet. Once again, I have a pretty good guess but I'm not sure if I'm right, nor what will happen before all is revealed. I’ll report back.

There are four books in the collection; and as it turns out, this volume is only Volume 1 of the Margery Sharp Collection. There is a Volume 2, which I plan to read just the minute I finish Volume 1.  Margery Sharp is filling the gap left by Hilary Mantel and Muriel Spark, whose work I have read from start to finish; and she is rapidly becoming one of my favorite authors. At least as far as reading is concerned, it should be a lovely summer.