Near Neighbors by Molly Clavering

Near NeighboursNear Neighbours
by Molly Clavering
Rating: ★★★★★
Publication Date: January 1, 1956
Genre: fiction
ReRead?: No
Project: a century of women

At number 6 Kirkcaldy Crescent lives Mrs. Lennox and her five children (all in their late teens or early twenties). Number 4, the house next door, Miss Balfour, a gentle and unassuming spinster who was constantly surprised to find "how astonishingly nice and good people were when you knew them..."

What she did not know and would not have believed was that the people who knew her could not help living up to her belief in their good qualities.


This was the third of my DSP in December books. You can find out more about DSP December which is the brainchild of Liz from Adventures in Reading…: here.

It was also my second by Molly Clavering – last year I read Mrs. Lorrimer’s Quiet Summer, and while I liked it, it didn’t wow me the way that Near Neighbours did. I found this book completely delightful. The interactions between the main character, Miss Dorothea Balfour, and her young neighbors, the four Lennox children, are charming and heart-warming.

Molly Clavering was D.E. Stevenson’s neighbor and her books are similar in tone. This one is actually set in Edinburgh, so it is a town book as opposed to a country book. There is lots of lovely detail around the activities of all the young people as they are beginning to form their relationships as young adults. The book really focuses on Rowan Lennox, who is the first of the young adults to venture a friendship with Miss Balfour. Miss Balfour has previously been under the thumb of her older sister who has passed away and who kept her very isolated. She blossoms under the attention of the family next door and begins to really live her own life for the first time.

I will definitely be reading more Clavering at this point, and will likely reread this one in the future.

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