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  • Published: 1 November 2012
  • ISBN: 9780099529330
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 432
  • RRP: $24.99

The Matchmaker




'Her character drawing is perfection, and her sense of fun too subtle to permit quotation' - James Agate, author of Ego

Uprooted from war-torn London, Alda Lucie-Brown and her three daughters start a new life at Pine Cottage in rural Sussex. Unsuited to a quiet life, Alda attempts to orchestrate - with varying degrees of success - the love affairs of her neighbours. Her unwilling subjects include an Italian POW, a Communist field-hand, a battery-chicken farmer and her intelligent friend Jean.

  • Published: 1 November 2012
  • ISBN: 9780099529330
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 432
  • RRP: $24.99

About the author

Stella Gibbons

Stella Gibbons is best known for her comic masterpiece Cold Comfort Farm. A witty parody of the pastoral fiction written by authors such as D H Lawrence, Thomas Hardy and Mary Webb, it won the Prix Femina Vie Heureuse Anglais in 1933 and established her literary reputation. Gibbons also wrote 22 other novels, including Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm (1940) and Starlight (1967), as well as three volumes of short stories and four poetry collections. She died in 1989, aged 87.

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Praise for The Matchmaker

Her character drawing is perfection, and her sense of fun too subtle to permit quotation

James Agate, author of Ego

Chipper is the word: Gibbons's heroines are plucky, determined and quietly hedonistic. But she can do melancholy with the best of them, too, not to mention melodrama

Guardian

Stella Gibbons.an exception to that old canard: women can't make us laugh

Independent

The Jane Austen of the 20th century

Lynne Truss

Stella is stellar

Sunday Herald

Stella Gibbons's gift is very special

Daily Express