Claudine at School is a book from 1900 about Claudine, a fifteen-year-old girl living in rural France, and her time at school. That’s it. It’s told in first-person, as diary entries. There’s no plot at all, although there’s suspense about final exams and constant gossip about who is having a relationship with whom. The book is funny and charming but not the kind of book in which very much happens. You could boil this review … Continue reading Claudine at School by Colette →
Miss Miles was written in 1890, and it describes the lives of four women in Yorkshire. Sarah Miles is a working-class young woman who wants to become a “lady” even though she doesn’t fully understand what being a lady means. Amelia is a lady, or the closest thing the area has to one, and she is driven to despair because her family will not let her do any kind of work. Dora and Maria are … Continue reading Miss Miles by Mary Taylor →
This summer we are graced with a movie version of My Cousin Rachel, which delights me no end. The question is, what version of the story will we see? It would be completely possible to make multiple different versions of this story, all faithful to the original book, and yet all very different, because this is a story about how the stories we tell ourselves and the characters we create take over our heads and … Continue reading My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier →
I’ve read So Big (first published in 1924) by Edna Ferber many times since I was a little girl. It is one of several classic books that shaped my idea of what being an admirable woman would involve: an appreciation of beauty, a love of learning, enthusiasm, a capacity for love, an ability to work very hard, and, above all, resilience. In So Big, Ferber creates a wonderful character in her protagonist, Selina, and uses … Continue reading So Big by Edna Ferber →
I’m going to pay Lady Audley’s Secret the highest compliment I can pay a sensation novel: I kept finding great passages to bookmark but I didn’t bookmark them because I didn’t want to stop reading long enough to do so. That made for a great reading experience but it will make for a superficial review considering all the meaty stuff in this book that we could happily analyze for days if I had just slowed … Continue reading Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon →
D.E. Stevenson was a prolific and beloved writer who lived from 1892 – 1973, though her first book was published in 1923. She wrote character-centered books like the Mrs. Tim series – a series that I have read dozens of times in a state of hypnotized bliss despite the fact that nothing much happens in it. She also wrote more dramatic romances and mysteries, such as Smoldering Fire and The Young Clementina. If there’s one … Continue reading Miss Buncle’s Book by D.E. Stevenson →
Victorian Ghost Stories by Eminent Women Writers is an anthology that contains twenty-one stories of crypts, brain fevers, meditations on the meaning of God, enormous crumbling houses, obsessive artists, creepy children, and moors. So, you know, pretty much everything I cherish in life. While most of the stories were published firmly within the Victorian Era, a few were published just before or just after it. As is, unfortunately, often the case with older books, I … Continue reading Victorian Ghost Stories By Eminent Women Writers: Edited by Richard Dalby →
This summer I treated myself to re-read of A Room With A View, a book that gets better every time I read it. While Lucy Honeychurch is in a “muddle” for sure, she wants to do the right thing, and seeing her struggle to become her authentic self is thrilling. Plus, the book is hilarious in so many subtle ways that I keep finding new things to enjoy. A Room With a View was first … Continue reading A Room With a View by E.M. Forster →
Back when my mom was growing up and general practitioner doctors were the norm, people used to refer to having a family doctor. We don’t have a family doctor, but we do have a family author (as in, an author the family loves, not an author to whom we are related). All the women on my mom’s half of the family, and there are a ton of us, are obsessed with the writings of Nevil … Continue reading Pastoral by Nevil Shute →
