A Girl Walks Into a Bookstore...

Pages: 640 Original date of publication: 2011 My copy: 2011 Why I decided to read: received a copy from the publisher for review How I acquired my copy: Amazon Vine program, 2011 Although I wasn’t too keen on the first two books in this trilogy— The Tea Rose and The Winter Rose —I picked this one up hoping my mind had changed. Each book in the story offers a different perspective on one family at the turn of the century; this book begins just before WWI and focuses on Seamie and Willa. I think the story is meant to be fast-paced and give the reader a good overview of early 20th century history, but the story lines were so unrealistic and predictable that I had a hard time finishing the book. There were so many characters and coincidences that the book got pretty convoluted after a while. The characters’ dialogue also didn’t seem era-appropriate. This might be a good book if you’re looking for a period romance, but be prepared to suspend disbelief at the plot and chara...

Pages: 509 Original date of publication: 2011 My copy: 2011 (Black Swan) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Waterstone’s, Piccadilly, September 2011 Maybe I’ve been reading too many classic novels recently, but I thought that this novel fell a bit short for me. I guess I was expecting lush descriptions of India, vivid descriptions of historical events, and great characters. Sadly, I was disappointed. The Sandalwood Tree is a split-time novel. One half of the novel focuses on an American, Evie, whose husband Martin comes to India on a Fulbright scholarship to document the end of the British Raj and the separation of India and Pakistan in 1947. One day, she finds a packet of old, illegible letters that documents the friendship between two Englishwomen, Adela and Felicity in 1856. The chapters then alternate between the two stories; Evie’s story focuses on the disintegration of her marriage, while Felicity goes to India as a member of the “Fishing Fleet,”...

Pages: 430 Original date of publication: 1922 My edition: 1980 (Virago Modern Classics) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Philly Book Trader, March 2011 The Judge is set in 1910s Edinburgh and focuses on the love story between a young typist and suffragette, Ellen; and Richard Yaverland, a charming explorer who has literally been all over the world. Their relationship is overshadowed by the relationship between Richard’s mother and father, creating an intricate tale about what happens when the past starts to catch up and interfere with the present. Sigh. No matter how hard I try, I just seem to strike out with Rebecca West’s novels. I wasn’t a big fan of Harriet Hume , and I didn’t particularly like The Judge , either. I think it has something to do with West’s manner of exposition; she doesn’t focus on plot, so that all of the action tends to take place in her characters’ heads. She also has this fantastical ability to know exactly what each of her c...

Pages: 592 Original date of publication: 1946 My edition: Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Philly bookstore, April 2012 The World is Not Enough is set in France in the late 12th century. Opening with the marriage of Alis and Ansiau, the reader is immediately thrust into the lives of these characters and the time they lived in, right up through old age. The focus of the novel is on the Crusades, which Ansiau participates in, leaving Alis at home to manage the household and become a person in her own right. The strength of the novel lies in the amount of detail with which the author provides the reader, but I thought that at times the detail bogged down the pace and progress of the story, making the book at least 100 pages longer than it really needed to be. We also get told a lot of things rather than have them shown to us, which made the novel much less interesting to read. The prose is also stilted, which may have more to do with the translation of ...

Pages: 326 Original date of publication: 1924 My edition: 1984 (Virago Modern Classics) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Philly bookshop, August 2011 The Constant Nymph is one of those coming of age stories. This story is that of Tessa Sanger, the daughter of an unusual bohemian composer who lives in a chalet in the Austrian Alps with his ragtag group of children. Albert Sanger has a habit of randomly inviting other artists to the chalet, and the story opens when Lewis Dodd, a composer, arrives at the chalet. Well, I didn’t really like this novel very much, which was disappointing considering I liked some of Margaret Kennedy’s other novels ( Together and Apart was fantastic, for example). Although I like unusual characters, Tessa was far too “out there” for me to really understand or like her as a character, nor could I really understand the connection between her and Lewis or why the author tried to present it in such a mature light—even though Tess...

Pages: 293 Original date of publication: 1932, 1933, 1930 My edition:1982 (Virago Modern Classics) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Philly bookshop, August 2011 Women Against Men is a collection of three novels published in 1932, 1933, and 1937. Delicate Monster is the story of a writer and her many husbands, told from the point of view of a family friend; The Single Heart is the story of a young woman’s marriage and subsequent reconnection with an old flame; and A Day Off is the story of a middle-aged fallen on hard times woman who looks back on her life. The theme is as the title states, about the relationships and sometimes conflicts between women and men. But it’s also about the conflicts between women, particularly as seen in Delicate Monster (you get a sense of jealousy from the narrator over her friend’s exploits). Other than that theme, though, there’s not much to connect these three novellas. They don’t work either as short stories or longe...

Pages: 391 Original date of publication: 1950 My edition: 1986 (Virago) Why I decided to read: AV/AA How I acquired my copy: bookshop near work, August 2011 Mary O’Grady is the story of one woman and her family during roughly the first half of the 20th century. The novel opens with her marriage to Tom and move to Dublin from her native Tullamore, and the birth of Mary’s 5 children—Patrick, Ellie, Angie, Larry, and Rosie. I found it kind of hard to like the main character sometimes. She’s so concerned with her children that there’s very little introspection. She doesn’t have time to think because she’s so busy thinking about other people; so our perception of Mary is colored by her children’s opinions of her. Because of her stifling, it’s hard for her children to gain independence—which is exactly why they flee from her—Patrick to America, Larry to the priesthood, etc. So this is mostly a domestic novel; in fact, with the exception of one or two scenes that take pl...

Pages: 380 Original date of publication: 2012 My edition: 2010 (Ballantine) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Amazon Vine, May 2012 Until I began reading this book, I hadn’t realized that I’ve never actually read a novel about Isabella of Spain—one of the most powerful women in early modern history. The novel is set during the early years of Isabella’s life and covers her marriage, struggle to maintain the throne of Castile, and the birth of her children. CW Gortner is known for researching the heck out of his novels, so you know you will always get high-quality fiction from him. That said, though, I didn’t enjoy this book as much as I’ve enjoyed some of his others or as much as I wanted to. There’s nothing technically wrong with this novel, but I wasn’t as interested or invested in Isabella’s story as I was with Juana la Loca’s in The Last Queen . The prose is stiff, as is the dialogue, and I found it hard to like or relate to Isabella’s plight (e...

Pages: 228 Original date of publication: 1935 My edition: 200 (Vintage) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: The Strand, NYC, July 2011 BUtterfield 8 is based on a true story. In this novel O’Hara tries to imagine what that young girl’s life might have been like. Gloria Wandrous is a party girl, familiar with the speakeasies and clubs of 1920s New York City. She falls in with a married man and spends one night at his apartment—after which she steals his wife’s fur coat. The theft leads to tragedy. I liked the idea of the novel, but I thought it was confusing and illogical in several places; I agree with a previous reviewer who said that the relationship between Gloria and Weston Liggett didn’t seem believable. The relationship started too quickly and seemed less like a relationship and more like lust/physical attraction; I didn’t buy for a second that he was in love with her. The tone of the novel feels very frenetic and sex-charged, probably due to ...

Pages: 431 Original date of publication: 1845 My edition: 1989 (Virago Modern Classics) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Oxfam Bookshop in London, September 2011 Zoe is the story of a young woman who marries at a young age and ends up having an affair—with the priest Everhard Burrows. Both of them are outsiders to their ways of life, so it’s natural that they find themselves drawn to each other. Geraldine Jewsbury spent many years in Manchester’s cultural scene, becoming friends with the Carlyles , GH Lewes, and others. Jewsbury was famous for her outrageous behavior—she wore men’s clothing, smoked, cursed, and claimed George Sand as her inspiration. As such, her novel Zoe was meant to titillate her readers, but as a modern reader, I didn’t care so much for either of the protagonists especially Zoe, who behaves as a coquette in her pursuit of Everhard. I didn’t find her behavior shocking so much as annoying. The theme certainly would have been s...

Pages: 202 Original date of publication: 1993 My edition: 2010 (Phoenix) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Waterstone’s, Piccadilly, September 2011 Carlos Ruiz Zafon is best known in the US for his bestselling adult novels, The Shadow of the Wind and The Angel’s Game . The Prince of Mist is a young adult novel, published before his adult novels. The novel is the story of Max Carver, a 13-year-old boy who’s watchmaker father moves his family from an unnamed city to an unnamed seaside town. Once there, Max discovers a garden with strange statues and his sisters begin having unexplainable visions. It’s definitely a first novel, and even though I kept the fact that this is a YA novel in the back of my mind as I was reading, I didn’t enjoy this book as much as I wanted to. The characters are pretty one-dimensional; none of them really grow in any way. Max seemed way too mature and intuitive for a 13-yer-old (even for a novel of this type), and there were s...

Pages: 383 Original date of publication: 1936 My edition: 1981 (Virago) Why I decided to read: It’s on the list of VMCs How I acquired my copy: Oxfam bookshop, York, UK, September 2011 The Weather in the Streets is the sequel to Invitation to the Waltz, set ten years afterwards. When her father becomes ill, Olivia Curtis returns home, having just been through a disastrous marriage. On the train ride, he runs into an old acquaintance: Rollo Spencer, a married man with whom she has an affair. I wanted to like this book; I really did. I think the major problem I had with this novel was that I felt so detached from the story and characters. Olivia is a passive observer in the novel, not an active participant, so it was hard for me to really get involved in her story. The thing that threw me off the most was the shift from third person to first person; it’s used intermittently for the first hundred pages or so and in earnest as soon as Olivia’s affair starts. Therefore, I saw the story fro...

Pages: 294 Original date of publication: 1942 My edition: 1983 (Houghton Mifflin) Why I decided to read: it’s a Virago title How I acquired my copy: Philly Book Trader, February 2011 Beryl Markham led a fascinating life. . Born in Britain in 1902, she spent much of her life in Kenya, working as the only female airplane pilot in Africa. She was also a racehorse trainer, and her memoir details her childhood and adulthood in Kenya. Markham had a wide range of friends and acquaintances, among them Karen Blixen and her lover, Denys Finch-Hatton. All of this should equal a well-written, interesting memoir, right? Well-written this book is, but Markham’s writing isn’t all that engaging and so I was very bored in man y places as I was reading this book. I became interested in West With the Night after reading The Virago Book of Women Travellers , which contains an excerpt from it, but other than that excerpt, there’s not much all that interesting about the way that Markham tells her story. Par...

Pages: 387 Original date of publication: 2011 My edition: 2011 (St. Martin’s Griffin) Why I decided to read: I enjoyed Marina Fiorato’s other books and thought I’d give this a go How I acquired my copy: Amazon Vine, May 2011 Set amidst the danger and excitement of early 18th-century Siena, the plot of this novel centers on an event to which the Sienese look forward to eagerly: the Palio, a traditional horse race that takes place twice, in July and August. Pia of the Tolomei is descended from Cleopatra and the daughter of a wealthy patrician. He marries her to a member of a family from an opposing ward in the city, despite tradition. When her future husband is killed in the Julia Palio, Pia is married to his brother. Over the course of the next month or so, she develops a relationship with a horse rider, and the two of them work (in conjunction with Violante de’ Medici, who has governed the city for ten years) to fight a plot to take over Siena, led by the Nine—leaders from ea...

Pages: 280 Original date of publication: 1951 My edition: 1990 (Penguin/Virago) Why I decided to read: Read this as a part of Virago Reading Week How I acquired my copy: The Philly Book Trader, January 2011 Lady Diana Cooper was a famous socialite of the 1910s and the wife of Duff Cooper. She and the life she led were fictionalized in several books, including Nancy Mitford’s Don’t Tell Alfred and The Loved and Envied , which was written by Lady Diana’s longtime friend, Enid Bagnold. The Loved and Envied is the story of Lady Ruby Maclean, and deals with the theme of aging, especially the effect that aging has on a beautiful woman. This is the third book I read for Virago Reading Week; unfortunately, it just wasn’t my week! I didn’t really care for this book, either. The author tends to hit her reader over the head—over and over—with her theme. Lady Ruby is supposed to be this fascinating woman, attractive to everyone she meets; and yet I didn’t see the appeal at all...

Pages: 288 Original date of publication: 1929 My edition: 1980 (The Dial Press) Why I decided to read: read this for Virago Reading Week How I acquired my copy: The Philly Book Trader, October 2010 Man, this is a weird one, one I don’t quite know how to describe; and maybe it went over my head a bit too much! This novel tells the story of the relationship between two people: the free-spirited musician Harriet, who lives in a lopsided house in London, and her lover, Arnold, a politician The story takes their relationship/friendship through many years, at which they meet up periodically. This was a very, very slow read for me, and one I didn’t enjoy very much. Part of my problem with this book was Rebecca West’s writing style; the only way I can describe it is bizarre! For example: “But the governess had turned her gaze on them, and had on seeing the marks of deep emotion on the faces made a long leap through the ether to some universe thickly upholstered with seducti...

Pages: 303 Original date of publication: 1934 My edition: 1984 (Virago) Why I decided to read: Read this for Virago Reading Week How I acquired my copy: The Book Trader, October 2010 I’ve been really up and down with Molly Keane’s books. On one hand, I loved The Rising Tide and Taking Chances ; on the other, I really didn’t like Loving Without Tears or this one. This is the story of the friendship between two women in London (and then, in true Molly Keane fashion, a decaying old estate in Ireland). Jane is a weak-willed woman who is caught between her friendship with Jessica and her budding relationship with George Playfair; Jessica is controlling and manipulative. Neither of the two main characters is particularly likable, which made it hard for me to care what ultimately happened to them. Jane is practically a doormat and not that smart; Jessica gets herself involved in everybody else’s life, which I found irritating to the extreme. Their relationship is passion...

Pages: 469 Original date of publication: 2010 My edition: 2011 (Hyperion) Why I decided to read: it was offered through Amazon Vine How I acquired my copy: Amazon.com, November 2010 Last year, I read one of Andrew Taylor’s other books: Bleeding Heart Square , set in Earl’s Court in the 1930s, right in the heart of the British fascist movement. The Anatomy of Ghosts is completely different. Set in 1786, it features a bookseller who is commissioned by a wealthy lady to catalogue a library, while at the same time find his benefactress’s son, a student at Cambridge who has been committed to an insane asylum. It’s an interesting premise, but it’s not an original one. The author turns to all the old clichés: a femme fatale (guess where that story line is going?), a mysterious library, a murder, a secret mission, etc. Taylor doesn’t really go out of the box for this book as he did with Bleeding heart Square, and Holdsworth, his main character, is about as bland as they com...

Pages: 415 Original date of publication: 1885 My edition: 1980 (Virago) Why I decided to read: browsing on Ebay How I acquired my copy: Ebay, June 2010 Diana of the Crossways is a novel that was closely modeled on the life of Caroline Norton , a Victorian feminist who famously separated from her husband, later having an affairs with a rising politician. George Meredith was a close friend of Norton’s and so this novel portrays Caroline (renamed Diana in this book) in an extremely sympathetic like—sometimes too sympathetically. To protect her reputation, I suspect Meredith took a lot of the scandal out of Diana’s story—really, to the detriment of the book, since Caroline Norton had an extremely fascinating life. As a result, Meredith manages to make Diana’s story uninteresting, to the point where I just didn’t care much about the story or characters. It’s too bad, because George Meredith has a lot of material to work from. Instead, he spends a lot of time in thi...

Pages: 306 Original date of publication: 1934 My edition: 2003 (Virago) Why I decided to read: I found this book browsing on ebay How I acquired my copy: Ebay, July 2010 The Ante-Room is set over the course of just a few days in 1880. Agnes Mulqueen lives with her father, brother, and mother, who is dying from cancer. When Agnes’s older sister Marie-Rose arrives for a visit, she brings her husband, Vincent, along with her—and Agnes must deal with the feelings she has for her brother-in-law. This is another one of those books I really wanted to like. But because the characters spend so much time waiting, the novel drags a lot, especially towards the middle. Agnes’s struggle—her love her Vincent versus her extremely strong faith—could be interesting, but I just found it dull after a while. I found myself wishing that Agnes would just grow herself a backbone, since she allows people to walk all over her. Actually, none of the characters are particularly likeable, exce...