The author causes her characters to work hard in the plot, and she paints each one with care and humour. Of course a fine description of plants and place doesn’t make a novel. I can feel that wonderful warm breeze on my skin with the plum blossom falling, this very moment. Judas tree, peach trees, freesias, irises, roses (oh the petals!) tamarisk, daphnes, lilies, fig trees, plums, olives and as she puts it, modest weigela. The very names made me wish I were there. She evokes the parade of flowering plants so beautifully I could almost smell their delicious aromas. I guess the author was very keen on gardens. The sea lay asleep in it, hardly stirring.' 'All the radiance of April in Italy lay gathered together at her feet. There, we can lie back in the past, in our sun loungers with a glass of wine, and enjoy the fragrances, and the slow passing of time demonstrated by flowers going over, only to make room for different buds to appear. It is also a wonderful way of making a virtual escape from the pandemic and drifting up to the castle gardens, overlooking the sea. This is a very funny book, but also poignant, sympathetic and at times thought provoking. Would Mrs Wilkins have dared to book the castle if a slight acquaintance had not agreed, along with two other women, to share the castle and its costs? Good for them say I! And so it turned out to be, in various, unsuspected ways. At the same time, the idea of a married woman, travelling unaccompanied by her husband, to a place so far from home, to have a month’s holiday without him, well! That would have been somewhat unusual in 1922. The novel was written in 1922, when servants were more common. To be honest, if that advert had been a real and current one I would have applied immediately! Small medieval Italian castle on the shores of the Mediterranean to be let furnished for the month of April. To Those Who Appreciate Wisteria and Sunshine. She had not suffered a long, Covid-19 winter, as have we, but she was not altogether happy, and sheltering from the sooty London rain she read this advertisement in The Times. On the contrary, her character, Mrs Wilkins, shopping on a wet London day, wishes to escape it. However, it is not an English April that Elizabeth von Arnim wishes to eulogise in her novel. Some plants, like my winter lettuces, and those courageous tulips can stand up to all that April can throw at our gardens. But in truth, who could not love the Spring, with its birdsong and all those brave early flowers? We can always sow more seed if we’ve been caught out by a late frost.

Eliot had it the cruellest month, and looking at the frosted magnolias near my house I do have a certain sympathy for that point of view.

Robert Browning yearned for it while abroad, though where are the green shoots of the elms these days? T. The month of April in England comes in for both praise and disfavour.

The enchanted april book review