Story of the first 20-some years of Sarah Morris.
Enjoyable writing and very likeable characters for the most part, although right in the middle is a bit of implied immorality that quite disappointed me. It's not spelled out, and is never referred to again.
As a young teenager, Sarah meets her older brother's college friend, a kind and sympathetic man from Austria named Charles, and while he retains family-friend status for a while and she has a childish affection for him, it's not much of a leap for her to agree to marry him at the age of 19. But World War II gets in the way for a while, and the second half of the book is the story of Sarah's trials and successes in wartime London, where she keeps a flat for her father and brother and works as an interpreter in a department store. I quite liked this part of the book, as well as the couple of episodes where Sarah goes to visit her grandparents in Scotland. ( )

Sarah reflects on growing up, from her childhood in an English vicarage through her adolescent years spent studying languages to her time working in London during WWII. It’s interesting and poignant and I enjoyed it.

There were a few moments when I began wondering if the book’s age was showing in the form of some prejudice or outdated attitude, and then the narrative would take steps to address my concern! For instance, after Sarah has a negative experience with some French people, her teacher reminds her that she mustn’t assume all the French are like that, and Sarah reflects:

Her warning shouldn’t have been necessary… but, strangely enough, it was.

I suspect that a young woman with Sarah’s fluency in languages would have ended up with different war work, but it probably would have been the sort of job that involved signing the Official Secrets Act and therefore it’s highly likely that in 1967 Stevenson didn’t know enough (or perhaps any?) details about such jobs to put one of them in a book. ( )

A lovely book to escape from the crazy world we live in. One where you can be sure nothing too terrible will happen. Good characters, thoughtful plot, just a very nice book from a very different time. I'm ready for the next of the series. ( )