I just finished Greenery Street by Denis Mackail, which is a novel about a young couple who have just been happily married. And that’s it. There is a little bit of plot, but it only happens to the minor characters. The hero and heroine are unmitigatedly nice to each other. Miraculously, it is riveting. It has been reprinted by Persephone Books, and so in reading it on the subway I had the added pleasure of knowing that mine was the most delicately designed paperback on the F train. For instance, the endpapers for Greenery Street reproduce a 1925 chintz and look like this:
I also am infatuated with Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson. A failed governess, on the verge of the workhouse, is hired by a flapper and discovers cocaine, promiscuity, rouge, and the pleasure of shedding one’s scruples. If you buy the books from amazon.co.uk, the shipping is cheaper, but if you buy direct from the press you get pretty bookmarks and the catalog.