Our Intrepid Heroine

A Far Cry from Kensington takes place mainly in 1950s London. The narrator, Mrs Agnes (Nancy) Hawkins, is a highly competent editor who begins the novel on the front lines of a failing publishing company. She's sort of an all-purpose secretary/editor who listens to the complaints and schemes of the executives and does her very best with the manuscripts provided.

Given the choice of promoting drek and offering an honest assessment, Mrs Hawkins always selects the latter. Then, she chooses literary integrity over politics when she decides against a horrid manuscript penned by a friend of a Name author. Between the subsequent fallout, her Polish housemate's blackmail problem, the violent and interchangeable married couples next door, weird religious pseudo-science, and Mrs Hawkins's image as a sturdy woman older than her age, the reader has plenty to keep him or her occupied.