Goes along very well with the previous book in the series, Miss Bunting. Anne Fielding, her friend Robin Dale the schoolmaster, and a few new people, like siblings George and Sylvia Halliday, along with the whole Leslie family introduced in Wild Strawberries, are all finding themselves a bit out of sorts as the end of the war draws near. After 6 years of deprivation and stress, they can hardly believe that Peace will not be as disturbing as War. But aside from all that (culminating in a little rant by the author at the end of the book wherein one sentence lasts for more than a page), the concerns are much the same as usual. Who should marry whom? What is proper and polite? What would Miss Bunting have said?
David Leslie is back and up to his old tricks of flirtation, but starting to age so that everyone feels it's time he settled down. But who could ever keep him in order? ( )

It’s 1945, and the end of the war is nigh. The people of Barsetshire have been struggling with air raid drills, evacuations, food rationing, and “the war effort” for so long, they can hardly envision how to function in a post-war world. Any day now, peace will be announced and cause all kinds of headaches. The trains might not be running, and shops will be closed, making it difficult to prepare the day’s meals. Well, that’s Angela Thirkell’s satirical take on it anyway. But even as VJ Day approaches, there are still church services every Sunday, a Bring and Buy Sale being planned, and a large cast of characters going about their daily lives pretty much as usual.

This novel, the fifteenth in the series, brings together several families and characters we’ve met before. Everyone is getting older, which puts them in new situations. Characters who were once children are now adults and getting into romantic entanglements, and as in many of the Barsetshire novels as they visit for Sunday lunch, a game of tennis, or a walk in the countryside, it’s just a question of who ends up with whom. If I have one criticism of this book, it’s that the cast of characters was so large, it was a while before I could keep everyone straight, and I had to consult secondary sources to refresh my memory on the family relationships. But other than that, it was an enjoyable way to pass the time. ( )

Thirkell's 1946 book, Peace breaks out, opens, as we might have guessed, in April 1945, a few days before VE Day, and its action continues through the 1945 general election, ending just after VJ Day in August. Thirkell's characters aren't exactly exultant about the end of the war - for many of them it messes up their plans for continuing with interesting war-work and getting their next promotion through; others seem to know very well that it won't mean an end to rationing and other government interference:

On the following Tuesday a day of national rejoicing burst by very slow degrees and barely recognised as such upon an exhausted, cross and uninterested world. Not much notice was taken in the country as everyone was busy, few young people were about and there was the usual dearth of beer.

Alternating with the narrator's gloom and doom about the state of England (for which she blames all foreigners, irrespective of which side they were on in the war, in pages and pages of xenophobic rant) we get an unexpectedly sunny romance plot full of set-pieces like tennis-parties, bring-and-buy sales, school sports and clerical infighting in the Close. It looks as though the charming David's days as a bachelor may be numbered, but we're left guessing until the end who will be the unlucky woman. It feels like an oddly unbalanced book, in which the plot really doesn't work together with the historical context at all, but there are still a lot of gems of detailed observation in between times to make it worth reading. ( )

3½ stars. ( )

I didn't think it was one of her better books. It took too long for me to get into it, and I gave up after about 50 pages. ( )