A Lady of Quality by Frances Hodgson Burnett

December 23, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. Project Gutenberg, 2012. Originally published 1896. 256 pgs. Free download. In 1690, the wife of Sir Jeoffry, Daphne, dies soon after giving birth to her ninth child. Her husband is disappointed with the birth of a ninth daughter and refuses contact with the baby, banishing Clorinda to the other side of the castle with her only living siblings, Anne and Barbara. Blessed with better health than either of her sisters, Clorinda grows up to be an […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Classics, Classics Club, Europe, Fiction, United Kingdom • Tags: Frances Hodgson Burnett

The Shuttle by Frances Hodgson Burnett

December 20, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. Project Gutenberg, 2012. Originally published 1906. 522 pgs. Free download. The book’s title refers to ships shuttling back and forth over the Atlantic, carrying wealthy Americans heiresses to England in search of titled husbands and impoverish, titled Englishmen in search of wealthy women. (Think Cora Crawley from “Downton Abbey” and her marriage to Lord Grantham.) According to Persephone Books, it would later be estimated that more than five hundred American women married titled foreigners and some […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Chunkster, Classics, Classics Club, Europe, Feminism, Fiction, New York, North America, Persephone Books, United States • Tags: Frances Hodgson Burnett

The Brothers by Asko Sahlberg

December 18, 2019 by Christina

Fiction — Kindle edition. Translated from the Finnish by Fleur Jeremiah and Emily Jeremiah. Peirene Press, 2012. Originally published 2010. 112 pgs. Library copy. Two brothers, Henrik and Erik, who fought on opposite sides of the war between Sweden and Russia in 1809 return to their small, family farm in the newly autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland. Both men lay claim to the mantel of “master” of the farm; both men must confront the olds wounds and animosity they carry […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Europe, Fiction, Finnish, Peirene Press, Scandinavia, Translated • Tags: Asko Sahlberg, Emily Jeremiah, Fleur Jeremiah

Maybe This Time by Alois Hotschnig

December 16, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. Translated from the German by Tess Lewis. Peirene Press, 2011. Originally published 2006. 110 pgs. Library copy.  The publisher of Peirene Press, Meike Ziervogel, compared Hotschnig to Franz Kafka in her short introduction to this short story collection, writing that “here we have a Kafkaesque sense of alienation – not to mention narrative experiments galore!”. Having never read Kafka, I cannot comment on the similarity between Hotschnig and Kafka. What I can comment on is the […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Europe, Fiction, German, Peirene Press, Short Stories, Translated • Tags: Alois Hotschnig, Tess Lewis

They Knew Mr Knight by Dorothy Whipple

December 13, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. Persephone Books, 2000. Originally published 1934. 496 pgs. Purchased.  The Blakes are considered to be a typical English family: Celia is a homemaker with three children – Freda, Ruth, and Douglas – while Thomas holds down a job at a Leicester engineering business and serves as the breadwinner for his wife and children, his widowed mother, his unemployed brother, and his unmarried sister. Yet, the family has long believed they could be more and have more […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Chunkster, Europe, Fiction, Persephone Books, United Kingdom • Tags: Dorothy Whipple

Wife in Name Only by Charlotte M. Brame

December 6, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. Project Gutenberg, 2012. Originally published 1876. 137 pgs. Free download. Comprised of thirty short chapters, Brame’s book can be roughly divided into three parts to follow the shifts in who the main character is. In Part One, a provincial doctor with a failing practice aids a titled Englishman traveling with his ill, pregnant wife. The two are traveling under an assumed name because they married without permission from the man’s father and do not want their […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Classics, Classics Club, Europe, Fiction, United Kingdom • Tags: Charlotte M. Brame

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

December 4, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Random House, 2009. 349 pgs. Purchased. In August 1974, New Yorkers awaken to find a mysterious tightrope walker is traversing between the Twin Towers on a wire suspended a quarter mile above the ground. No one knows who the (wo)man might be; no one knows if this is a sales stunt or a suicide plan. In McCann’s novel, though, the tightrope walker is not the focus. Instead, the performer’s daring feat serves as a backdrop for exploring […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Book Club, Fiction, New York, North America, United States • Tags: Colum McCann

The Time Machine by H.G. Wells

December 2, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – audiobook. Read by Kelsey Grammer. Apple, 2018. Originally published 1985. 4 hours, 7 minutes. Free download. Identified by the narrator as simply “The Time Traveler”, a Victorian English scientist and gentleman inventor living in Richmond, Surry is invited to a weekly dinner party to share about his latest invention. At this particular dinner party, the narrator recounts the Traveler’s revelation that he has built a machine capable of carrying a person through time. Encouraged by the audience’s response, […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Audiobook, Classics, Classics Club, Dystopia, Europe, Fiction, Science Fiction, United Kingdom • Tags: H.G. Wells

2666 by Roberto Bolaño

November 29, 2019 by Christina

Fiction — print. Translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer. Picador, 2008. Originally published 2004. 898 pgs. Purchased. In the introduction to Bolaño’s novel, which was published posthumously, his editor explains that Bolaño intended for the novel to be published as a five novel series rather than as one colossus tome. Up until Part 5, I wondered if his heirs and publisher had done him a disservice in publishing this collection as one novel. Each part felt standalone; the content […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Chunkster, Europe, Fiction, Germany, Mexico, North America, Spanish, Translated • Tags: Roberto Bolaño

Young Master Darcy by Pamela Aidan

November 25, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. Wytherngate Press, 2010. 122 pgs. Purchased. Set at Christmastime in 1797, Aidan’s novella helps to explain how Fitzwilliam Darcy would become the prideful man tormented by the unsuitability of his love for Elizabeth Bennet. Arriving home from his first term at Eton, thirteen-year-old Darcy learns his mother is dying and desires to make her last Christmas a memorable and happy one. Darcy is determined to carry out her wishes, but he is also a boy toeing […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Austen Inspired, Europe, Fiction, United Kingdom • Tags: Pamela Aidan

Chasing the King of Hearts by Hanna Krall

November 20, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Translated from the Polish by Philip Boehm. Peirene Press, 2013. Originally published 2006. 176 pgs. Purchased. The title of this novella comes from the actions of the story’s main character, Izolda Regenberg, who is singularity driven to chase down her “King of Hearts”, her husband, Shayek. As the situation in the Warsaw ghetto grew more desperate, Izolda hatched a plan for herself, Shayek, and his parents and sister to hide in Polish homes outside the ghetto. Only […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Europe, Fiction, Genocide, Holocaust, Peirene Press, Poland, Polish, Translated • Tags: Hanna Krall, Philip Boehm

Dracula by Bram Stoker

November 18, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. Top Five Books, 2011. Originally published 1897. 398 pgs. Purchased.  Told in a series of diary entries, ship logs, telegrams, and phonograph recordings, Stoker’s novel recounts the efforts of Jonathan Harker, Lucy Westenra, Mina Murry, John Seward, Quincey Morris, Arthur Holmwood, and Abraham Von Helsing to rid themselves and the world of Count Dracula, a vampire who has left his castle in Transylvania and traveled to England in the hopes of finding new victims and spreading […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Classics, Classics Club, Europe, Fantasy, Fiction, United Kingdom • Tags: Bram Stoker