The lady inhabitants of a London ladies' hostel emerging from the shadow of World War II, do their best to act as if the world were back to normal, all the while maintaining a front for some tragically painful war wounds.

Set on the crazier fringes of 1950s literary London, A Far Cry from Kensington is a delight, hilariously portraying love, fraud, death, evil, and transformation.

Mrs. Hawkins, the majestic narrator of A Far Cry from Kensington, takes us well in hand and leads us back to her threadbare years in postwar London. There, as a fat and much admired young war widow, she spent her days working for a mad, near-bankrupt publisher ("of very good books")

...