This novel, written in the 1980, is a wonderful evocation of boarding house life in mid-50’s London.Mrs Hawkins (we only discover her first name late in the novel) is a young war widow. She lives in a tall, shabby rooming house in South Kensington and works in publishing. The damage left by war is everywhere – all over the smashed-up city, in her own past, in the lives of the refugees she lives and works with. But she herself seems unhurt: strong, capable, one of those large women people always confide in. Slimming down as the novel goes on, she notes that people cease their confidences when she is thin; the irrational quirkiness of others gives her (and her creator) great delight. Enthusiastically religious – she is in the habit of saying the Angelus every day at 12 eve