Persephone Reading Week Update

I finished They Were Sisters yesterday, and thought it was excellent (review to come). I'm now about halfway through A London Child of the 1870s (originally published in 1934 as A London Child of the Seventies). This is the first in series of books that continues with A London Girl of the 1880s and A London Home in the 1890s, though this of course is the only one that Persephone has published. The picture above is of the house the family lived in (borrowed from the Persephone website). It's a short memoir about Molly Hughes's experience growing up in a middle-class family in North Islington with four brothers. While I'm not totally taken with it (it has a "way back then" kind of feeling to it), I'm finding that it's a fascinating look at middle-class life during the high Victorian period. It's also very funny. I should finish it today and have a review posted soon.

Comments

Hannah Stoneham said…

Looking forward to reading your review as I have had my eye on that one for a while. I am so far realy enjoying Mariana.
Just to let you know - I have linked to you in my latest post
happy reading
Hannah

May 6, 2010 at 6:45 AM

verity said…

London child is one of my very very very very favourite books - I really hope you're enjoying it.

May 6, 2010 at 7:40 AM

Paperback Reader said…

I read A London Child last Persephone Reading Week and did find it charming and fascinating historically, if not completely taken with it until the end.

Glad to read that you loved They Were Sisters! It is brilliant.

May 6, 2010 at 9:20 AM

A giveaway winner, and another giveaway

The winner of the Girl in a Blue Dress contest is... Anna, of Diary of An Eccentric ! My new contest is for a copy of The Shape of Mercy , by Susan Meissner. According to Publisher's Weekly : Meissner's newest novel is potentially life-changing, the kind of inspirational fiction that prompts readers to call up old friends, lost loves or fallen-away family members to tell them that all is forgiven and that life is too short for holding grudges. Achingly romantic, the novel features the legacy of Mercy Hayworth—a young woman convicted during the Salem witch trials—whose words reach out from the past to forever transform the lives of two present-day women. These book lovers—Abigail Boyles, elderly, bitter and frail, and Lauren Lars Durough, wealthy, earnest and young—become unlikely friends, drawn together over the untimely death of Mercy, whose precious diary is all that remains of her too short life. And what a diary! Mercy's words not only beguile but help Abigail and Lars

Another giveaway

This time, the publicist at WW Norton sent me two copies of The Glass of Time , by Michael Cox--so I'm giving away the second copy. Cox is the author of The Meaning of Night, and this book is the follow-up to that. Leave a comment here to enter to win it! The deadline is next Sunday, 10/5/08.

Review: The Piano Teacher, by Janice Y.K. Lee

The Piano Teacher is a complicated novel. On the surface, it’s about a love affair between two British ex-patriots in Hong Kong in 1952-3. Claire Pendleton comes to Hong Kong with her husband Martin at a time when the world is still recovering from WWII; Claire takes up work as a piano teacher for the daughter of a wealthy Chinese family, where she meets Will Truesdale, the Chens’ enigmatic chauffeur. The book jumps back in time between the 1950s and the beginning of WWII, when Will is interned in Stanley, a Hong Kong camp for enemies of Japan. On “the outside” is Tudy Liang, Will’s beautiful Eurasian lover. There’s no doubt that Lee’s writing is beautiful. But there’s something lacking in this short, terse novel that I can’t quite put my finger on. First, I think it’s the tenses she uses when taking about each story: that which is set in the 1950s is in the past tense, while the war scenes are talked about in the present tense (confusing, no?) The interpersonal relationships of the m

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