Started very well, then got a bit "dark" - so stopped reading it ! (there's enough darkness in the real world, I read to get away from it all) ( )

The Darling Buds of May by H.E. Bates is altogether delightful, irresistible, sensual and irrepressibly uplifting. That is what I wrote when I first read it in August 2001, and I feel the same way on a re-read.
This is the first book in The Pop Larkin Chronicles which is full of joie de vivre!
The story is about the Larkin family lustily romping their way through life in the English countryside. They eat and drink to excess enjoying life to the full, with their six children.
Mariette, their eldest, has been doing the naughty with a couple of local lads and she thinks she is pregnant, but is not sure which one of them it could be. She is an absolute stunner at 17. In the Yorkshire TV series she was played to electrifying effect by a young unknown actress by the name of Catherine Zeta Jones, which set all our pulses racing. She later went on to marry Michael Douglas.
In the story, a young naive tax inspector visits Pop Larkin’s farm and tries to induce him to fill out a tax form, but he is seduced, first by the irrepressible Ma and Pop Larkin, (played brilliantly in the T.V. series by David Jason) and their happy-go-lucky lifestyle and then by the obvious charms and beauty of Mariette, who makes him forget all about his job as a tax inspector.
See blurb and pics here: http://www.itv.com/ClassicTVshows/familydrama/TheDarlingBudsofMay/default.html
Nothing less than five shells would do justice to this book. Read it and enjoy. ( )