Article: Batty governess fits in to `Country Life'

The Country LifeBy Rachel CuskPicador USA. 342 pages. $24

Fresh air! Real people! A return to family values! Right-o.

The moment a character in a British novel craves country life, gleeful readers know what to expect: the doddering, besotted aristocrats; the grand old manor decaying; the local folk and toothless perverts; even the animals not pleasingly pastoral but randy and repulsive. The parodic country idyll is so well entrenched as a genre in Britain that a whole generation of prep school boys has memorized the dialogue from the cult film "Withnail & I," in which two young London roommates, during their charming weekend away, do things to a chicken that make the

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