Darby And Joan

Love, age, domestic habit, and the quiet terror of knowing exactly how someone takes their tea.

Darby and Joan by Maurice Baring is a gentle, old-fashioned novel built around that most unfashionable of subjects: long companionship. Not grand passion, not melodrama flung down staircases, but the smaller, stranger business of two lives lived side by side until affection becomes furniture and memory becomes part of the wallpaper.

There is a pleasing irony in the title. “Darby and Joan” suggests cosy old married contentment, slippers by the fire, and mutual understanding polished smooth by time. Baring, of course, is far too observant to leave it quite that simple. Human beings remain complicated even when seated comfortably.

This near fine large print edition, as sold by Crappy Old Books, adds its own charm: generous type, easy reading, and the faintly comic grandeur of a modest domestic story given room to breathe on the page.

Ideal for readers of quiet literary fiction, older fiction, large print novels, and anyone who suspects that the real drama of life may not be falling in love, but staying recognisably human afterwards.

Keep browsing: See more Fiction books Other books by Maurice Baring