Loving, by Henry Green

I wasn't sure if I'd go back to Loving after I set it aside for The Uninvited Guests and then started another book -- Wolf Totem, by Jiang Rong -- but then last week I found myself wanting to read something a little less bloody than Wolf Totem (which is incredibly bloody) and rather than starting something new, I decided to finish Loving. It's such a short book it felt a shame to abandon it, so I finished it in an afternoon and then sent it on its way (via PaperbackSwap, to someone to wanted it). I don't really have much to say about this book. It follows the affairs of the staff of an English estate in Ireland over the period of a few months during World War II. The war is in the background, as is the potential threat to the estate from the IRA, but none of it seems quite to penetrate the reality of the household staff. There were pieces of this book that I enjoyed and that were funny, but overall I didn't felt like it had much to give.