Starlight by Stella Gibbons

Reading this book was a disorienting experience for me, because having read Cold Comfort Farm, I picked it up ready to collapse with laughter. While certain parts of this book are ironic, for the most part, it is serious and even frightening and most of its humour is rather bleak. There are some moments of absurdity and almost slapstick comedy in the portrayal of certain characters, but there is very little of it. It's also not nearly as interesting in the beginning as it gets towards the end. By the end, it has a strong similarity to the sort of British suburban Gothic that Ian McEwan specialised in during the early part of his career. I find it very hard to describe this book and don't know how I feel about it, because it seems so strange and divided. On the one hand, it is a satirical examination of the class system, with characters like two elderly well-meaning little-educated sisters, an earnest Vicar, the wealthy wife of a property speculator, several wealthy middle-class widows. There are a lot of descriptions of their everyday lives, activities and thought patterns. On the other hand, it is also about the struggle between Heaven and Hell that happens to take place off the Archway Road. There's no central character, and the central conflict doesn't become clear until the very end. As a devoted lover of Gothic literature, I liked the creepy parts best, and by the end, I was completely fascinated. But the beginning in very slow and confusing and rather dull.