A Girl Walks Into a Bookstore...

Pages: 972 Originally published: 1944 My edition: 2000 (Chicago Review Press) How I acquired my copy: Amazon.com, 2004 Forever Amber  takes place in the 1660s, immediately follwing Charles II's ("the Merry Monarch") return of the Stuarts to the English throne. The book features Amber St. Claire, a young woman who starts out as a sixteen-year-old country girl, naieve to the workings of the world. She immediately meets Bruce Carlton, a dashing young Cavalier, with whom she has a passionate love affair in choppy intervals throughout the book. They have two children together, but Bruce won't marry her for the reason he tells his friend Lord Almsbury: that Amber just isn't the kind of woman one marries. Upon following Bruce to London, he goes to Virginia, leaving her to fend for herself. What follows is a series of affairs and four marriages, with Bruce coming back from America now and then. Amber's marriages are imprudent: her first husband is...

Pages: 383 Original date of publication: 1865 My copy: 1986 (Virago) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Ebay, February 2011 A friend to George Meredith, Thackeray, and other notables of that time, Lucie Duff Gordon (1821-1969) was raised in a radical, intellectual family and imbued with a sense of adventure; her imagination roamed father than the usual Grand Tour. In 1862, she took a tour to South Africa, attempting to recover from tuberculosis; when that didn’t succeed, she went to Egypt, where her son-in-law was a banker. Although her daughter and son-in-law lived in Alexandria, Gordon spent much of her time in Luxor, living in a ruined house above a temple. Her letters were alternately written to her husband, Sir Alexander Duff Gordon; her mother; and her daughter. Gordon’s letters reveal someone with a high amount of inquisitiveness and cultural sensitivity; Gordon frees herself from the usual ways that other Europeans stereotyped Egyptians at the t...

Pages: 511 Original date of publication: 1935 My copy: 2008 (NYRB Classics) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Joseph Fox Books, January 2012 Patrick Hamilton covers very similar themes in his books. His plots are comprised of characters from the lowest strata of London society: drunks, prostitutes, etc. Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky is set in and around a central London pub called The Midnight Bell. Bob is a waiter who falls in love with a young prostitute named Jenny and loses all his money in the process; Ella is a barmaid in love with Bob who nonetheless begins a relationship with an older man. The story consists of three novellas, each of which takes you on a tour of the characters’ stories, offering, as it does so, alternate looks at the same situation within the same time frame. The shape shifting is what makes the plot of the book interesting, and each of these characters is unique in their own right. Hamilton is skilled at depicting th...

Pages: Original date of publication: 1929 My copy: 2000 Why I decided to read: Re-read How I acquired my copy: Borders, 2000. A Farewell to Arms has been called one of the best books to come out of WWI. In it, Hemingway loosely fictionalizes his experience working as an ambulance driver on the Italian front, as well as his relationship with Agnes von Kurowsky, a Red Cross nurse he met while recuperating from shrapnel wounds. In A Farewell to Arms , Lieutenant (Tenente) Frederick Henry is a driver in the Italian ambulance corps who develops a relationship with a Scottish VAD nurse, Catherine Barkley. Hemingway’s themes deal with death, women, war and love, all of which of course are present here. There’s a kind of detached unemotionalism about A Farewell to Arms ; even death doesn’t see to faze Henry. Yes, it’s brutal, but the tone of the book reflects the overall themes that play out here. Hemingway’s style is sparse, laconic; he doesn’t use flowery language to de...

Pages: 420 Original date of publication: 1905 My copy: 2000 Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Borders, 2000 The title for the book famously comes from the Ecclesiastes quote, “The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.” Lily Bart is possibly Edith Wharton’s most complicated character, and this novel one of the best portrayals of the glitter and cruelty upper class New York society. When the novel opens, Lily is 29 years old, unmarried, and trying to “keep up with the Joneses,” so to speak. Torn between her desire to fit in with society and a desire for a relationship, Lily fits in nowhere. This novel then is the story of her downfall. I first read The House of Mirth in high school, but really didn’t appreciate it the way I do now—or even understand the complexity of the themes that Edith Wharton explores. Reading The Age of Innocence a couple of years ago led to a newfound love for Edith Wharto...

Pages: 224 Original date of publication: 1981 My copy: 2001 (New Directions) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Joseph Fox bookstore, Philadelphia, January 2012 The novel opens on a summer day in 1949, when Fleur Talbot, an aspiring writer at work on a novel called Warrender Chase , get a job as typist for an “Autobiographical Association” that promises to save the memoirs of its illustrious members for a period of 70 years. As she gains material for her novel (and subsequent novels), Fleur begins to suspect that Sir Quentin, its head, is blackmailing its members. What ensues is a bizarre, funny take on the idea that “truth is stranger than fiction.” The phrase “to loiter with intent” is used in a humorous sense to describe anyone who is waiting around for an unspecified purpose. The whole tone of the novel is like this, in some ways; you get the sense that our narrator and the other characters are hanging around, waiting for something to happen. Muriel...

Pages: 626 Original date of publication: 1944 (original collection; additions made to later editions) My copy: 2006 (Penguin) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Phoenix airport bookstore, December 2012 Dorothy Parker was famous for her satirical wit, a founding member of the Algonquin Round Table, and one of the earliest writers for the New Yorker. She was once arrested for protesting the execution of the murderers Sacco and Vanzetti. Later, she pursued screenwriting in Hollywood and was later blacklisted there for her involvement in left-wing politics. She was married three times, twice to the same man; and had four suicide attempts, none successful. After her death, her ashes lay for 21 years on a shelf at a funeral home and then in the office of a Wall Street law firm, before she was finally buried at the headquarters of the NAACP. Parker loved one-liners and word play, and this is a compilation of short stories, magazine articles, letters, interviews, b...

Pages: 448 Original date of publication: 1946 My edition: 2011 (Vintage) Why I decided to read: though it would be a good vacation/plane read How I acquired my copy: Waterstone’s, Piccadilly, September 2011 I’m usually hit or miss with Stella Gibbons’s novels. I was on the fence about her most famous novel, Cold Comfort Farm ; but I loved Nightingale Wood . Westwood falls into the Nightingale Wood  category, happily. Set in London in the midst of WWII, Westwood is the story of Margaret Steggles, a romantically-minded young woman who, after finding a ration book belonging to one Hebe Niland, becomes entangled with the family who live at Westwood, primarily among them Gerard Challis, a middle-aged playwright at work on what he believes is his masterpiece. Then there’s his daughter, Hebe; her husband, Alex; and their three children. A variety of other characters round out the cast, including Margaret’s cheerful old school friend Hilda, who never takes anything s...

Pages: 501 Original date of publication: 1935 My edition: 1995 (Harper Collins) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Amazon.com, April 2010 I always prefer the Lord Peter Winsey mysteries when Harriet Vane is in them. The more she appears, the better I like her for savvy, intuition, self-sufficiency, and wit—as well as the attraction she and Lord Peter have towards each other, which is based on intellectualism rather than anything else. You can see perfectly why they’re drawn to each other—and why Harriet keeps pulling away. In Gaudy Night, Harriet attends her reunion—also known as the Gaudy—at the fictional Oxford college of Shrewsbury. While there, she receives a threatening note, the first of several that members of the college receive over the next few months. Harriet is asked to join the staff of the college, ostensibly to work on a study of Sheridan Le Fanu, but really to investigate the mystery of the notes—which eventually lead to vandalism, amon...

Pages: 387 Original date of publication: 1936 My edition: 2011 (Persephone) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Persephone website, June 2011 When we last saw Miss Buncle , she was just about to marry her publisher, Arthur Abbott. Her novel, Disturber of the Peace , disturbed the peace in the town of Silverstream, and the novel opens with a decision to move from there in light of the censure Barbara, now of course married, received for writing it. Barbara begins married life in Wandlebury, a new town with a whole new set of characters from which to gain inspiration. But Barbara claims she has eschewed novel writing and turns her attention to her new house, friends, and family, including Arthur’s nephew Sam. Barbara is just as charming as ever; she’s incredibly perceptive of the people she encounters, from the village busybodies, to the town doctor (who happens to be an old friend of Arthur’s), to an eccentric old aristocrat who changes her will according...

Pages: 183 Original date of publication: 1880 My edition: 2010 (Oxford World’s Classics) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Amazon, September 2012 Published in 1880, Washington Square looks back to an earlier period of New York City’s history, when upper-crust society lived at or adjacent to Washington Square, before society eventually migrated uptown. Set in the first half of the nineteenth century and based on a story that was once told to Henry James, this novel tells the story of Catherine Sloper the daughter of a respected physician and the heiress to a fortune of $10,000. One evening she meets Morris Townsend, a young man of whom Dr. Sloper is immediately suspicious, for wanting to marry Catherine for her money. Although Dr. Sloper forbids his daughter to marry or even see Mr. Townsend, as the risk of her losing her fortune, she does so anyways, with the help of her aunt, Mrs. Penniman. Washington Square in the early nineteenth century wasn’t so ...

Pages: 297 Original date of publication: 1922 My edition: 1994 (Collier Books) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Philadelphia bookshop, August 2012 The Glimpses of the Moon tells the story of Nick and Suzy Lansing, a young couple who married for neither love nor money—or, rather, they married for money but other people’s. Their bet is to spend a year honeymooning in their rich friends’ houses in France, Venice, and elsewhere; and if one or the other should wish to marry someone else who can advance themselves socially, they will be free to do so. What really happens surprises not the reader but Suzy and Nick. Nick and Suzy are characters who undergo a lot of self-growth. They start out as people who are only concerned with living in the moment; and enjoying life, or their perception of it, as much as they possibly can. They both come to realize that there’s much more to life than what appears on the surface. Their growth is pretty predictable, but it’...

Pages: 430 Original date of publication: 1982 My edition: 2010 Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: September 2011, Persephone shop I’ve been putting off and putting off writing a review of An Interrupted Life , mostly because I wanted everything to sink in and also because I really didn’t know what to say about this wonderful, albeit heartbreaking book. There I go again, using clichés to describe this book, but I loved it from start to finish. Etty Hillesum was born in January 1914 in Holland and lived in Amsterdam working as a translator of Russian and Russian teacher. Even still she aspired to be a writer, and kept a journal to that effect during WWII. As a Jew, Etty’s life became increasingly circumscribed by the restrictions placed upon her; she was later given a job as a typist in the Jewish Council, an organization that sought to mediate between the Nazis and Dutch Jews. Etty later volunteered to help accompany Jews to Westerbork, a detention camp ...

Pages: 256 Original date of publication: 1955 My edition: 1982 (Perennial) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Philadelphia Book Trader August 2010 As a parallel to society as a whole, Barbara Pym tells the story of a group of anthropologists in London. Tom Mallow is an incredibly self-absorbed but brilliant anthropologist working on his thesis, and he has a convenient live-in arrangement with a magazine write named Catherine, who seems to be more of a friend, although it’s hinted that the two may have had a relationship in the past. Tom takes up with Deirdre, an earnest but naive anthropology student. Barbara Pym worked with anthropologists for many years, so they are a recurring theme in many of her books. Anthropologists make cameo appearances in some of Pym’s other novels (such as Everard Bone from Excellent Women , who has a cameo appearance in this book; Emma from A Few Green Leaves ; and Tom Mallow is an early version of Rupert Stonebird from An U...

Pages: 413 Original date of publication: 1913 My edition: 2010 (Vintage classics) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Barnes and Noble, July 2012 I read The Customs of the Country before I learned that Edith Wharton is currently the subject of an article in this month's issue of Vogue magazine, entitled “The Customs of the Country.” I just about died. How did I not know about this before???? Supermodel Natalia Vodianova plays Edith Wharton,   and several famous actors and authors play various people in her life, including Jeffrey Eugenides as Henry James (gasp! A win-win combination in my book, pun intended). It looks as though Edith Wharton is having a bit of a revival at the moment; a cache of her letters has been published recently, in conjunction with the fact that this year is the 150th anniversary of her birth. In addition, Vintage Classics have reprinted several of her novels, including this one, Ethan Frome, The House of Mirth , and The Age o...

Pages: 372 Original date of publication: 1934 My edition: 1984 (Virago) Why I decided to read: AV/AA How I acquired my copy: September 2011, London Luminous Isle takes place in Jamaica in the 1920s, where Emmeline Hibbert has been raised. She returns to Jamaica after years spent in England and is immediately thrust back into the colonial life: parties, tennis, and polo matches. But Em’s real interest and focus lie in the Island itself. Eliot Bliss’s writing style is incredibly philosophic; Em is an extremely introspective character, as well as introverted, so we get snippets of her thoughts that go somewhat like this: People who felt dull when they were alone could not really be people; they were parts of ideas rushing about the world looking for the other parts--that was what must have been meant by 'looking for your complement'--they didn't seem to think it was unflattering to be considered unrelated pieces of a jig-saw puzzle. P 76 Each li...

Pages: 204 Original date of publication: 1959 My edition: 1987 (Virago) Why I decided to read: All Virago/All August How I acquired my copy: Philadelphia Book Trader, August 2010 Set in Sydney, Australia, in the late 1950s, Bobbin Up is actually a collection of vignettes about the young women who work in the Jumbuck spinning mills. They are, as the cliché goes, overworked and underpaid, and each “chapter” focuses on the story of a different girl, among them a pregnant teenager and a Communist idealist. The title’s double entendre is cunning—the bobbins of spinning, as well as the idealistic acting of “bobbing up” out of one’s own circumstances, to do something about an unfavorable situation (hence the title of the pamphlet that’s passed around at the mill). There is a kind of idealism to the tone of the book, as well as an interest in the “human condition.” The author wrote the preface for the Virago edition of the book, in which she is a little bit embarrassed by...

Pages: 250 Original date of publication: 1980 My edition: 1980 (Harper Perennial Library) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: The Philadelphia Book Trader, August 2010 Barbara Pym’s novels are comfort reads. They follow pretty much the same format and have very much the same elements; in fact, some of her characters overlap between novels. This novel is set in an Oxfordshire village in the 1970s and features a typically Pym-esque cast of characters: an academic, a rector, village doctors, spinsters, and possible love interests. One of the main characters, Emma, is an anthropologist, and her activities reflect the overall purpose of the book, because the story is more or less an anthropological study of the people who live in the village.Some of Pym’s characters are truly funny: the rector who’s so wrapped up in searching for his mythological DMV (deserted medieval village) that he scarcely pays attention to the present; the local spinster cat lady; the e...

Pages: 232 Original date of publication: 1949 My edition: 2010 (Persephone) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Persephone Secret Santa, December 2011 Little Boy Lost is set during and just after WWII. Hilary Wainwright is an English writer who lost his wife during the Holocaust—and his son, John, is also lost but in a different way. Hilary receives a tip that his son may be living in an orphanage in France, and he goes there to investigate. It’s a bleak novel—the theme of which is emotional expression. Hilary’s constant struggle is whether to repress emotion, or to let it out. There’s so much emotional fodder here—the death of his wife, the loss of his son—but he doesn’t allow himself to actually express what he’s feeling. This suppression of emotion is what makes this book so powerful, all the more so because this is a novel of self-discovery, too. It’s only when Hilary manages to “find” himself that he opens himself up. Then there are the larger quest...

Pages: 588 Original date of publication: 1853 My edition: 2001 (Modern Library) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Border, 2001 I tried reading Villette once, a number of years ago. I got about halfway through and stopped; maybe I wasn’t old enough to appreciate it very much. About a year and a half ago, when I moved into my apartment, I came across my copy and threw it on TBR Mountain, “to read sometime in the future.” Villette , as is Jane Eyre , is based on personal experience: Charlotte Bronte famously spent a year teaching English in Brussels. The novel is set in the fictional country of Labassecours, based on Belgium (at first I thought the setting of the book was some extension of Angria, the kingdom she and her siblings created when they were children). Lucy Snowe comes to Villette from England in search of a job and almost accidentally ends up at the door of Madame Beck’s pensione, or school for young ladies, where she initially gets a job as ...