Category: Uncategorized
-
Mrs Martell
It takes courage and skill to write a novel where the central character is thoroughly unlikable, whilst ensuring that the book remains enjoyable, but that’s just what Elizabeth Eliot manages to do in her 1953 story Mrs Martel – and she does it extremely well. Rescued from obscurity by Scott at Furrowed Middlebrow (read his…
-
The Diary of a Provincial Lady
Today I’m copying over a slightly amended post for today ‘s offering for The 1930 Club is a slightly amended version of EM Delafield’s The Diary of a Provinicial Lady, which has become a firm favourite since I first wrote about it way back in 2012. At that point I had a Virago hard-backed edition…
-
Cats, Books and Squares!
Another bookshop post I’m afraid… because I’ve been staying in London for a few days looking after my younger daughter’s cat while she and her boyfriend went ‘Up North’ to see his family, and London is full of bookshops, so my ‘No New Books’ resolution has gone by the board! But London is full of…
-
A Novel Way Of Making A Living!
Barbara Buncle is a frumpy, middle-aged spinster who knows nothing of life outside the village of Silverstream. She lives quietly in the cottage where she was once once a small fat child in a basketwork pram, and her old nurse Dorcas is now cook, maid and parlour maid. But Miss Buncle has a secret which…
-
Mum, Memory, and Jane Austen
My mother rings. She is reading Jane Austen (again) and would I like to join her (again). My mother reads a lot of Jane Austen – she always did. But her reading habits have changed. Once upon a time she would read (and discuss) Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, Wilkie Collins, Walter Scott, the Brontes, George…
The Book Trunk 