Review: "A Little History of Literature" by John Sutherland (Digital ARC from NetGalley)

I'm a big fan of the Little Histories books from Yale Press: my son and I used EH Gombrich's A Little History of the World for homeschool.  This one is a short survey of Literature, by John Sutherland. The book is geared to younger readers, but I'd say age 12 and up would be the appropriate age--any adult will enjoy this work as well.

As an English major myself, I felt Sutherland did a pretty good job of being comprehensive, as a far as covering most of the major literary movements. Of course, one cannot talk about every author that ever set quill to papyrus!  He covers the classics of world literature, English literature, and American lit as well, and does a pretty good job of touching on the important highlights. He starts with a rudimentary explanation of myth,  "Myth always contains a truth,which we understand before we can clearly see it or explain it."  I felt throughout the book, Sutherland makes simple statements about whatever is being explored; he makes these observations himself, or quotes other experts and authors. This is the kind of book that will lead readers to other works, both of literature and of criticism. It is so important for kids to read and understand what true criticism is about these days. The idea of criticism has becomes so pejorative.

I didn't necessarily agree with every single thought the author has (Mr. Knightley, dull?! Never!), but overall, I enjoyed his style of writing, and he makes it clear that he is also a reader with opinions. He even addresses the EL James 50 Shades of Grey phenom: a "bonkbuster"), and popular lit vs prize winners.  Other noteworthy topics: the Sagas, Anglo-Saxon literature, interactive literature, digital books, and poetry.

The author, John Sutherland, is a professor in London, and there were a few words that were clearly regional to England. This would be a great book for a middle school age child who is truly interested in reading and literature to read and discuss with an adult. I plan on giving it to my son to read as well. He is almost 13. It is not a difficult read, the prose style is conversational and often humorous.  This could give anyone adult or teen, a leg up in English classes, or at a cocktail party!

5 stars!

Longbourn is a must read book for Austen fans!

I have been so excited by two books this year: Burial Rites by Hannah Kent (which I am almost done reading), and Longbourn by Jo Baker.  I was so fortunate to be offered an ARC of Longbourn! It was a wonderful, engaging and lovely read.

Ms. Baker's beautiful writing (and much like Kent's Burial Rites) evokes a gorgeous and atmospheric sense of place: : Longbourn,  the family home of the Bennet family is located in the picturesque county of Hertfordshire in the English countryside outside of London.  The story of the servants of Longbourn begins with one of these exquisite passages of Baker's, a word painting really, that describes in lush and fragrant detail, the area around the estate, from the sheep on the hills, to the Bennet daughters asleep in their beds.  Each chapter begins with a line from Pride and Prejudice, giving subtle hints of the time setting.  Baker has taken the lovely old bones of Pride and Prejudice, and re-clothed them with a different skin. And while the time is completely contemporary to P&P, Baker really let's us know the people she portrays in her novel, in a way that is much less guarded than the original.

We are introduced to the hard working house maid, Sarah, who is close in age to the Bennet girls, and almost considers them friends. The family lends her books and gives Sarah their cast off gowns, but of course, she will never be actual friends with these young women, because in the English class system at this time, proper young ladies were not friends with the servants.  I would highly recommend actually reading Pride and Prejudice first, if you have never done so, it really enriches your experience with what Ms. Baker has done here.  Sarah's story, and that of her fellow servants, mirrors that of the Bennet family.  In fact, we see that the servants living at Longbourn are a family of sorts.

Ms. Baker is able to address issues that Miss Austen couldn't even dream of discussing this directly in her own novels, although they were definitely issues that were spoken of privately and secretly at the time. The use of slaves and the abolitionist movement among the county's families, illegitimate children, homosexuality, and even addiction is spoken of throughout this novel.  Ptolemy Bingley is a favorite servant of the senior Mr. Bingley from their West Indies sugar cane plantation, and one can't help but wonder if he IS a Bingley, and not just in name.  Sarah has never met a black man before, but she is both impressed with his physical beauty as well as his regal bearing and charming personality.  Sarah is young (about 15) and is learning about men and women and the attractions between them, via the Bennet girls romantic antics and courtships, as well as the young men she meets herself:: Ptolemy, Mr. Wickham, Mr. Darcy, and James Smith, the latest servant addition to the Bennet's household.  Jame Smith is introduced as a shadowy, mysterious figure, but not a menacing one, a welcome one. And Sarah, sensitive, intelligent and curious, is intrigued.

I absolutely loved this novel. I am a big Jane Austen fan, but not one to read the many "sequels" and take offs inspired by her works.  In fact, I did read Austenland (Shannon Hale) when it came out five or so years ago., but was sort of bored with it. I want to escape too, but that as a plot does not interest me. Nor do books like Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife (Linda Berdoll), which are merely new takes on the same characters in the books: I understand that they are beloved by many, and we want to know what happens after the last page, but this kind of fan fiction does not keep my interest:  I only want to "hear" Miss Austen's voice, and that cannot be duplicated. But what Ms. Baker does here is so very different, in her imagining a completely new cast of characters, not just cut out servants standing in the background waiting to interact, with no real hearts of their own. Ms. Baker gives each and every one a story, a past, hopes, joys and problems, of course; fleshing them out in a realistic and relate-able manner.  This is the kind of novel that causes me to read aloud to my completely disinterested husband, and he listens, because whether or not he can relate or appreciate what I'm reading, he can see that I am in love with the prose and the story.

This book made me cry--and that's a good thing. It was a very moving story, and I couldn't wait to pick the book up again after a break from it. This one will definitely be on my list of favorite for now on. And I will definitely be reading more Jo Baker in the future! What a happy discovery!

Review of The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P by Adelle Waldman

I went into reading this book feeling excited, because there has been some talk about this book. I saw it chosen as some online magazines "book group" pick, but have since forgotten which one it actually was, even though that is truly what prompted me to pick up this novel. That and comparisons between Waldman and Jane Austen. Well, I guess I'm here to say Ms.Waldman has a long way to go, although it wasn't a bad start, either.

Nathaniel is a writer, living in Brooklyn. He's been struggling for years, but works hard. His parents, Romanian Jewish immigrants, worked hard to give him an American life, and he pretty much seems to have realized that dream: he attended Harvard, pursued a writing career, and eventually, moved to New York City and sold his first book. Glowing in that recent success, Nate starts to wonder: why doesn't he have a girlfriend? What went wrong with the old girlfriends? We soon get a lot of insight into why things might not have worked out with his previous girlfriends, as well as the one he meets in the course of the book.

I will totally admit to having a preconceived notion of what this book was going to be like, and fully admit to being wrong.  I did not have any clue it was going to be a discourse on why no woman would never be good enough for Nate's friends. Yes, his friends. Because even though Nate is fairly attractive in his own right, who you hang out(in Brooklyn!)with is nearly of equal or possibly greater importance as far as how attractive you might be to the opposite sex.  Nate's friends might leave a bit to be desired, but with this novel, everyone is a sort of caricature of themselves, so the fact that we meet a very one dimensional Jason, who eventually does show a more sensitive side, is relatively unimportant. The truth is, for Nate, it is all how the current woman looks on his arm, and to his friends. With Nate, appearances, at least at the start of the novel, are everything.

I enjoyed reading this book, although at times, I felt frustrated. Waldman tries a little too much to "think like a man."  Nate does have some pretty bad habits in his thinking and his behavior, and you root for him, but wish that maybe, he could change just a little, and learn from his mistakes.

Definitely an interesting debut for Adelle Waldman.

Review of Nancy Horan's Under the Wide and Starry Sky (Fanny Van De Grift and Robert Louis Stevenson)

My review is based on a Netgalley electronic ARC.

This is a fictionalized imagining of what the relationship between Robert Louis Stevenson and his wife and soul mate, Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne. Their lives together are well documented, and they both wrote extensively--obviously, RLS wrote all the time, and as many people of the time were often separated by distance and oceans, and often for life, they were both enthusiastic letter writers. Fanny also wrote some fiction, and she kept extensive diaries and journals, for her own personal reasons, as well as for Stevenson to refer to. 

Fanny meets Stevenson in the French countryside at a sort of summer artist's colony when she fled the US in an attempt to leave her philandering husband with her children to try to pursue a better life. RLS was instantly attracted to Fanny and her verve for life. Having been sickly all his life (tuberculosis), he was entranced by her strength and outgoing ways, especially for a woman of the time period.

This book documents their relationship and life together from day 1. While they loved being together, theirs was not a marriage without its troubles. Both struggled with periods of depression and artistic frustration. Fanny gave up a lot of the things she wanted to do to accompany RLS to various spa like sanatoriums in Europe and the US and Canada. When he was well enough to write, he did nothing but. Fanny managed the household, dealt with his menagerie of crazy friends, and put aside her own artistic pursuits to help him achieve success. 

The writing in this novel was lovely. Horan does not shy away from the tough issues that clouded the times and the life of the people we meet in this novel. From France and Belgium, to the US and finally to the South Seas, where he settled with his family on the Samoan island of Upolu. There was nice balance between the two main characters; I felt like I got to know both Fanny and RLS quite well. I think this book will be well received.

A Love Letter (review of The Bookstore by Deborah Meyler)

This book is a loveletter both to New York City, to individually owned bookstores crammed to the ceilings with used books. Esme garland (great name! Esme is an English girl, a grad student on scholarship working on her masters in Art History on scholarship at Columbia(a Froster schorlaship at that!). We meet her as she struggles with the sudden realization that she is pregnant,

Esme is a female character that defies description. She is not a chick lit character, obsessed with makeup and shopping and "boys." Nor is she a truly nerdy girl. She loves what she loves and who she loves, and is serious and thoughtful about people. She is open, in a way I think most native New Yorkers are not. She seeks the good in people, a quality rare in anyone these days, in our cynical socirty. But she is not a dupe, nor is she stupid. She is kind. 

Esme's story centers around her studies and her job at The Owl, a small, independently owned boosktore that buys and sells mostly used books, and most predominantly, her pregnancy and relationship with the father of that baby. meyler does a wonderful job of letting you get to know Esme and her friends. Never forced, the author carefully reveals the thoughts of Esme and her feelings about those around her so that finally, you feel like you really KNOW Esme. And adore her, as well as her friends. 

This book was not perfect, it had a few weak plot moments that I wished were different, but I really loved reading it. It was entertaining, and I was swept up into Esme's life. A perfect little summer read.

Mary Anning: Female Fossil Hunter

I have recently (in the last couple of years) been fascinated by the life of Mary Anning, a female fossil hunter who was born in 1799 in Lyme Regis, Dorset, England.

From a poor family, but with a dreamer father who was a fossil hunter himself, Mary grew up exploring the rocky and often dangerous coast that was right outside her door. Her family suffered the loss of several children, and though her father was a cabinet maker by trade, he searched for and sold "curies" to tourists, and his children, Joseph and Mary often joined him on these searches. Mary continued with her fossil hunting after her father died. It definitely generated income from them, both from the souvenir business and selling to serious collectors of paleontological specimens at the time.

I have read three different books specifically about Mary, two are novels, and one a biography of her life that reads like fiction. And her life was very much like a Dickens novel (and he was also interested in Mary, and even wrote about her life in his literary magazine, All The Year Round, and certainly had elements of an Austen heroine's struggle as well.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel: A "wow" kind of novel.

Wow--an amazing novel. Please don't be put off by the odd narrative style, you get used to it quickly and it really works for this particular book. I cannot wait to read Bring Up The Bodies. Mantel most certainly deserved the Man Booker prize. Really great reading.

I already enjoy reading both novels and non-fiction regarding the court of King Henry VIII, so it does help top already have a familiarity with the cast of characters portrayed. But it is not a necessity, and I often refer to the internet while reading about a seriously intense and large cast of characters, to more easily expand my knowledge of them. This seems to be the first time I remember being exposed to the Holy Maid of Kent, a nun named Elizabeth Barton who claimed to communicate with angels, the dead, and see the future. A brilliant device by Mantel. She also turns the usual portrayal of Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell on its head, and very successfully.

I can't recommend this novel enough, especially to fans of the Tudor court. Wonderful writing and a beautifully told story.