The last of the original series of these novels, this is perhaps the least of them. And that's fair: Benson was in his 70s by the time this novel was published, and would die mere months later. Still, the world of Tilling is richly embroidered and there is plenty of fun to be had. Perhaps the laughs don't come every single line, and one almost feels like one is reading a light novel rather than a light comic novel, but fans will still delight in the madness. Just not a place to start for a newcomer.

Luckily we have numerous authors who have taken up the baton of this series since the 1980s - some wonderful, some less so - so that we are assured that Elizabeth, Georgie, Lucia, Diva, Irene and the gang will never truly leave us. ( )

A good end to the series - as the title says, Lucia runs into some trouble in Tilling & with Georgie Pillson but, ever indomitable, she rises to the crisis. ( )

NOTE: This review applies to the entire Mapp and Lucia series.

This appears to be one of those series that people either love or hate. Set in the early decades of the 20th century, E.F. Benson skewers the frivolous lives of the elite in rural English villages. The heroine is Mrs. Emmeline Lucas, known to all as Lucia (the Italian pronunciation, if you please). Lucia rules the village of Riseholme with an iron fist in a velvet glove, ruthlessly running the social lives of the others in her social class. Despite their occasional resentment and attempts to break free of Lucia's influence, the village invariably finds life gray and boring without their benevolent dictator in residence.

The second book in the series, Miss Mapp, at first appears to be a completely unrelated book, as Lucia does not appear and instead the main character is Elizabeth Mapp, a never-married woman "of a certain age" in the village of Tilling. Like Lucia, she rules her social class with a strong will, although with somewhat less grace than her counterpart in Riseholme. The third book, Lucia in London, leaves Mapp and Tilling behind and returns to focus on Lucia, this time on her adventures during the social season in London.

Finally, in Book Four (Mapp and Lucia), the irresistible force (Lucia) meets the immovable object (Mapp) when Lucia decides to move to Tilling. This town is not big enough for both of them to rule, and the schemes and shenanigans that ensue are delightfully sharp and witty. Their tussles continue in the final two books in the series, Lucia's Progress and Trouble for Lucia.

The lives of the people spotlighted in Riseholme and in Tilling are spectacularly shallow. The biggest intrigues involve who is paired with who at the evening bridge games, and gossip is traded freely during the morning marketing, when anyone who is anyone gathers on the High Street with their baskets and their cutting observations. Scarcely a reference is ever made to world wars or depressions, even though both raged throughout the time period of these books. To read such accounts written in a serious manner would be intolerably smug, but Benson's writing is slyly cutting, as he appears to take all of the plotting with the utmost sincerity even while winking at the reader with his asides.

Readers who prefer their heroes and heroines to be a bit less shallow and a bit more kind will find the Lucia series less than enjoyable, as will those readers neither old enough to remember the early 20th century nor with any interest in life among the middle class (being, in those days and in that country, truly in the middle between the poor and working classes on one end and the aristocracy on the other). Those who, like me, enjoy a sharp bite to their fiction will find themselves alternately rooting for the downfall of Mapp and Lucia and cheering their subsequent rise back to prominence. ( )

It's with a certain sadness I finish the last of Benson's Lucia novels, not for the finishing itself as I can, and will, re-read them, but because the intimations of growth I thought I saw in Lucia's character in the previous two books came to naught.

If Olga Bracely and Miss Mapp represent the better and worse aspects of Lucia's character, then, like Georgie, I'm more attracted to her in the former, and repelled by her in the latter mode.

Crediting Benson with knowing what he was doing, Lucia is ultimately shown to be a weak and vain person who tries but fails to rise above her petty, self-centred vindictiveness, and whose airs of being The Champion of the Poor are founded in hollow self-aggrandisement, along with the social stratum she represents. Benson's choice to make the satirical point was, it's sadly clear, prophetic given the subsequent course of social & world events,
but leaves us (well, me, at least) with a diminished Lucia.

I do hold out hope for Lucia, though, as she has shown herself amenable to influence from two benignant sources: the gossipy, but ultimately kind-hearted, Georgie Pillson, and the irreverent and unaffected Quaint Irene. I cross my fingers in hope of Lucia's redemption, and of those she represents.

I have the Tom Holt continuations, and hope that perhaps he takes things in that direction. ( )

A good end to the series - as the title says, Lucia runs into some trouble in Tilling & with Georgie Pillson but, ever indomitable, she rises to the crisis. ( )