A rich, moving, and satisfying tale of a woman engaged at last with the great mysteries of love and life. Beautifully...
An incandescent debut, and bestseller in Britain, luminously details transforming encounters that change a lonely spinster's life when she decides to live in Venice.
Julia Garnet, a retired teacher who has never been in love, seems to belong to that group of disappointed women trapped in the bleak lives that Anita Brookner's readers know so well. But Miss Garnet, soon Julia to everyone she meets, is more robust and adventurous. And she's not exactly conventionally middle-class either: she's a communist and an atheist who disapproves of wealth, religion, and sensual beauty. But much changes when Harriet, the teacher she's lived with in London, dies and Julia decides to go to Venice for six months. There, as she steps off her water taxi at the Campo Angelo Raffael to move into the apartment she's rented, she notices, high up on the Campo's church, statues of an angel, a boy, and a dog. She soon learns that they represent the story from the Apocrypha of Tobias and the Angel Raphael, who exorcised the demons from Tobias's wife Sara (the ancient story is told in sections paralleling the changes in Julia's life). Formerly shy and reserved, Julia now makes friends with her landlady and her son Nicco; an American couple; a charismatic monsignor; and the handsome Carlo, an art historian with whom she falls in love. As she explores Venice, she meets the mysterious twins Toby and Sara, who are restoring a 14th-century chapel where they've found a painting of the Angel Raphael. When both it and Toby disappear, Julia, though by now disappointed in love, rallies to find the painting, help Sara, and live to the full in the city that has taught her how "to learn and enjoy."
A rich, moving, and satisfying tale of a woman engaged at last with the great mysteries of love and life. Beautifully wrought and impressively wise.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7867-0823-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
Entertaining and thoroughly engrossing.
Another reboot of Jane Austen?!? Hadlow pulls it off in a smart, heartfelt novel devoted to bookish Mary, middle of the five sisters in Pride and Prejudice.
Part 1 recaps Pride and Prejudice through Mary’s eyes, climaxing with the humiliating moment when she sings poorly at a party and older sister Elizabeth goads their father to cut her off in front of everyone. The sisters’ friend Charlotte, who marries the unctuous Mr. Collins after Elizabeth rejects him, emerges as a pivotal character; her conversations with Mary are even tougher-minded here than those with Elizabeth depicted by Austen. In Part 2, two years later, Mary observes on a visit that Charlotte is deferential but remote with her husband; she forms an intellectual friendship with the neglected and surprisingly nice Mr. Collins that leads to Charlotte’s asking Mary to leave. In Part 3, Mary finds refuge in London with her kindly aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner. Mrs. Gardiner is the second motherly woman, after Longbourn housekeeper Mrs. Hill, to try to undo the psychic damage wrought by Mary’s actual mother, shallow, status-obsessed Mrs. Bennet, by building up her confidence and buying her some nice clothes (funded by guilt-ridden Lizzy). Sure enough, two suitors appear: Tom Hayward, a poetry-loving lawyer who relishes Mary’s intellect but urges her to also express her feelings; and William Ryder, charming but feckless inheritor of a large fortune, whom naturally Mrs. Bennet loudly favors. It takes some maneuvering to orchestrate the estrangement of Mary and Tom, so clearly right for each other, but debut novelist Hadlow manages it with aplomb in a bravura passage describing a walking tour of the Lake District rife with seething complications furthered by odious Caroline Bingley. Her comeuppance at Mary’s hands marks the welcome final step in our heroine’s transformation from a self-doubting wallflower to a vibrant, self-assured woman who deserves her happy ending. Hadlow traces that progression with sensitivity, emotional clarity, and a quiet edge of social criticism Austen would have relished.
Entertaining and thoroughly engrossing.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-12941-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
