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Dear George, In Keynotes (1893), you seem to be trying to find and set the tone for your exploration of (what you conceived as) the female experience.…… Read more “When we shall live larger and freer lives,”
Category: Scarlet Letters
My own books scourge me
Hi, folks! I am kicking off our Season in Middlemarch with a slim biography, packed with illustrations, in case you fancy a brief outline of Eliot’s life.…… Read more “My own books scourge me”
Being good felt delicious
Dear May, Life and Death of Harriett Frean (1922) traces the eponymous character’s downfall from a promising child to a nonentity. Our protagonist, Harriett, the only child…… Read more “Being good felt delicious”
She was shuddering in a body long ago dead
Dear Marghanita, The Victorian Chaise Longue (1953) follows Melanie Langdon, a young married woman who is recovering from tuberculosis. When the novel opens, we are somewhere in the…… Read more “She was shuddering in a body long ago dead”
How good we all are at talking without ever saying what we think
Dear Ivy, I guess I will never be completely at ease at being cast among those whom Barbara Pym would describe as ‘the sort of people who…… Read more “How good we all are at talking without ever saying what we think”
Women’s Prize 2021: Dolan, Leilani, Peters & Bennett
Hi, folks! I’ve been reading through some of the books on the Women’s Prize 2021 longlist, and I’d like to write brief notes about them. The last…… Read more “Women’s Prize 2021: Dolan, Leilani, Peters & Bennett”
Only the skin chairs are true
Dear Barbara, As The Skins Chairs (1962) starts, ten-year-old Frances has been sent to stay with the Lawrences, her mother’s rich relatives. In one of her strolls…… Read more “Only the skin chairs are true”
Both had come from an incommunicable experience
Dear Rosemary, The Chinese Garden (1962) centres on Rachel Curgenven, a bookish sixteen-year-old student at Bampfield, a British girls’ boarding school whose “ideal was designed to turn…… Read more “Both had come from an incommunicable experience”
This half-free will that carried her off and that she was guiding
Dear Karolina, I can never resist an elegantly written (or, at least, elegantly translated) comedy of manners, particularly when it is suffused with anger – and it…… Read more “This half-free will that carried her off and that she was guiding”
It takes destiny for a human to tame a beast
Dear Yan Ge, Your Strange Beasts of China (2020, tr. Jeremy Tiang. Original: 异兽志, 2006) reads like a collection of entries from a bestiary: the city of…… Read more “It takes destiny for a human to tame a beast”
You created me in the abyss of nonexistence
Dear Carmen, The Book of Anna (2020, tr. Samantha Schnee. Original: El libro de Ana, 2016) takes off a couple of years after Tolstoy had left us…… Read more “You created me in the abyss of nonexistence”
Childhood is dark and it’s always moaning
Dear Tove, In Childhood (2019, tr. Tiina Nunnally. Original: Barndom, 1967), your portrait of the artist as a working-class girl is no rosy picture. Born in an…… Read more “Childhood is dark and it’s always moaning”
What fun she would have as a ghost
Dear Elspeth, Who can resist an awkward, introverted misfit with a wild imagination and a tragic fate? Janet, your protagonist in O Caledonia (1991), is a girl…… Read more “What fun she would have as a ghost”
And the flower is still up on the hillside
Dear Marita, As The Purple Flower (1928) opens, we are told that we are in “The Middle-of-Things-as-They-are”, in an unusual setting: “Might be here, there or anywhere—or…… Read more “And the flower is still up on the hillside”
I felt that laughter could be the dawn of a word
Dear Sara, The short stories and vignettes in your Land of Smoke (2018, tr. Jessica Sequeira. Original: El país del humo, 1977) walk us through the mist…… Read more “I felt that laughter could be the dawn of a word”
At least we learned that war is madness
Dear Fumiko, Everyone is drifting in your Floating Clouds (2006, tr. Lane Dunlop. Original: 浮雲, 1951). When the novel opens, WWII has ended and Yukiko is returning…… Read more “At least we learned that war is madness”
Madness has turned to logic
Dear Gine, In Zero (2018, tr. Rosie Hedger. Original: Null, 2013), we follow a middle-class Norwegian girl from age ten to twenty-one, as she comes full circle…… Read more “Madness has turned to logic”
My mother never held my hand
Dear Violette, At one point in Asphyxia (2020, tr. Derek Coltman. Original: L’Asphyxie, 1946), the unnamed narrator is standing on the sidewalk, peeking through a window at…… Read more “My mother never held my hand”
