Near Neighbours (Paperback or Softback)

Miss Dorothea Balfour was nearer seventy than sixty, but there was something childlike about her . . . She felt rather like a child, a lost, bewildered child, and she was doing what Belle had always objected to so strongly: staring out of the window at ‘those rather odd persons next-door’ . . .

Shy, uncertain Miss Balfour is still finding her way after the sudden death of her domineering sister Belle, who—following a failed marriage many years ago—had returned home and made a career of brow-beating her meeker sibling (her memorable final words were ‘Don’t be a fool Dottie’). But Dorothea soon begins exploring her newfound freedom, observing and then becoming happily enmeshed in the doings of her neighbours, the widowed Mrs Lenox and her five unusual and charming children, with whom Belle had always forbidden contact. Domestic challenges, romantic difficulties, and efforts to aid a painter’s abandoned family—all are facilitated by Dorothea’s calm intelligence. And before long she has drama of her own, from her spontaneous rescue of an endangered child to her encounter with Belle’s long-lost husband, from whom she learns some surprising secrets.

Molly Clavering was for many years herself a near neighbour and friend of bestselling author D.E. Stevenson, and they may well have influenced one another’s writing. Originally published in 1956 and set vividly in post-war Edinburgh, Near Neighbours is one of Molly Clavering’s most cheerful and amusing tales. This new edition includes an introduction by Elizabeth Crawford.

Mary 'Molly' Clavering was born in Glasgow in 1900. Her father was a Glasgow businessman, and her mother's grandfather had been a doctor in Moffat, where the author would live for nearly 50 years after World War Two. She had little interest in conventional schooling as a child, but enjoyed studying nature, and read and wrote compulsively, considering herself a 'poetess' by the age of seven. She returned to Scotland after her school days, and published three novels in the late 1920s, as well as being active in her local girl guides and writing two scenarios for ambitious historical pageants. In 1936, the first of four novels under the pseudonym 'B. Mollett' appeared. Molly Clavering's war service in the WRNS interrupted her writing career, and in 1947 she moved to Moffat, in the Scottish border country, where she lived alone, but was active in local community activities. She resumed writing fiction, producing seven post-war novels and numerous serialized novels and novellas in the People's Friend magazine. Molly Clavering died in Moffat on February 12, 1995.