It was too short for character development. All the characters seemed one-dimensional. The language was hard to read (but that's probably due to the time it was written). I didn't really get a chance to know characters, they just seemed like caricatures of what I image early 1900s life to be like. Lucy is flighty, Cecil is a pompous ass, Freddy is immature, Charlotte seems resentful, and all the characters seem silly. The Emersons, the "crass" people are really the only ones with any positive attributes...which I guess was the whole point of the book...but not my cup of tea.