Before I started this book, I did not realise it was epistolary. When I found out, I nearly didn't start it, because I am really not a fan of epistolary novels. It did not take very long until I was very, very glad that I decided to read it anyway. 

The middlebrow genre "recipe" is basically the same across most of them: Gentle observational humour, lovingly detailed descriptions of landscapes and often a significant romantic element. This is my 28th completed book in the middlebrow genre, and one of only three that I have scored at five out of five. It had all of the ingredients of the recipe that I like and almost none of the ones that I don't like, with a surprising soupçon at the end to top it off and win the fifth star. 

The first surprise for me reading this was how exceptionally well the epistolary format fits the middlebrow genre. I really enjoyed reading Sara's letters. All of them featured one element that outshone everything else – the incredibly detailed, descriptive and very loving descriptions of the landscape. 

In most of my reviews for Dean Street Press books I try to include snippets of the writing that really resonated with me or wowed me in some way. It is a great tribute to this book that I was unable to find any such snippets, simply because the passages that wowed me were far beyond snippet length. Clavering lingers over the descriptions of her obviously beloved Scottish Borders, and for me, she succeeded in making me feel like I was there and could see what she was describing. The sense of being there was so strong that references to seasonal and climatic conditions quite often momentarily confused me because I forgot that she was writing about a different hemisphere. 

Another common ingredient in the middlebrow books I like is gentle observational humour, and there is enough of that in this book. Not as much as some, but it's not the primary focus of the story, and when it is there it is genuinely amusing. One example that made me laugh out loud and caused my  wife to ask "what's so funny?" was a description of a choir practising Christmas carols. Sara's description of the people around her is a little less detailed than her description of the landscapes, but overall reflects the same affection, and also an insight touched with empathy. 

My least favourite ingredients in the middlebrow recipe are the racist, colonial and imperialist attitudes that often appear. One of the middlebrow books I did not finish was dropped because the first half of it was a paean to feudalism. To my delight, there were almost none of these troubling ingredients in this story. The letters Sara wrote were written to a man in Northern Rhodesia. That kind of context could be a set up for colonial cringe on an epic scale, but apart from a reference to "native-made souvenirs", there was very little in this book that pushed my postcolonial buttons. Indeed, I was impressed that while Sarah's narration of her nephew's adolescent antics reminded me forcefully of Enid Blyton's Famous Five, there was almost nothing in the story that triggered memories of "Five Go Mad in Dorset" and other satirical lampooning of Blyton's quite ghastly mindset. 

As mentioned earlier, romance is a common feature of many middlebrow novels, and I do love a good romance. I read a lot of romance novels, and some of my favourite middlebrow novels have centred on romance. Romance was not central to this story, with the exception of Sarah's past romance, the younger brother of the man she wrote her letters to. Romance was present in the story, with a couple of happy romantic endings, but at the very end of the book,  the reason I upgraded my score for this book to 5 out of five, was because this tale told by a woman about a woman did indeed feature separately both a fish and a bicycle.