Book excerpt: This classic epistolary novel wittily documents the trials and tribulations of a young English architect as he designs and builds a mansion. In this first US publication of a richly comic classic—originally published in England in the 1920s—the pitfalls and vicissitudes of home building are presented in sharp and unforgettable detail, in the form of letters to and from the architect—a hapless young man named James Spinlove, who, in his valiant attempts to create the Honeywood mansion for Sir Leslie Brash, encounters a motley collection of contractors, surveyors, plumbers and town planners—to say nothing of intensely litigious lawyers, and Sir Leslie Brash himself, along with his good lady. There are letters from the subsidiary but crucial characters named Nibnose & Rasper, Mr. Snitch, V. Potch, and Hoochkoft the surveyor of bricks, among others.