did anyone else think that Small Pleasures wasn't THAT good?

[MaMaLa321]

I was so eager to read this, as many of my friends loved it, and the reviews were so good.
But I found it underwhelming. Bunging in as much 1950s detail as possible was too much. In fact, there was just too much - issues, characters. Baggy. Also implausible - wouldn't the nuns have realised what had happened to Gretchen when they changed the sheets? I know Gretchen was an innocent, but she would have noticed in the morning.
I hear comparisons with Barbara Pym, but BP wrote better books in half the space, and had a much lighter touch. This was leaden.

I enjoyed it. I had not heard much about it though so I had zero expectations.

Yes, me! The copy I had had pages and pages of good reviews at the start (which almost put off - I don't need to be told what Richard Osman thinks of a novel) but it was actually quite average.

There were some good descriptions of the minutiae of life in the 50's. It reminded me of Sarah Waters in that respect, but it did get bogged down with it in the end at the expense of the storyline and I found it quite dull in the end. I also guessed the ending (although not who'd done it). I mean, how else could it have possibly happened?

Yes it reminded me of SW Tipping the Velvet. Absolutely everything she knew about victorian sex lives went in.