(Image Source)

I don’t know if it’s the cold weather that is making me want to curl up under a blanket with a cup of tea and a cozy read… or the approaching busy holiday season that has me yearning for a simpler life… or just that they’re good books, but I’ve been on a Fairacre binge lately.

The Chronicles of Fairacre, by Miss Read, are a series of books describing the limitless charm of life in a small (some would say backward) English village just after World War II.  The main character of the series is Miss Read herself, the headmistress of the village school.  Miss Read is a spinster who likes her independent life in the village schoolhouse, and guards her freedom jealously even as the townfolk drop numerous not-so-subtle hints that she should be married.  From her post at the headmistress’s desk, Miss Read shares her wry observations of life in a rural village – from the joys and challenges of educating the country children, to the sweetness of a life measured in seasons rather than minutes and the quirks of her colleagues, acquaintences and friends, nothing escapes her observant eye.  Fairacre is peopled with memorable characters: Mrs Pringle, the cantankerous school cleaner; Miss Clare, the sweet retired infants’ teacher; Mr and Mrs Annett, the headmaster of nearby Beech Green school and his wife, herself a former Fairacre infants’ teacher; the Vicar, Gerald Partridge and his wife; Mr Willet, the reliable school caretaker, and more.  And then there are the children, a good-hearted group with excess energy and limited grammar (despite Miss Read’s heroic efforts).

Miss Read had been on my radar for years before I finally got around to reading Village School, the first in the series, earlier this year.  Village School starts the series off on a slow, ponderous note as Miss Read takes the reader through one year in the life of Fairacre School.  It’s easy to think that nothing happens in Fairacre – although there are plenty of little events, Village School is a particularly quiet book.  But the series picks up and Miss Read finds her voice in the second installment, Village Diary, in which she again records a year in her life, but this time focuses more on the adult residents of Fairacre, which gives her pen more scope for the gentle sarcasm she does so well.  I enjoyed Village School, but with Village Diary I was hooked.  I visited Fairacre again in September, dropping in for the third installment, Storm in the Village, in which the atomic energy company ponders a compulsory purchase of land near Fairacre, intending to build a housing estate for its workers, and the villagers unite in opposition.  (My September visit was just what I needed to take away some of the NICU stress.)  I can’t think of a better place to while away a quiet afternoon… or pass a stressful time… than in between the pages of one of these sweet reads.

And now it’s November, and I’ve gone on a bit of a Fairacre bender.  So far this month, I’ve read Miss Clare Remembers, Over the Gate, The Fairacre Festival, and Emily Davis – the fourth through the seventh installments.  And I’m headed back to the library for more.  I just can’t get enough of this gentle, sweet, yet subtly witty schoolteacher and her associates.

Have you read the Fairacre books?  Or ever gone on a series binge of your own?  Do share.