Louisa decided that she wanted to get married... and so begins a delightful frothy parable, of sorts, that ends in a rather unpredictable match. This is a 50's take on the romance tale but the tale Sharp creates really belongs in the world of D.E. Stevenson's Barbara Buncle or Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day.

I seem to be in the minority among the reviewers. My introduction to Sharp was her superior series that Disney adapted The Rescuers from(though Bob Newhart and Gabor did fantastic things with the voices, her villains were better). Based on the quality of this one,I'm intrigued by her novels for adults and intend to try more. ( )

There I was profiling Sharp books as having a Tyler like quality of avoiding 'happily ever after' and here I am writing about one that makes me eat my words. It's all in the name, Something Light. It's a straightforward comedy in which the heroine sets out to become married and one way or another the closer she thinks she is, the further way she finds herself.

She's a 'good sort', an expression which seems to have fallen by the wayside. Indeed Sharp, who had a particular interest in language uses lots of words which might have been faddish at the time but dropped out of use. One in this book is 'Pammies'. They are a type of female, but it isn't clear to me if it is an expression coined by Sharp or a word of the period. I can't see any references to it online.

Fabulously freshly funny. ( )

There I was profiling Sharp books as having a Tyler like quality of avoiding 'happily ever after' and here I am writing about one that makes me eat my words. It's all in the name, Something Light. It's a straightforward comedy in which the heroine sets out to become married and one way or another the closer she thinks she is, the further way she finds herself.

She's a 'good sort', an expression which seems to have fallen by the wayside. Indeed Sharp, who had a particular interest in language uses lots of words which might have been faddish at the time but dropped out of use. One in this book is 'Pammies'. They are a type of female, but it isn't clear to me if it is an expression coined by Sharp or a word of the period. I can't see any references to it online.

Fabulously freshly funny. ( )

Something Light was exactly that—a frothy and agreeable tale of a 1950s British woman tired of scrambling to make ends meet who decides what she needs is a husband. Of course you know that after several disastrous forays she'll end up with someone who's lurking in plain sight—I don't even think that counts as a spoiler in this kind of novel—and the question, of course, is who? This wasn't my usual fare, but it was fun, and I was won over by the fact that Louisa's a dog photographer. What a perfect profession for a struggling career woman in mid-century England! I couldn't help hoping she sticks with it even after her successful nuptial campaign. ( )

As funny as life, and then some! ( )