In 1930s England, a beleaguered mother frets over her twelve-year-old''s "skirmishes with the grown-up world and his schoolmasters . . . amusingly told" (Kirkus Reviews).Laura Morland loves her son, Tony, unconditionally . . . even when he''s talking everyone''s ear off, accidentally breaking a window, shelling peas in the bathtub, or desperately trying to convince her to buy him a bicycle—the thought of which terrifies her. And of course Laura cherishes their time together when Tony''s home on break, while secretly counting the minutes until he goes back to school . . .This twentieth-century tale set in Anthony Trollope''s beloved Barsetshire is a lighthearted and sharp-witted look at the life of the upper class in prewar England, and a funny portrait of the fraught relationship between a long-suffering mother and a demanding, rambunctious, and occasionally infuriating twelve-year-old boy.Praise for Angela Thirkell and the Barsetshire novels"Thirkell writes in a charmingly easy and intimate style." —The New York Times"[Thirkell''s] writing celebrates the solid parochial English virtues of stiff-upper-lippery, good-sportingness, dislike of fuss, and low-key irony. . . . Light, witty, easygoing books." —The New Yorker