SOURCE: Holden, Wendy. “Lager Saga.” New Statesman 131, no. 4573 (4 February 2002): 51.

In the following review, Holden commends Trollope's portrayal of family relations in Girl from the South, calling the work “ tightly written” and “acutely observed.”

I was always a huge fan of Joanna Trollope's Aga sagas, especially on telly. For my money, Lindsay Duncan's performance as the angst-ridden, adulterous rector's wife [in The Rector's Wife] was the highlight of her acting career (which cannot be said for her inexplicably well-received Private Lives with Alan Rickman). I felt Trollope was being gloriously subversive with the flawed-middle-class-perfection storyline, intrinsically tongue-in-cheek with the multiplicity of cheekbones, cabbage roses and other Cotswold clichés. The slightly balding but dashing boyfriend was perfect, and the bits where posh Lindsay took a job in a supermarket were sublime social comedy. I can recall it all instantly, although it is ten years since it was screened.

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