A dark turn

A witty and poignant novel-of-manners about young women in a boarding house in 1940s London. It takes a dark and tragic turn, which struck me as rather out-of-the-blue, but to a contemporary reader, or just one more familiar with the mindset of postwar England, it would probably have worked better; as the back cover blurb says, the funny giddy bit is "hiding some tragically painful war wounds".

So it's not amusing escapism as the beginning might suggest. But it's good.