The way I work my blog is that, as I finish a novel, I write up my notes in a book diary. Every five reviews, I pick out my next five books from those notes, and generally speaking, I run about six months behind what I have read.
Obviously, there’s room for error in this system, and I have made one with Greenery Street. I kept expecting my review to turn up, and finally, the other day, I looked the novel up on Goodreads to see when I finished reading it. More than a year ago! I looked back in my journals to see if I inadvertently skipped it, only to find that I apparently forgot to write it up. What a shame for this delightful novel!
Greenery Street is a story of ordinary life in a couple’s first home, written in 1925. It begins on a day in April when newly engaged Felicity Hamilton and Ian Foster wander into Greenery Street in search of a house and find a very small and pleasant one. Then it jumps back to cover their meeting and engagement.
The novel details the everyday life of this newly married couple. There is nothing particularly unusual about their lives (well, not for their time—not too many young wives spend their days shopping, socializing, and supervising the help anymore), but they are rendered in interesting detail and humor, small disagreements and the normal ups and downs of a new marriage. The end of the book is telegraphed from the beginning, when we’re told the house would be too small for three. However, the journey is delightful.
What? Me Read? 
I love Persephone Books, especially the end papers and bookmarks! In one of their newsletters, they sent some odd bookmarks one year and I just love using them. This isn’t one that I know, but it sounds like one I would enjoy. A little reminiscent of Lettice Cooper’s The New House maybe?
I haven’t read that one yet, so I don’t know.
I love this book, it’s young and fresh and sweet isn’t it? It’s a world away, as you say, from a newly married couple today but the sense of excitement and strangeness was the same I thought!
Yes, in that way it’s universal.