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: 500 Originally published: 1954 My copy: 2004 (Chicago Review Press) How I acquired my copy: Borders, 2004 This book is more than just a good romance. It is an all-time classic. I am a younger reader, and so I don't have fond memories of the first time this book came out; but I'm glad that they brought Katherine  back into print. It is one of those books that all lovers of historical fiction should read, not simply for the history, but because this is an elegantly crafted novel; unarguably one of the very best I've read in a long time. This novel is a great introduction to the works of Anya Seton. The story of Katherine Swynford and John of Gaunt is set against a backdrop of chivalry and heroic adventure during the 14th century. I thoroughly loved this novel; there are parts of it that still stay with me two months after reading it. Whenever I read historical fiction, I always look to see whether the author has done her research- Anya Seton most definit...

Pages: 667 Original date of publication: 2011 My copy:   2011 (Oxford University Press) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Amazon.com, April 2013 This is a compilation of many of Jane Austen’s letters, most of them sent to her sister Cassandra between 1796 and 1817, the year of her death. Although many of Austen’s letters were destroyed by her sister in order to preserve the family reputation, the collection contains over 160 letters in which Austen gives her sister details about her life in Chawton—as well as giving us a tantalizing glimpse of what was going through her mind as she was writing her novels (especially the novel that was to become Pride and Prejudice , First Impressions ). There are other letters here, too, giving advice to her niece and professional correspondence to publishers—as well as a couple of letters that were written by Cassandra Austen after Jane’s death. To the sisters, the letters acted in the way that phone calls do toda...

Pages: 259 Original date of publication: 2013 My copy: 2013 (Penguin) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Phoenix bookstore, May 2013 In January 1937, the body of a young British girl, Pamela Werner, was found near Peking’s Fox Tower. Although two detectives, one British and the other Chinese, spent months on the case, the case was never solved completely, and the case was forgotten in the wake of the invasion of the Japanese. Frustrated, Pamela’s father, a former diplomat, tried to solve the crime. His investigation took him into the underbelly of Peking society and uncovered a secret that was worse than anything he could have imagined. At first, I thought that this would be a pretty straightforward retelling of a true crime, but what Paul French (who spent seven years researching the story) reveals in this book is much more than that. Foreign society in Peking in the 1930s was stratified, with the British colonials at the top and the White Russian refu...

Pages: 384 Original date of publication: My copy: 2013 (Harlequin MIRA) Why I decided to read: Copy offered for review How I acquired my copy: Amazon Vine, April 2013 Set in 1923, the novel focuses on Delilah Drummond, a daringly modern woman who is forced to take a “break” from society when a scandal threatens her reputation. She goes to Kenya and her stepfather’s estate, Fairlight, and quickly becomes acclimatized to the way of life there—meeting, as she does so, Ryder White, a hunter/tracker. I’ve had a taste of British colonial life in Kenya—Frances Osborne’s The Bolter is about a famous colonist of the period, Idina Sackville, and the five husbands she “bolted” from in order to set up a new life in Kenya (where she continued her adventures, many of them sexual). So there are pretty obvious comparisons to be made between Idina Sackville and Delilah Drummond, as there are between Dennis Finch-Hatton (of Out of Africa fame) and Ryder White. Still, there’s enough...

Pages: 367 Original date of publication: My copy: 1978 (Ace books) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Amazon.com, November 2010 DE Stevenson’s books are quite hard to find, but I was able to buy a copy of Celia’s House a few years ago. The novel takes place over the course of about 40 years and focuses on the lives and fortune of the Dunne family and their family estate, Dinnian, in Scotland. Humphrey Dunne inherits the estate in 1905 from Celia Dunne, with the stipulation that Dunnian will be passed to Humphrey’s daughter, Celia, when she comes of age. Some of the plot is a little predictable; for example, when the elder Celia states that Dunnian be passed on to the younger Celia, the younger Celia hasn’t even been born yet—so it’s pretty obvious that there will indeed be another Celia to carry on the family name. Because the book takes place over a larger period of time, there were also large gaps between events; for example, Stevenson doesn’t really ...

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: 268 Original date of publication: 1924 My copy: 2008 (Persephone) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Persephone subscription, November 2011 Set in small-town America around the time it was written, this novel explores gender roles and how they affect families, and one family in particular. Lester Knapp is an accountant for a department store; his wife, Evangeline, is a housewife raising their three children. They both perform the roles expected of them by society, yet neither is suited to their role and neither is particularly happy. When Lester is injured in an accident that leaves him home-bound, his wife goes to work—to the benefit of everyone in the family. Dorothy Canfield Fisher gets her reader deep into the heads of her characters, so we can understand exactly what they’re like and so that we get a three-dimensional view of the situation. Even the children’s point of view is well represented—especially Stephen, aged 5, who fears having his...

Pages: 506 Original date of publication: July, 2013 My copy: 2013 (Random House; ARC) Why I decided to read: Offered through Amazon Vine program How I acquired my copy: Amazon Vine program, march 2013 I’ve loved Sarah Dunant’s novels for years, so when I saw that Blood and Beauty was available for review before publication, I jumped at the chance to read it. It tells the story of the Borgia family, specifically Lucrezia, and follows them from Rodrigo Borgia’s ascension to the papacy (and pope Alexander) in 1492 to Lucrezia’s third marriage to Alfonso d’Este in 1502. Rodrigo Borgia’s rise to power was much in keeping with the mores of the time period in which his lived. He even Italianized his name from Borja to Borgia. He and his four children, as well as his mistresses, became symbols of the power, splendor, and decadence of the Papal court in the late 15th century. It’s really, really hard to write fiction about the Borgia family without completely vilifying or ...

Pages: 378 Original date of publication: 2013 My copy: 2013 (Norton) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Amazon Vine program, March 2013 The Gods of Heavenly Punishment is set during WWII, and specifically focuses on the American firebombing of Tokyo in 1942 and 1945. We are introduced to Yoshi Kobayashi, the daughter of an expansionist; Cam, a bomber pilot taken prisoner by the Japanese; and Anton, an American architect, who had helped build some of Tokyo’s modern buildings in the 1920s and ‘30s but is enlisted to build test structures for the American air force to practice. Epstein has chosen an event that rarely gets written about in fiction, yet caused so much devastation at the same time; in the Operation Meetinghouse attack of 1945, 16 square miles of Tokyo were destroyed, approximately 100,000 people were killed, and over a million lost their homes. It was the deadliest air raid of WWII. So I was very interested to read about this lesser-known pe...

Pages: 473 Original date of publication: 1909-1986 My copy: 2012 (Persephone) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Persephone subscription, January 2013 The Persephone Book of Short Stories is a collection of thirty short stories—some that have been previously published in other Persephone books (crowd pleasers such as Minnie Panter-Downes’s “Good Evening, Mrs Craven” and Irene Nemirovsky’s “Dimanche”)—some that have been published in the Persephone Post , and others that appear here for the first time. The earliest story in the collection, Susan Glaspell’s“A to Z,” was published in 1909 and the last, Georgina Hammick’s “A Few Cases in the Day Case Unit,” in 1986. My favorite story in the collection is the first: Susan Glaspell’s “A to Z,’ in which a young college graduate gets a job as a dictionary copyist at a publisher’s office. She strikes up a friendship with a young man at the office; the irony of the story being that while these characters’ bread ...

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: 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: 327 Original date of publication: 1921-1928 My copy: 2007 (Persephone) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Persephone subscription, October 2012 Katherine Mansfield wrote the 25 stories in this collection during the 9 months she spent at Montana sur Sierre in Switzerland, seriously ill with tuberculosis. The stories are arranged in the order she wrote them, and many were left unfinished. Some characters are recurring; Mansfield also gained inspiration from other writers, including Chekhov, Louisa May Alcott, Virginia Woolf, Henry James, and DH Lawrence. Mansfield chastised herself for writing “lowbrow” stories and made jokes about them (“ the Mercury is bringing out that very long seaweedy story of mine ‘At the Bay.’ I feel inclined to suggest to them to give away a spade an’ bucket with each copy…”); but as the publisher’s note at the end says, “what choice did she have?” Mansfield wrote herself that she did not consider herself a good writer. B...

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: 218 Original date of publication: 1977 My copy: 1977 (Perennial) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Philly Book Trader, July 2010 Quartet in Autumn centers around four retirement-aged office workers in London: Edwin, Norman, Letty, and Marcia. Edwin, a widower, is a church hopper; Norman, struggles with his anger; Letty’s an eccentric spinster whose childhood friend is set to marry a much younger clergyman; and Marcia, a survivor of a mastectomy. As the story progresses, Letty and Marcia do retire from their jobs (“something vaguely to do with filing”), an occurrence that brings the characters together more than they realize. You might think it’s a depressing novel, but it’s bittersweet in a way. The characters are stuck in a kind of limbo; stuck in the past and remembering how things used to be, but still faced with the decisions they have to make about the future. So it’s interesting to see how each one copes with change in their lives. Pym’s ...

Pages: 318 Original date of publication: 2008 My copy: 2008 (WW Norton) Why I decided to read: saw Mary Roach speak at a conference How I acquired my copy: Denver airport bookstore, October 2012 In Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers , Roach explored the topic of the human cadaver and how it’s used in science. In Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex , she does pretty much the same thing, except with sex and sexuality. Roach wanders out into the fringes of scientific exploration in her books, into the areas that aren’t considered “typical,” and she writes her books with a liberal amount of humor. Roach traveled all over the world to witness—and even participate in—clinical trials involving sex. Every now and then she footnotes her writing with random stuff, including a note about who Millard Filmore’s running mate was (trick question!). From start to finish, Bonk is an entertaining read—even if I did get a few odd looks as I was reading it in public....

Pages: 162 Original date of publication: 1927 My copy: 1981 (Virago Modern Classics) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Library Thing member, July 2011 One day, young Jacky Jacka visits a witch, where he sees a vision of a woman in a bowl of water. The vision leads him to seek passage on a ship to the West Indies, which is then hijacked en route by the pirate Captain Lovel and the crew aboard the Moonraker. The year in 1801, a time when Napoleon had control of the high seas and the days of swashbuckling piracy was—nearly—on its way out. The story takes young Jacky throughout the Caribbean, and along the way he meets a Frenchman named Raoul and a black man Toussaint L’Ouverture, who works to free Haiti from the forces of Napoleon. On the surface it’s a fun tale; Tennyson drew her inspiration from Robert Louis Stevenson, and obvious comparisons might be made between this book and the Pirates of the Caribbean films. But this novel goes a bit deeper than th...

Pages: 384 Original date of publication: 1863 My copy: 1984 (Virago Modern Classics) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: bookshop in Charing Cross Road, London, September 2011 Aurora Floyd is a member of that genre of novels called Victorian sensationalist fiction. Published in the 1860s, sensationalist novels, mostly written by women, addressed the fears that people of that era had and addressed issues such as adultery, bigamy, murder, and other scandalous social issues. Nothing is ever what it seems in a novel like this. This novel has all the classic elements of this brand of novel: a young woman, Aurora Floyd has a deep, dark secret, which leads her to reject marriage proposals from two men (but then accept one). As the story plays out, her secret threatens to come out as well and destroy the life she’s created. Aurora isn’t your typical Victorian heroine, but given the heroines we seem in fiction these days, she’s pretty much the same as the rest: ...