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The other Rebecca A Sucessora (1934, ‘The Successor’) opens with a couple returning from their honeymoon trip. The first chapter unravels through an extended scene that feels…… Read more “A trail of books: on Carolina Nabuco’s A Sucessora (‘The Sucessor’, 1934) and the plagiarism charges against Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca (1938)”
Tag: Modern Classics
Her heart is this red apple
Dear Irina, When Isolde (2019, tr. Bryan Karetnyk and Irina Steinberg. Original: Изольда, 1929) opens, it’s summer, sometime in the wild 1920’s, and we are in Biarritz.…… Read more “Her heart is this red apple”
The music of life and living
Dear Dorothy, We are forever exiles of our childhoods, but sometimes the smallest details can bring us back to our neverland. It takes one song, a slant…… Read more “The music of life and living”
A kind of door in oneself through which it was necessary to pass
Dear Mary, The Friendly Young Ladies (1944. Published in the USA as The Middle Mist, 1945) is at its best when walking the tight rope of double…… Read more “A kind of door in oneself through which it was necessary to pass”
A small jewel that has always been hopelessly flawed
Dear Isobel, Every Eye (1956) is a novella that plays with the ideas of perspective and sight, narrated by a character who is trapped in her blind…… Read more “A small jewel that has always been hopelessly flawed”
Fauna smiles upon the love of intertwined women
Dear Renée, For the past couple of days, I’ve been trapped inside a stuffy Victorian room heavily decorated with rich furnishings, intricate pieces of furniture, some middle…… Read more “Fauna smiles upon the love of intertwined women”
Careering along like drunken drivers
Dear Shelagh, A Taste of Honey (1958) centres on teenage Jo and her mother, Helen. They are always falling behind on rent, and, as the story starts,…… Read more “Careering along like drunken drivers”
The unlived life is light, so light
Dear Marie Luise, Circe’s Mountain: Stories (1990, tr. Lisel Mueller. Stories originally written in the 1950’s and 1960’s) is a collection of 12 of some of your…… Read more “The unlived life is light, so light”
The rainbow bubble came along and I grasped it
Dear Capel, Painted Clay (1917) is centred on Helen Somerset, an Australian girl coming of age in Melbourne, in the years before WWI. As the story opens,…… Read more “The rainbow bubble came along and I grasped it”
What was common could also be a flower
Dear Gwendolyn, Maud Martha (1953) centres on a working-class black girl coming of age in pre-WWII Chicago. When the story opens, the eponymous protagonist is about seven yeas…… Read more “What was common could also be a flower”
The time cracks into furious flower
Three poems by Gwendolyn Brooks, from the collection The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks, ed. Elizabeth Alexander (2005), and one from the collection To Disembark (1981). “the mother Abortions…… Read more “The time cracks into furious flower”
Stolen waters are the sweetest
Dear Jessie, Plum Bun: A Novel Without a Moral (1928) centres on Angela Murray, a middle-class girl from a black family in Philadelphia. Angela and her mother, Mattie,…… Read more “Stolen waters are the sweetest”
They purge the soul with their infinity
Five poems by Jessie Redmon Fauset, from the anthology Shadowed Dreams: Women’s Poetry of the Harlem Renaissance, edited by Maureen Honey (1989), plus two poems from The…… Read more “They purge the soul with their infinity”
And the money ate the blood
Dear Maria, Die Vergiftung (“The Poisoning”, 1920) reads like a box full of family pictures. We are taking them out randomly, one by one, and some disembodied…… Read more “And the money ate the blood”
We can be an army of two
Dear Isabel, Patience and Sarah (originally self-published in 1969 as A Place For Us) reads like going on a journey outside the closet while remaining firmly locked…… Read more “We can be an army of two”
Put a berry for a heart,
Dear Mourning Dove, How many stories can fit inside one story? Comparing the two versions of the tales collected in Coyote Stories (1933) and Tales of the…… Read more “Put a berry for a heart,”
I turned her into a tree so that she would stop trembling
Dear Irmgard, Child of All Nations (2008, tr. Michael Hofmann. Original: Kind aller Länder, 1938) is all about voice. Not bitter nor cheerful, but something in-between. It…… Read more “I turned her into a tree so that she would stop trembling”
A flower silence, completely unfolded,
Dear Getrud, The two prose works collected in A Jewish Mother from Berlin: A Novel/ Susanna: A Novella (1997, tr. Brigitte M. Goldstein) read like disenchanted but…… Read more “A flower silence, completely unfolded,”
