As I’ve said before, I simply LOVE Dorothy Gilman. She has an absolutely lovely way with language and her characters are always so human yet somehow also just that little bit more - more conscientious, more thoughtful, more thought, more human - than the people one encounters in everyday life… Perhaps I’m a relic, but I love that her books are stories - not plot contrivances designed to deliver violence or sex. There are always pertinent and relevant life lessons tucked away inside her dialogue, but they’re delivered with such a deft hand and in such cheeky and also somehow casual ways that they never feel like lessons until you finish reading their sentences - then the simple truths they uncover just jump out at you. I miss the days when stories could be simple yet thoroughly complex through nothing more than the exigencies of human interaction. She manages to remind me of days gone by without waxing sentimental or getting maudlin. Madame Karitska, the protagonist of this lovely book (the first in a two-book series!) is a worthy successor to the incomparable Mrs. Pollifax, and if you haven’t yet met either, you simply must resolve that with all expediency…