Review: To the Bright Edge of the World, Eowyn Ivey

Review: To the Bright Edge of the World, Eowyn IveyTo The Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey
Narrator: John Glouchevitch, Christine Lakin, Kiff Vandenheuvel
Published by Hachette Audio on August 2, 2016
Genres: Historical Fiction
Length: 13 hours 27 minutes
Format: Audio, Audiobook
Source: Library
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Goodreads
five-stars

In the winter of 1885, Lieutenant Colonel Allen Forrester sets out with his men on an expedition into the newly acquired territory of Alaska. Their objective: to travel up the ferocious Wolverine River, mapping the interior and gathering information on the region’s potentially dangerous native tribes. With a young and newly pregnant wife at home, Forrester is anxious to complete the journey with all possible speed and return to her. But once the crew passes beyond the edge of the known world, there’s no telling what awaits them.

With gorgeous descriptions of the Alaskan wilds and a vivid cast of characters —including Forrester, his wife Sophie, a mysterious Eyak guide, and a Native American woman who joins the expedition—TO THE BRIGHT EDGE OF THE WORLD is an epic tale of one of America’s last frontiers, combining myth, history, romance, and adventure.

In the Middle Ages, mapmakers used to draw dragons, sea monsters, and other mythical creatures to mark the unknown: “Here be dragons.” Lt. Col. Allen Forrester must have understood the impulse. I loved this epistolary novel about an expedition to explore the fictional Wolverine River in Alaska. The characters come to life through letters, diary entries, and artifacts such as advertisements, photographs, drawings, and much more. I was listening to the audiobook, and I checked out the hardcover from the library so I could examine some of these artifacts as I read.

I probably wouldn’t have picked up this book had I not been participating in the Decades Reading Challenge and needed a book set in the 1880s or 1890s. I didn’t think I was much interested in reading about Alaska or its exploration. However, the book had good reviews, and I thought I’d at least check it out. I’m so glad I did because Eowyn Ivey managed to captivate me on a subject and setting I wasn’t much interested in.

The descriptions of Alaska were lyrical, and I rooted for the expedition to make it. More than that, Ivey transformed Sophie Forrester’s story—waiting at home for her husband to return and taking up photography—into a fascinating tale to equal her husband’s. I particularly loved the coda at the end.

Along with the Forresters’ story, Ivey also weaves the tale of the blossoming friendship between Walt Forrester, a descendant of the Colonel’s brother, and Josh Sloan, who works at a museum in Alaska. Walt wants to bequeath the Forrester papers and artifacts to the museum. I was charmed by their letters back and forth to each other.

The audiobook is excellent, but if you read it, do yourself a favor and have a paper copy on hand to experience the full multimedia experience this book offers.

 

five-stars

Review: Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo,” Zora Neale Hurston

Review: Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo,” Zora Neale HurstonBarracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” by Zora Neale Hurston, Deborah G. Plant
Published by Amistad on May 8, 2018
Genres: History, Nonfiction
Pages: 171
Format: Hardcover
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Goodreads
five-stars

In 1927, Zora Neale Hurston went to Plateau, Alabama, just outside Mobile, to interview eighty-six-year-old Cudjo Lewis. Of the millions of men, women, and children transported from Africa to America as slaves, Cudjo was then the only person alive to tell the story of this integral part of the nation’s history. Hurston was there to record Cudjo’s firsthand account of the raid that led to his capture and bondage fifty years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed in the United States.

In 1931, Hurston returned to Plateau, the African-centric community three miles from Mobile founded by Cudjo and other former slaves from his ship. Spending more than three months there, she talked in depth with Cudjo about the details of his life. During those weeks, the young writer and the elderly formerly enslaved man ate peaches and watermelon that grew in the backyard and talked about Cudjo’s past—memories from his childhood in Africa, the horrors of being captured and held in a barracoon for selection by American slavers, the harrowing experience of the Middle Passage packed with more than 100 other souls aboard the Clotilda, and the years he spent in slavery until the end of the Civil War.

Offering insight into the pernicious legacy that continues to haunt us all, black and white, this work is an invaluable contribution to our shared history and culture.

This book is such a valuable record. It’s wonderful that it has come to light at long last, and I’m so glad it exists. I first heard about the Clotilda on an episode of Finding Your Roots, hosted by Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The show’s genealogists uncovered that Questlove descended from Charles Lewis, one of the 125 people captured, enslaved, and brought to the United States on the Clotilda. This ship was the last ship to bring enslaved Africans to the United States in 1860. While the slave trade had been abolished, it didn’t stop the illegal trafficking of enslaved people, and of course, slavery had not yet ended in the United States. The men responsible for trafficking the people brought to the United States aboard the Clotilda were never punished for the crime.

Netflix currently has a documentary, Descendant, about the Clotilda descendants in Africatown, Alabama.

We now know that two other survivors of the Clotilda outlived Cudjo Lewis, but when Hurston interviewed him, he was believed to be the last person alive to have survived the Middle Passage. She captured video footage of Cudjo Lewis, a powerful documentation of the legacy of slavery.

I appreciated the opportunity to read this first-hand account of Cudjo Lewis’s story and am grateful to all those who brought his story to light.

five-stars

Review: Harlem Shuffle, Colson Whitehead

Review: Harlem Shuffle, Colson WhiteheadHarlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead
Narrator: Dion Graham
Published by Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group on September 14, 2021
Genres: Historical Fiction
Length: 10 hours and 36 minutes
Format: Audio, Audiobook
Source: Library
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Goodreads
four-stars

From two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author Colson Whitehead, a gloriously entertaining novel of heists, shakedowns, and rip-offs set in Harlem in the 1960s.

"Ray Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked..."

To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for himself and his family. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their second child, and if her parents on Striver's Row don't approve of him or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it's still home.

Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and that his façade of normalcy has more than a few cracks in it. Cracks that are getting bigger all the time.

Cash is tight, especially with all those installment-plan sofas, so if his cousin Freddie occasionally drops off the odd ring or necklace, Ray doesn't ask where it comes from. He knows a discreet jeweler downtown who doesn't ask questions, either.

Then Freddie falls in with a crew who plan to rob the Hotel Theresa—the "Waldorf of Harlem"—and volunteers Ray's services as the fence. The heist doesn't go as planned; they rarely do. Now Ray has a new clientele, one made up of shady cops, vicious local gangsters, two-bit pornographers, and other assorted Harlem lowlifes.

Thus begins the internal tussle between Ray the striver and Ray the crook. As Ray navigates this double life, he begins to see who actually pulls the strings in Harlem. Can Ray avoid getting killed, save his cousin, and grab his share of the big score, all while maintaining his reputation as the go-to source for all your quality home furniture needs?

'Harlem Shuffle's' ingenious story plays out in a beautifully recreated New York City of the early 1960s. It's a family saga masquerading as a crime novel, a hilarious morality play, a social novel about race and power, and ultimately a love letter to Harlem.

But mostly, it's a joy to listen to, another dazzling novel from the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning Colson Whitehead.

After two back-to-back Pulitzer award-winning novels, Colson Whitehead seems like he wanted to have a little bit of fun. And who could blame him? The subject matter of both The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys is so heavy. As he does in those previous novels, however, Whitehead brings the setting to vivid life. A couple of times, I laughed out loud as I listened to this one. Yet there were also moments when Whitehead’s virtuosity as a writer was fully displayed. Frankly, this one would make a great film, and I kind of hope it gets made.

As well drawn as Ray Carney is, I think perhaps Freddie and Pepper were my favorite characters, but the book is peopled with many memorable (and lovable) characters. I loved the attention to detail. For example, Ray always made observations about the furniture—even when he had a gun trained on him, he noticed the office furniture. I understand a sequel is in the offing, and I’m excited to see what is in store for Ray Carney in the next book.

four-stars

Review: The Door of No Return, Kwame Alexander

Review: The Door of No Return, Kwame AlexanderThe Door of No Return by Kwame Alexander
on September 27, 2022
Genres: Historical Fiction
Pages: 432
Format: Hardcover
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Goodreads
four-half-stars

An instant #1 New York Times Bestseller!

From the Newbery Medal and Coretta Scott King Award-winning author Kwame Alexander, comes the first book in a searing, breathtaking trilogy that tells the story of a boy, a village, and the epic odyssey of an African family.

In his village in Upper Kwanta, 11-year-old Kofi loves his family, playing oware with his grandfather and swimming in the river Offin. He’s warned, though, to never go to the river at night. His brother tells him, "There are things about the water you do not know." "Like what?" Kofi asks. "The beasts." His brother answers. One fateful night, the unthinkable happens, and in a flash, Kofi’s world turns upside down. Kofi soon ends up in a fight for his life, and what happens next will send him on a harrowing journey across land and sea and away from everything he loves. This spellbinding novel by the author of The Crossover and Booked will take you on an unforgettable adventure that will open your eyes and break your heart. The Door of No Return is an excellent choice for independent reading, sharing in the classroom, homeschooling, and book groups.

Kwame Alexander’s new verse novel, The Door of No Return, fills an important gap. There are some wonderful books for adults, such as Homegoing and Roots, that explore the experiences of enslaved Africans, and the wonderful children’s book The 1619 Project: Born on the Water by Nikole Hannah-Jones and Renée Watson, but I cannot think of a middle-grade or YA novel that explores this story. This book would make a wonderful addition to any middle school English language arts classroom. I can see the potential for cross-curricular study in history as well. One of the great lies that White enslavers believed about those they enslaved was that they had no history, no culture. It couldn’t be a bigger lie—one Kwame Alexander deftly refutes in this beautiful story of Kofi Offin. I somehow missed that this was the first in a planned trilogy, and I’m very excited to see what he does with the other two books.

NPR’s Book of the Day podcast features an interview with Kwame Alexander:

four-half-stars

Review: The Glass Hotel, Emily St. John Mandel

Review: The Glass Hotel, Emily St. John MandelThe Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel
Narrator: Dylan Moore
Published by Knopf Publishing Group on March 24, 2020
Length: 10 hours 26 minutes
Format: Audio, Audiobook
Source: Library
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Goodreads
four-half-stars

From the award-winning author of Station Eleven, an exhilarating novel set at the glittering intersection of two seemingly disparate events—a massive Ponzi scheme collapse and the mysterious disappearance of a woman from a ship at sea.

Vincent is a bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star lodging on the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island. On the night she meets Jonathan Alkaitis, a hooded figure scrawls a message on the lobby’s glass wall: Why don’t you swallow broken glass. High above Manhattan, a greater crime is committed: Alkaitis is running an international Ponzi scheme, moving imaginary sums of money through clients’ accounts. When the financial empire collapses, it obliterates countless fortunes and devastates lives. Vincent, who had been posing as Jonathan’s wife, walks away into the night. Years later, a victim of the fraud is hired to investigate a strange occurrence: a woman has seemingly vanished from the deck of a container ship between ports of call.

In this captivating story of crisis and survival, Emily St. John Mandel takes readers through often hidden landscapes: campgrounds for the near-homeless, underground electronica clubs, the business of international shipping, service in luxury hotels, and life in a federal prison. Rife with unexpected beauty, The Glass Hotel is a captivating portrait of greed and guilt, love and delusion, ghosts and unintended consequences, and the infinite ways we search for meaning in our lives.

I checked this book out right after finishing Sea of Tranquility because I understood it had many of the same characters as that book. For most of the book, I admit this one was sitting on 4 stars, but I bumped it up by the end because I didn’t want to stop listening once I reached the last couple of hours. It didn’t reach the brilliance of Sea of Tranquility or Station Eleven for me, but it was definitely interesting. Who knew you could write a lyrical novel about a Ponzi scheme? But it is. I can’t really say I liked any of the characters, but I’m not sure you’re supposed to. My favorite parts were the office workers reflecting on what they were doing—Mandel calls these sections the Office Chorus. I understand she has said that the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme inspired her, and she was curious as to what the people working with him were thinking as they engaged in this illegal and unethical behavior. This book explored humanity’s interconnectedness and how our pasts and the people in them haunt us. It was compelling, though I’m not sure it will rise to the top reads of 2023—Sea of Tranquility might.

four-half-stars

Review: Sea of Tranquility, Emily St. John Mandel

Review: Sea of Tranquility, Emily St. John MandelSea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
Narrator: John Lee, Dylan Moore, Arthur Morey, Kirsten Potter
Published by Random House Audio on April 5, 2022
Genres: Contemporary Fiction, Fantasy/Science Fiction
Length: 5 hours 47 minutes
Format: Audio, Audiobook
Source: Audible
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Goodreads
five-stars

The award-winning, best-selling author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel returns with a novel of art, time, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon three hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space.

Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal—an experience that shocks him to his core.

Two centuries later a famous writer named Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour. She's traveling all over Earth, but her home is the second moon colony, a place of white stone, spired towers, and artificial beauty. Within the text of Olive's bestselling pandemic novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him.

When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in the North American wilderness, he uncovers a series of lives upended: The exiled son of an earl driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend from the Night City who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe.

A virtuoso performance that is as human and tender as it is intellectually playful, Sea of Tranquility is a novel of time travel and metaphysics that precisely captures the reality of our current moment.

Sometimes I feel like books find us when we need them. I read Emily St. John Mandel’s wonderful book Station Eleven and found it unlike anything I’d read before. And then, I found myself living amidst a pandemic, and snatches of that book came back to me and terrified me. As soon as I heard about Sea of Tranquility, I put it on my to-read list. There were passages of great beauty in Sea of Tranquility, but more than anything, what I admired about the book was recognizing what it was like to live through a pandemic and what it is like to contend with understanding the impact of colonization and even to wonder if the reason everything seems surreal is that we’re living in a simulation.

Emily St. John Mandel has said she is fascinated with the way we behaved in February 2020, when we could see the pandemic distantly but really didn’t understand it would affect us in the United States in the same way as it affected people first in China. I remember my own thinking at the time was that SARS had been contained, and Ebola had been contained. Still, as Mandel reminds us in this book, SARS can always come back in a new guise—my understanding is that we owe the speed with which a vaccine was developed for COVID to the fact that research had long been underway on how to vaccinate for SARS using mRNA vaccines. One of the characters in Sea of Tranquility has written a pandemic novel—Olive Llewellyn seems to be a version of Emily St. John Mandel contending with the popularity of Station Eleven and its adaptation (which is also great!). In Olive’s novel Marienbad, she writes

We knew it was coming.

We knew it was coming and we prepared accordingly, or at least that’s what we told our children—and ourselves—in the decades that followed.

We knew it was coming but we didn’t quite believe it, so we prepared in low-key, unobtrusive ways—”Why do we have a whole shelf of canned fish?”…

We knew it was coming and we were breezy about it. We deflected the fear with careless bravado…

Pandemics don’t approach like wars, with the distant thud of artillery growing louder every day and flashes of bombs on the horizon. They arrive in retrospect, essentially. It’s disorienting. The pandemic is far away and then it’s all around you, with seemingly no intermediate step.

I found myself nodding along as Olive contemplates the surreality of living through a pandemic—meeting via hologram (and how exhausting it is) is the Zoom of 2203; the loneliness is the same. Olive’s contemplation of the sirens and what they mean is chilling. I remember during one particularly surreal moment in 2020, a local church sent a car around the neighborhood with a recording playing over a loudspeaker that they were praying for everyone. Olive reflects during one of her holographic interviews:

My point is, there’s always something. I think, as a species, we have a desire to believe that we’re living at the climax of the story. It’s a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we’re uniquely important, that we’re living at the end of history, that now, after all these millennia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it’s ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world.

After that section of the novel, I had to pause the audiobook and cry for a minute because it seemed like something slid into place. Our world is not uniquely terrible. Living through the pandemic was not uniquely terrible. The world has always been terrible. Imagine what it was like to live through the Plague. Yet in the midst of all that terribleness is beauty. It’s impossible to read Sea of Tranquility without glimpsing those moments of beauty, too. What we don’t always understand is that we create those moments, in spite of everything.

five-stars

Review: The Lost Apothecary, Sarah Penner

Review: The Lost Apothecary, Sarah PennerThe Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner
Published by Park Row on March 2, 2021
Genres: Contemporary Fiction, Historical Fiction, Mystery
Pages: 305
Format: Paperback
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Goodreads
four-stars

A female apothecary secretly dispenses poisons to liberate women from the men who have wronged them - setting three lives across centuries on a dangerous collision course.

Rule #1: The poison must never be used to harm another woman. Rule #2: The names of the murderer and her victim must be recorded in the apothecary’s register.

One cold February evening in 1791, at the back of a dark London alley in a hidden apothecary shop, Nella awaits her newest customer. Once a respected healer, Nella now uses her knowledge for a darker purpose—selling well-disguised poisons to desperate women who would kill to be free of the men in their lives. But when her new patron turns out to be a precocious twelve-year-old named Eliza Fanning, an unexpected friendship sets in motion a string of events that jeopardizes Nella’s world and threatens to expose the many women whose names are written in her register.

In present-day London, aspiring historian Caroline Parcewell spends her tenth wedding anniversary alone, reeling from the discovery of her husband’s infidelity. When she finds an old apothecary vial near the river Thames, she can’t resist investigating, only to realize she’s found a link to the unsolved “apothecary murders” that haunted London over two centuries ago. As she deepens her search, Caroline’s life collides with Nella’s and Eliza’s in a stunning twist of fate —and not everyone will survive.

This was a fun read. I received this book from a work colleague who said it was one of her favorite reads last year, and she didn’t see it on my Goodreads account. In fact, this book hadn’t even crossed my radar until she gave it to me. My favorite genre is historical fiction, and I enjoyed going back in time to Nella’s apothecary shop. Usually, when books are set in both the past and the present, I find the parts set in the present kind of a slog. A good example of this phenomenon is Anne Rice’s books. However, this book was different. The parts set in the present were just as captivating, mainly because I enjoyed Caroline’s quest to find out the story behind the apothecary bottle she found while mudlarking in the Thames. Parts of the storyline strain credulity. I know enough about historical research to know Caroline would have had to have done a lot more digging to find the answers she sought, and it would have taken years, if she even found them at all. But books are where you go to escape realism sometimes, and this book was a nice escape. It’s a light read that I’d recommend to anyone who likes reading historical fiction, particularly set in London, or anyone who wishes, like Caroline, that they could take a vacation in London all by themselves.

four-stars

Review: The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton

Review: The Age of Innocence, Edith WhartonThe Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
Narrator: David Horovitch
Published by BBC Audiobooks on July 13, 2010
Genres: Classic, Historical Fiction
Length: 12 hours 5 minutes
Format: Audio, Audiobook
Source: Audible
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Goodreads
five-stars

In the exclusive world of upper-class New York, Newland Archer anticipates his marriage to May Welland, a beautiful young girl from a suitable family "who knows nothing and expects everything.: Into this well-ordered community May's cousin, the captivating and exotic Countess Olenska, arrives.

Many years ago when I was in undergrad, I watched Martin Scorsese’s film based on this novel. I remember I was still in college because I took a course called American Realism and Naturalism, and we read another of Wharton’s novels, Summer. I remember being excited to read the book because I had loved The Age of Innocence so much, but I didn’t enjoy Summer very much. Later, I read Ethan Frome and enjoyed that book quite a lot. I am not sure why I haven’t read The Age of Innocence until now. I tried to pick it up a few years ago, but I’m not sure I was in the right frame of mind. In any case, I finally decided to read it since Audible offered it for free with my membership. I must say that the film is quite faithful to the book. Perhaps that is why I waited so long to read the book—I had heard the movie was a faithful rendition of the story. The differences between the book and the film are minor; perhaps the largest difference is that Ellen Olenska has dark hair, while Michelle Pfeiffer is blond, and May Welland is blond, while Winona Ryder has dark hair. Other than that, the film is entirely faithful to the book in all but the most minor details… except for one critical detail. Newland Archer is a dick.

Daniel Day-Lewis manages to make the viewer care for and empathize with Newland Archer. The novel’s Newland Archer is selfish. He becomes engaged to a vapid society girl, congratulating himself on the notion that she’ll never surprise him and always know the right thing to say. Meanwhile, he falls in love with May’s cousin Ellen, if you could call it love, because I’d contend he only ever fell in love with an idealized version of the person he thought Ellen was. Idealization is powerful; the real person can never live up to the perfect dream concocted in the mind. I think Newland realizes that by the end of the book, too. I’m not sure he ever realizes how he has mistreated two women. If he was in love with Ellen before he married May, then he never should have married May. Once he married May, he should have stopped playing around with Ellen’s heart. To me, May is the most innocent party in the whole affair. I don’t think she was as dumb as Archer thought, either. I think she was just satisfied with their life. Newland secretly was, too, or else he would have found a way to do what he thought was going to make him happy.

When I saw the film, I felt frustrated with Newland for not going upstairs to see Ellen again at the end. After reading the book, I have a much greater understanding as to why he didn’t. He never had the courage of his convictions, not really. Ellen did. You might even argue that May did, to an extent. But Newland was afraid to really live and to really love, so he spent his life instead of saving it, to paraphrase one of his own sayings.

In spite of Newland’s maddening behavior, I loved the book, as I suspected I would. Edith Wharton captures Gilded Age New York like only a critical insider could possibly capture it. In her hands, Old New York society feels as perilous as any literary monster. It devours its own, and if one could personify it, it might be one of the more compelling and frightening villains in literature.

five-stars

Review: Villette, Charlotte Bront

Villette by Charlotte Brontë
Narrator: Charlotte Ritchie
Published by Penguin Audio, Penguin Books Genres: Classic
Length: 21 hours 20 minutes
Format: Audio, Audiobook
Source: Audible
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Goodreads
three-stars

With her final novel, Villette, Charlotte Brontë reached the height of her artistic power. First published in 1853, Villette is Brontë's most accomplished and deeply felt work, eclipsing even Jane Eyre in critical acclaim. Her narrator, the autobiographical Lucy Snowe, flees England and a tragic past to become an instructor in a French boarding school in the town of Villette. There she unexpectedly confronts her feelings of love and longing as she witnesses the fitful romance between Dr. John, a handsome young Englishman, and Ginerva Fanshawe, a beautiful coquette. The first pain brings others, and with them comes the heartache Lucy has tried so long to escape. Yet in spite of adversity and disappointment, Lucy Snowe survives to recount the unstinting vision of a turbulent life's journey—a journey that is one of the most insightful fictional studies of a woman's consciousness in English literature.

Well, I disagree with the Goodreads blurb above that this book eclipses Jane Eyre in any respect. I found it to be kind of mid, as my students say. I wanted to give up on it but saw I had about five hours left to listen to, and by that time, I’d sunk about 15 hours in, so I plunged ahead. If Charlotte Bront’s teacher (and major crush, according to Bront lore) Constantin Hger was anything like M. Paul Emmanuel, he’s a hard pass. I didn’t understand how Lucy Snowe came to fall for him in the first place. They spent most of the book sparring, and he was a misogynistic jerk. I didn’t find Lucy as likable as Jane Eyre.

The coincidences and revelations were implausible. M. Paul Emmanuel’s plantation in Guadeloupe was surely a slave plantation, and it’s completely glossed over. Well, I guess it would be, given the time of the novel’s composition. I understand Jamaica Kincaid wrote a postcolonial response to Villette called Lucy. The novel had its moments, and the characters were well drawn, particularly Ginevra Fanshawe and Madame Beck, Lucy’s nemeses. The ending is ambiguous, and I have to give Charlotte Bront props for not wrapping everything up in a tidy bow at the end.

three-stars

Catching Up

I have not blogged about my reading a very long time. It’s been eventful around here. I took on extra duties at work, our cat passed away, we adopted kittens in August. Meet Velma and Daphne.

Two tabby and white cats named Velma and Daphne
Velma (left) and Daphne (right)

They are incredibly lovable and sweet. We adore them!

Here is a list of all the books I’ve read since I last wrote a review on my blog with a star-rating attached. I don’t think I’ll get around to reviewing these books. I started to write a catch-up post with reviews in September, and I was overwhelmed. Links go to Bookshop.org if you’re interested in purchasing. I would earn a small commission.

Of these books, my two favorites are Circe and Surrender (big U2 fan here). I was slightly disappointed by The Brontë Myth because it focused almost entirely on Charlotte Brontë. Anne was entirely neglected and Emily nearly so. I get why: we just don’t really know that much about them because they died before they became major literary stars whereas Charlotte survived long enough to see her fame blossom. I still gave the book 4 stars as it was informative. It wasn’t in the same league as Miller’s book about Keats. I thoroughly enjoyed both Madeline Miller books and plan to read more in that vein (seems like a burgeoning industry to retell Greek myths). I felt like The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue owed a little bit to the Doctor Who episode about Ashildr, introduced in the episode “The Woman Who Lived” (one of my all-time favorites episodes and characters).