The Book Trunk

20thC

  • The Constant Nymph

    I’m not quite sure what to make of The Constant Nymph, by Margaret Kennedy, and I’m not even sure I like it – but despite my reservations I sat up until 3 am to finish it, so it can’t be… Continue reading

  • Is This Heroine Unlikable?

    It takes courage to write a novel with an unlikable heroine – but that’s exactly what Noel Streatfeild set out to do in It Pays To Be Good. “A tendency in my other efforts to make everybody lovable, has caused me,… Continue reading

  • Mary Stewart Reading Week

    Next month sees the centenary of the birth of novelist Mary Stewart, so I’ve volunteered to host a Reading Week in her honour – mainly because she wrote what has to be one the best ever versions ever of the… Continue reading

  • The Blush

    Here we have another Virago (after all, LibraryThing’s All Virago All August is still running). The Blush, is a collection of 12 short stories by Elizabeth Taylor who, unlike Lisa St Aubin de Teran in my last post, could never, ever be… Continue reading

  • A Virago for August!

    “We are a photograph, the same photograph of every year with me a summer older, so a summer taller: lanky Joan, outgrowing the world around her. It is always Selsey Beach, a stretch of bare sand on the South Coast,… Continue reading