The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris by Leon Garfield

I’ve chosen to write about this book today because it’s the ideal read for Valentine’s weekend, and also because this year (2020) is the Romantic Novelists’ Association’s 60th anniversary, and to celebrate, this month is Read a Romance Month.

All ends happily, however, with a little help from interested onlookers. The librarian answers him in the same way, but they both find it is all too easy to misinterpret the written word. Leon Garfield, one of the world’s best-known and most imaginative writers for young people, has turned his skill and inventiveness to the arrangement of an outstanding collection of love scenes taken from famous novels by writers of many different nationalities, from Jane Austen to Turgenev.Īround these love scenes, which range from the absurd to the tender, the tragic to the hilarious, Leon Garfield has woven the story of a young man who, having fallen in love with a pretty librarian, is too shy to express himself coherently and turns to passages from the classics in an attempt to make her understand his feelings. (You can still get second-hand copies here on Amazon.) Again, it’s a massive shame this book is out of print now, as the idea behind it is wonderful. One of my favourite of Leon Garfield’s books is The Book Lovers. (My older sister queued up to get a copy of the sequel signed for me by Leon Garfield at a bookshop in Leeds many years ago, and I still have it.) It’s very sad to see that a lot of them are out of print now – titles such as the fabulous The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris, and the sequel to it, Bostock and Harris.

When I was a teenager, I loved Leon Garfield’s books, and I still do.

The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris by Leon Garfield