As the discussion of techniques indicates, The Road to Lichfield belongs generally to the mainstream tradition of realism in the British novel: It contains fully-developed characters, a wellcrafted plot, and realistic details; it also demonstrates the concern with society, manners, and morals that characterize the traditional novel. Indeed, many reviewers comment that Lively, with her wit, control, and deftness at portraying social scenes, writes in the comedy of manners tradition of Jane Austen. However, as her kaleidoscopic narrative technique and her Proustian treatment of personal time suggest, Lively is not unmindful of her more immediate forebears, the modernists.

Indeed, in some of her novels (although not so much in this, her first), those Proustian resurgences of the past resemble the quasi-mystical epiphanies of Virginia Woolf, with the character sensing him/herself to be temporarily suspended from ordinary time and ordinary reality.

Lively's novels thus partake of...