This little demon did remind me of Just William. I do wonder if Angela Thirkell was familiar with Richmal Crompton. I have to admit I found Tony to be quite annoying. I felt for Dora and Rose. Three cheers for the doctor and Sylvia who knew how to put him in his place. Not much change or growth in the characters. Perhaps in one of the later Barsetshire books. I'll have to look them out. Some good laughs here. ( )

Very different from Angela Thirkell's other books. I think it's only the second book, chronologically speaking. It's entirely the adventures of Laura Morland's youngest son, 12-year-old Tony. He's mostly exasperating, a know-it-all enthusiast of trains, bicycles, horses, and most other subjects under the sun. ( )

This is the second book (or third, depending on whose order you look at) in the Barsetshire series by Angela Thirkell. I was utterly charmed by the first book but this one is hard to find. I finally found a paperback copy in the library in the next county. The series is set in the 1930’s in the fictional county of Barsetshire originally created by Anthony Trollope.

This one focuses on Laura Morland’s 13 year old son Tony. He is both delightful and completely obnoxious due to his overwhelming enthusiasm for whatever happens to be his latest obsession as well as his complete overestimation of his own abilities in every endeavor. The book is a series of his visits home during one year of school. He has plenty of adventures and they usually involve his mother imagining his gruesome death at some point. His school friend who rarely speaks was my favorite character in a book populated with quirky and fun characters.

While still fun, this particular book wasn’t quite as charming as the first in the series. A little of Tony goes a long way. ( )

Very entertaining, but really only endless tales of the amusing/appalling things Laura's irrepressible son Tony does and says (as opposed to actually having any plot) and therefore rather one tone. I liked Tony's effectively mute friend Donk with his love of babies. ( )

Tony Morland has his say

The Demon in the House is the third book of Angela Thirkell’s Barsetshire novels, and I wasn’t sure how I would feel about a story centered on a force of nature like the cheerfully self-involved, hyper-talkative, 12 or 13 year-old Tony Morland--the “demon” of the title--but for the most part I loved it. Many of the characters from High Risings, the first of Thirkell’s Barsetshire books, are back and it was a pleasure to catch up with old friends.

Several sections of the story evoke with breath-taking clarity the mostly unruly but sometimes sublime passions of childhood--especially chapter 5, which is titled Paradise Pool because Tony discovers a particularly lovely view of the lake where a group of grown-ups and children have gathered to picnic and swim. The youngsters are full of high spirits, playing, squabbling loudly, and running off with each other’s toys, but then Tony and his mostly silent friend Donk climb down to muck around in a stream that’s below the level of the main body of water, and from that lower angle the lake looms like a magic pool suspended in midair, a vision that awes and moves them both and temporarily silences the almost pathologically loquacious Tony--it’s a lovely piece of writing.

Thirkell apparently didn’t think much of her own books. Like Tony’s mother she wrote because she needed to earn a living and didn’t expect or want her well educated friends to read her novels, but but for “fluff” her stories are witty and socially aware. Because they were written during the time when they're set, in this case the 1930’s, the stories also offer interesting and often unexpected (to me) insights about the daily life and attitudes of the era, including a few eyebrow-raising off-hand comments by characters that are offensive today.

Virago is re-releasing many of Thirkell’s novels, but so far not not this one, which means that most or all of the available copies are the Moyer Bell editions which do have some editing errors. ( )