Christmas with the savages

the long version

From "Clothes in Books" blog: Mary Clive was one of the Longford/Pakenham family, and the book is a fictionalized memoir about her childhood Christmases, drawn into one story of the only child Evelyn, 8, who lands up in a rather grand English houseparty at Christmas, among three other families of very wild children...It is hard to describe why the book is so hilarious, and so perfect. Perhaps it is because these are very posh, wealthy children of 100 years ago, growing up to inherit the earth, but Clive gives them that universality – you recognized that yes, this is how children behave, and most writers simply don’t do that. There is a randomness and an inconsequentiality about them: they take up crazes and excitements, they fight, they make friends, they make plans. They climb up to the attics, and farther, inviting danger and trouble. There are great unfairnesses in the way they are treated, but all are related in a matter-of-fact way.