Skip to main content

Review: Madam, Will You Talk? by Mary Stewart


Charity Selborne is on vacation in the south of France with a friend, when by chance she meets David Shelley, an English boy traveling with his stepmother. It turns out that the boy’s father, Richard Byron, is a murderer—and he’s followed David to France. Charity immediately becomes embroiled in the lives of David and Richard, not knowing who she can trust.

Another really great suspense novel from Mary Stewart. One thing she’s really good at is description—you can almost hear the cicadas chirping (well, it was quite literal in my case—I had my window open and the cicadas were working overtime!). Mary Stewart is also known for her exotic locations, and this one definitely didn’t disappoint. The car chase scene is especially well done; the tension is palpable, even as we find out what really happened all those years ago. Mary Stewart’s books aren’t by any stretch of the imagination, literature as such (even the cover looks a little bit romance-y), but they’re definitely entertaining, and the perfect end-of-summer read.

Comments

Serena said…
I have not heard of this author before. Sounds like a good book...thanks for the review
Misfit said…
I am saving this one for the last of Mary's books I read.

Popular posts from this blog

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.

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...

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...