Margaret Halsey

I am rereading a delightful old book my sister once sent me, called With Malice Toward Some by Margaret Halsey. It is a delicious and witty account of an American moving to pre-WW II England for a year, and her observations of the differences between the English and Americans.

I love her descriptions of the countryside, the people, the buildings, the weather. Her metaphors and similes are fresh and original. My favourite is when she is watching a cricket player wind up and throw the ball in that strange overhanded manner they use. She says it puts the startled foreigner in mind of a ten-year-old girl quitting the neighborhood baseball team in a towering huff.