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Dear George, Feminist critics were angry with you in the 1970’s, and perhaps some of them still are: your Dorothea remains firmly grounded on the very rules…… Read more “Destiny stands by sarcastic with our dramatis personae folded in her hand”
Tag: Novel
Perhaps we don’t always discriminate between sense and nonsense,
Dear George, Yours is an odd Prelude: already in its first paragraph, it refuses to give us an easy key to your Middlemarch (1871-72). It goes on…… Read more “Perhaps we don’t always discriminate between sense and nonsense,”
A season in Middlemarch
Hi, folks! This seems to be the season of readalongs for me: I am currently participating (and already behind) in The Old Wives’ Tale Readalong hosted by Rohan…… Read more “A season in Middlemarch”
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”
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”
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”
A trail of books: on Carolina Nabuco’s A Sucessora (‘The Sucessor’, 1934) and the plagiarism charges against Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca (1938)
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)”
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”
Such shifting winds in life
Dear Ida, A Change of Time (2019, tr. Martin Aitken. Original: En ny tid, 2015) is the record of a woman’s passage through grief. Told through diary entries…… Read more “Such shifting winds in life”
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”
Happiness is so elusive it may as well be supernatural
Dear Marie-Helene, Much of the disturbing, off-kilter sense of humour in Parakeet: A Novel (2020) comes from a finely-drawn contrast between the strong sense of reality in…… Read more “Happiness is so elusive it may as well be supernatural”
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