Light historical romance with the benefit of a sterling pedigree.
For Jane Austen lovers, this latest take on the Darcy clan offers an amusing addition to the literature of Regency London’s mores.
Aston’s previous Darcy novels (The Exploits and Adventures of Miss Alathea Darcy, not reviewed, etc.) concern the former Miss Bennett and Mr. Darcy’s five daughters—this story takes on the exploits of a few cousins. At 19, Cassandra Darcy is in possession of rare beauty, a fine fortune and a very un-ladylike talent for painting. And though she has all she could ask for, she is under the thumb of her pious stepfather, Mr. Partington. Cassandra’s future is thrown into doubt, though, when Henry Lisser, a German landscape painter brought in to paint the family estate, begins a flirtation with naughty cousin Belle. Everyone believes it was Cassandra kissing Lisser behind the bushes, and to save Belle’s already shaky reputation, Cassandra agrees to go to Bath to reflect on her wickedness. While there, she falls in love with James Eyre, and the two run away to London. But when James halts the marriage plans to negotiate a rich dowry (and too late, passionate Cassandra has already slept with him!), she spurns James, and in turn becomes a social pariah. Enter dashing cousin Horatio Darcy, a lawyer representing her stepfather, to offer Cassandra two choices: Repair to the country and live a life of spinsterhood with the vile Mrs. Harris, or become destitute. Cassandra chooses to make her way in London as a portraitist, but during her first day of freedom makes a monumental error in judgment—she takes rooms with a procuress who intends to turn Cassandra into Lord Usborne’s mistress. Cassandra escapes life in the demimonde with the help of her cousin Camilla, who, with the help of kind Mr. Lisser, sets Cassandra up with her own painting studio. Austenites may balk at this racy, wholly 21st-century reinvention of Austen (Lord Frederick has an eye for men, our teen heroine is no virgin and Aston’s feminist motifs are a bit heavy handed), but all in all, much enjoyment can be had from Cassandra’s attempts to find love and artistic happiness.
Light historical romance with the benefit of a sterling pedigree.Pub Date: March 7, 2006
ISBN: 0-7432-7490-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
Intelligent, reflective, satisfying fiction from an old master.
Veteran Godwin’s latest (Grief Cottage, 2017, etc.) tracks a half-century friendship between two very different yet oddly compatible women.
The dean and dorm mistress of Lovegood College pair Feron Hood and Merry Jellicoe as roommates in 1958, hoping that sunny, outgoing Merry will be a steadying influence on Feron, who has recently lost her alcoholic mother and fled from an abusive stepfather. The girls do indeed form a lasting bond even though Merry leaves after a single semester to run the family tobacco farm when her parents are killed in a plane crash. They have both taken their first steps as writers under the guidance of Literature and Composition teacher Maud Petrie, and during their mostly long-distance relationship, Feron will be goaded to write three novels by Merry’s occasional magazine publications; she is at work on a fourth about their friendship as the book closes. The two women rarely meet in person, and Feron is bad about answering letters, but we see that they remain important in each other’s thoughts. Godwin unfolds their stories in a meditative, elliptical fashion, circling back to reveal defining moments that include tragic losses, unexpected love, and nurturing friendships. Self-contained, uncommunicative Feron seems the more withholding character, but Merry voices one of the novel’s key insights: “Everyone has secrets no one else should know” while Feron reveals essential truths about her life in her novels. Maud Petrie and Lovegood dean Susan Fox, each of whom has secrets of her own, continue as strong presences for Feron and Merry, who have been shaped by Lovegood more enduringly than they might have anticipated. Feron’s courtly Uncle Rowan and blunt Aunt Mabel, Merry’s quirky brother Ritchie, devoted manager Mr. Jack, and a suave Navy veteran with intimate links to both women are among the many nuanced characters drawn by Godwin with their human contradictions and complexities on full display. A closing letter from Dean Fox movingly reiterates the novel’s conjoined themes of continuity and change.
Intelligent, reflective, satisfying fiction from an old master.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63286-822-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
A bold attempt, nevertheless, by a gifted writer whose own future looms promisingly indeed.
A compelling protagonist and a lyrical style grounded in precise observation of the physical world: these are the hallmarks of Idaho author Doerr’s complex, ambitious first novel.
As in the stories of his highly praised debut (The Shell Collector, 2002), Doerr explores the tensions between scientific objectivity and emotional vulnerability—here in the story of David Winkler, a trained hydrologist whose understanding of predictability in natural process is unsettled by mysteries that unfold from his own nature. For David experiences prophetic dreams of mischance occurring in both humdrum and catastrophic forms. We first meet him on an airplane when, at age 59, he’s returning to the US from 25 years of self-exile and servitude in the Caribbean Grenadine Islands. Working through extended flashbacks that comprise most of the text here, Doerr patiently fills in the blanks. Growing up a scholarly, solitary youth in Anchorage, Alaska, David “dreamed” his chance meeting with the woman he would wed—then, finding her unhappily married, persuaded her to accompany him to a new life in Ohio. Fathering a daughter (Grace), then dreaming the flood in which he himself accidentally drowns her, David fled his marriage and future, booked passage on a Caribbean-bound steamer, then spent an embattled quarter-century laboring to return to obligations he had shed, meanwhile acquiring a new “family” and a second chance at happiness. About Grace possesses a seductive symbolic intensity, and abounds with gorgeous descriptions and metaphors (“The sea teething” on a coral reef; “the million distant candles of the stars”). But it’s much too long, and is significantly marred by its climactic momentum toward a reconciliation that simply isn’t very credible. Its protagonist’s loneliness, regret, and guilt are painfully palpable, and go a long way toward making this risky book work—but, in the end, aren’t enough.
A bold attempt, nevertheless, by a gifted writer whose own future looms promisingly indeed.Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2004
ISBN: 0-7432-6182-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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