Engaging sideways look at English village life

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, Helen Simonson, Allen & Unwin, $38.99

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IN HER debut novel, Helen Simonson – born and raised in England, but a US resident for 20 years – harks nostalgically back to the village life of her childhood, complete with eccentric spinsters, vicars, dogs, a lord of the manor and, of course, a retired major.

But things have changed. The village shop has been owned for some years by Mr and Mrs Ali, and the Major's son Roger is off doing something lucrative but dubious in the City. Both Mr Ali and the Major's beloved wife Nancy have died. When we first meet the Major, he is reeling from the news that his brother Bertie has died too. Then Mrs Ali turns up on his doorstep asking for the paper money.

What follows is an engaging comedy of contemporary manners that eventually threatens, quite convincingly, to turn into tragedy.

The Major is convincing enough to overcome the handicap of often speaking with a supple irony which it's hard to envisage him displaying so fluently, especially where his money-grabbing son is concerned. All too believable, however, and rarely striking a false note, is the casually racist snobbery with which Mrs Ali and her family are treated by the locals. Planning the golf club dance around a Grand Mughal theme, the Major's friend's wife Alma explains what Mrs Ali is being asked to do: "We wanted a kind of welcoming goddess, stationed in the niche where we keep the hat-stand... And Mrs Ali is so quintessentially Indian, or at least quintessentially Pakistani, in the best sense."

"Actually, I'm from Cambridge," says Mrs Ali in a mild voice. "The municipal hospital, ward three. Never been further abroad than the Isle of Wight."

"But no one would know that," says Alma.

The Major, of course, knows a great deal better, and has (so we are competently led to believe) much more in common with the shopkeeper's attractive, dignified widow – including a love of Kipling – than with his much plainer spinster compatriots. On this occasion he rescues Mrs Ali, and shocks the others, by announcing that he's bringing her to the dance as his guest.

But Simonson is much too clever to try to get away with a simplistic, stereotyped depiction of nasty British versus noble Pakistani. Mrs Ali's family has its own complex dilemmas to deal with, and it's from these, not from the Major's struggles over his brother's will, his difficult relationship with his apparently shallow son, or Lord Dagenham's sinister plans for the village itself, that near-tragedy will arise.

And this is where, I think, the difficulty lies. The problems faced by the Major are always serio-comic, involving encounters with a motley cast of British and American "characters". They're on a different level altogether from the problems faced by Mrs Ali, her nephew and his outcast girlfriend; these are genuinely serious, even potentially deadly, and meant to be seen as such. Because the tone keeps shifting, you're never quite sure where you or the author stand.

But these are uneasy afterthoughts, a bit like the queasy feeling you get after finishing off a box of Christmas chocolates.

While you're reading, it's easy to be whisked happily along by the fast pace, skilful plotting, snappy dialogue and sometimes biting satire.

In terms of telling a story well, Simonson knows exactly what she's doing. This is not a great book – or even a really good book – but it's a highly satisfying summer read all the same.

Anne Else is a Wellington reviewer.

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