I listened to this book some months ago without writing about it and had forgotten it. I realized that when Laura mentioned reading it because Nancy Pearl recommended it. The main characters, Mattie Simpkin and Flora Lee (known as the Flea) are veterans of the suffrage movement in Britain and have the battle scars to prove it. Mattie comes from a privileged background while the Flea always had to...
After I finished listening to this book, I listened a second time and found that to be worthwhile. Mrs. Dalloway was irresistible; this one has more ruminative “self talk” that eludes me. Still, I enjoyed the moments of clarity and brilliance. I was reminded of the Edward Albee play/movie “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” about the elusive Virginia Woolf, dreaded by...
While I rarely hesitate to divulge plot twists and probably should always post “spoiler alerts” on my posts, I want to limit that as much as possible for this one. Personally I do not mind knowing what to expect in my reading and in fact consider it a bonus to read with knowledge of what’s coming. But in this case, I enjoyed having the feeling of slowly coming to understand what...
This is my fifth book by Geraldine Brooks and I do love them all. The complexity of the story she has told by weaving together many strands related to a racehorse that lived in the middle of the 19th century is breathtaking. At the center is the racehorse Lexington, who became famous for his speed and even more for his many very fast offspring, including a horse named Preakness. (I thought...
Ty Seidule’s premise, that the lie of the Lost Cause perpetuated from the end of the Civil War is a reflection of White Supremacy that infects the whole country, is not a surprise or new idea. What is different is that a military historian at West Point who grew up in the South idolizing Robert E. Lee has described his beliefs and his coming to understand the facts and reject the myth. As...
Years ago I read books about the discovery of the Blue Nile and the White Nile by Alan Moorehead, a great biography of Henry Morton Stanley, and a biography of Richard and Isabel Burton. It was interesting to revisit the European discovery of source of the White Nile and that dramatic struggle between Richard Burton and John Speke. The recent book by Candice Millard is good, but left me more...
This is a debut novel by a recent graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, a classmate of my friend’s daughter. While that influenced me to pick up this book, it was already on my radar, especially after seeing Ron Charles’s review in the Washington Post. When we meet Olga, she is an over-the-top wedding planner for the super-rich, charging high prices and finding ways to scam...
This book was recommended by Dorothy and it gave me hours of pleasure as I listened to it. Annie Wilkins found herself in dire straits financially in the mid-1950s, having just recovered from a serious illness, and was told by her doctor that she would no longer be physically fit to run her farm. She had no family and he suggested she give up the farm that had been in her family for three...
This little treat of a book opens with the arrival of a flying saucer near the Chateau Saint-Antoine vineyard in 1954 which transformed that year’s ordinary Beaujolais into an extraordinary wine. The vintner was never able to reproduce such a remarkable vintage again. Then we cut to 2017 in an old building in Paris where because of unusual circumstances four people celebrate when one finds...
This novella is small, but powerful and unfortunately, it’s timely as well. It is set in 1985 and though times are hard in Ireland, it’s almost Christmas and folks are in a happy mood. The central character, Bill Furlong, has quite the backstory, and is surely facing a difficult economic future. His mother became pregnant while working in the household of Mrs. Wilson, the wealthy...