Elbow-Room

Smith fears Jones will think him queer; Jones behaves conventionally because he fears Smith. In a village with elbow-room, what happens when everyone dares to be a little odd?

In this late-nineteenth-century comic novel, Charles Heber Clark leaves the crowded city for a hillside hamlet where leafy retreats give way to snug cottages, busy shops and ironworks by the river. The great city is only a dozen miles away, but here the pressure of other people’s opinions eases—and human nature has room to show its quirks. True to its subtitle, A Novel Without a Plot, the book trades a single grand scheme for amusing glimpses of ordinary people and their eccentric ways, with laughter as a welcome counterweight to life’s sorrows. What unexpected characters and comic mishaps might flourish where everyone has a little more room to be themselves?

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