Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit is harsh and beautiful and sad. It’s based on autobiography, and tells of a young Jeanette growing up in a tiny town in the North of England. The claustrophobia of the town is strongly evoked–it’s the sort of place where everyone knows everyone else, everyone has a place and is expected to stay in it, and any attempts to hide or move or change must be carried out under severe scrutiny by neighbours, friends and family and probably followed […]
I’m not convinced
I absolutely adore some of Austen’s books–one of my first reviews for Cannonball Read IV was of Northanger Abbey. I love the energy and passion of Pride and Prejudice (“What are men to rocks and mountains?” indeed), the mischief of Emma, and the creaky doors and thunderstorms and laundry lists of Northanger Abbey. I sympathise with Elinor Dashwood, and think she could have done much better in terms of sisters and eventual husbands–but I also sympathise with Marianne’s youthful desire for drama, and think she […]
It’s like Rear Window but with more butts of malmsey
The Daughter of Time (1951) is the first novel by Josephine Tey that I’ve read, and it’s a rather unconventional mystery, so I have no idea how the style relates to any of her other detective fiction. Based around the aphorism that “Truth is the daughter of time, not authority” (Sir Francis Bacon), the novel, via Scotland Yard Detective Alan Grant, investigates whether Richard the Third really murdered his nephews in the tower. Grant is laid up in hospital and bored; a friend brings him […]
There’s a country house party in the 1920s…what do you think will happen?
A. A. Milne is a million times more famous for Winnie-The-Pooh than he is for this neat, compact and fluent little novel of amateur detectives and a body in a locked room. Which is a shame, as The Red House Mystery (1922), while not brilliant or innovative, is of value because it masters the conventions with precision and humour, creating an entertaining mystery, and likeable characters with enjoyably explicit nods to Sherlock and Watson in their dynamic. Mark Ablett is a patron of the arts, an […]
“On sweet silk grass I stretch me at mine ease,…”
Like J. Courtney Sullivan’s The Engagements, reviewed here, Kate Beaufoy’s Liberty Silk is a tale of different eras and generations connected by a single object–in this case, a beautiful, shimmering, colourful silk dress from Liberty of London. Bought in 1919 by Jessie, a young lady of patrician English background who marries a penniless artist and spends her honeymoon deliriously happy in the summery South of France, it’s eventually inherited by Baba, born Lisa, who is a starlet with an empty life in Hollywood in the 1940s, […]
“And I should tell him all my pain,…”
And I should tell him all my pain, And how my life had droop’d of late, And he should sorrow o’er my state And marvel what possess’d my brain; (Tennyson, In Memoriam XIV.13-16) Mad About the Boy, the third Bridget Jones book, is confusing. But then, Bridget Jones herself and her narratives are confusing; there’s the original Bridget Jones of the Independent newspaper columns, there’s Bridget Jones of the films, and there’s Bridget Jones of the books. I’m pretty sure that Bridget Jones of […]
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