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3.82 AVERAGE
3.82 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
A Century of Books- 1922
A wonderful story of friendship and love. Four women, who begin as strangers, carrying their own inner struggles (loneliness, fear, helplessness) spend one month together at a beautiful villa on the sea in Italy. The ocean, sky, flowers, air slowly helps each woman see her value and how her own inner self had held her back. This is a classic.
A wonderful story of friendship and love. Four women, who begin as strangers, carrying their own inner struggles (loneliness, fear, helplessness) spend one month together at a beautiful villa on the sea in Italy. The ocean, sky, flowers, air slowly helps each woman see her value and how her own inner self had held her back. This is a classic.
hopeful
lighthearted
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
lighthearted
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
funny
lighthearted
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
'The Enchanted April' is a delightful, beautiful, and breezy read. It's an ideal vacation read and a book I can already see myself re-reading. Written in 1922, four years after WWI and three years after Arnim's disastrous, acrimonious second marriage, 'The Enchanted April' is based on the premise that women deserve to be happy. It follows four English women who impetuously respond to a newspaper ad to rent out a medieval castle in Portofino, Italy for the month of April. The women largely do not know each other and need this vacation to find happiness from different ways of being unhappy . Two young housewives, Lotty Wilkins and Rose Arbuthnot, are unhappy in their marriages for very different reasons and feel compelled to pursue their own happiness for once. Mrs Fisher is a 60yo widow stuck in the past, thinking that happiness can be re-discovered by getting away to re-read all the Victorian authors with whom her father kept company. Completing the gang, Lady Caroline "Scrap" Dester is a 28yo socialite who is the most beautiful lady men have laid eyes on. She wishes to escape all their gawking and grabbing, while reckoning with the fear that she's tawdry.
The rest of the novel is a gently beautiful comedy of manners - a hug for the soul if you will - that nevertheless explores important themes of beauty, love, happiness, and relationships. It explores these themes first through the women learning to relate to each other and honestly self-evaluate. It then transitions to exploring how these women will take these learnings back to their relationships, by introducing three male characters. These are the husbands of Lotty and Rose and the owner of the castle Thomas Briggs. Briggs serves as both a pseudo-son for Mrs Fisher and potential love interest for Caroline.
I truly think this novel was at least gently feminist for the time. But my biggest gripe with the novel is that almost all the women are successfully re-paired or newly paired off with men by the end of the novel - without the men having changed any of the aspects of their personality that either previously soured marriages or will predictably sour future marriages. This novel does a really good job of asking questions (Does love look like Rose's bosom desire to hold one husband or son close to feel loved for all of life? Does love also work inverted wonders, turning men into grabbers and gawkers rather than saints and angels - as Caroline's experience has attested? Can Mrs Fisher buck the societal expectation that personal development must cease as one ages?). And I think that's the novel's power: these questions are meant to stick with you when you finish, to ponder on and discuss with fellow readers. But the novel ends with the trip ending, the men having not really changed, and a concern that any newfound happiness will be crushed by the concerns of daily life that the pairs of lovers return to. Maybe this is also meant to be a question - if not the biggest question - that sticks with readers: once we've found happiness, how do we preserve it? But at the end of the day, it feels like Arnim asks more of her female than male characters and for that I have to ding a star. It also feels like the book would be more powerful to modern readers if some of the women - Caroline and maybe even Rose - didn't end up with men at the end. But this is a critique of how the book is read 100+ years later and doesn't affect my rating.
The rest of the novel is a gently beautiful comedy of manners - a hug for the soul if you will - that nevertheless explores important themes of beauty, love, happiness, and relationships. It explores these themes first through the women learning to relate to each other and honestly self-evaluate. It then transitions to exploring how these women will take these learnings back to their relationships, by introducing three male characters. These are the husbands of Lotty and Rose and the owner of the castle Thomas Briggs. Briggs serves as both a pseudo-son for Mrs Fisher and potential love interest for Caroline.
I truly think this novel was at least gently feminist for the time. But my biggest gripe with the novel is that almost all the women are successfully re-paired or newly paired off with men by the end of the novel - without the men having changed any of the aspects of their personality that either previously soured marriages or will predictably sour future marriages. This novel does a really good job of asking questions (Does love look like Rose's bosom desire to hold one husband or son close to feel loved for all of life? Does love also work inverted wonders, turning men into grabbers and gawkers rather than saints and angels - as Caroline's experience has attested? Can Mrs Fisher buck the societal expectation that personal development must cease as one ages?). And I think that's the novel's power: these questions are meant to stick with you when you finish, to ponder on and discuss with fellow readers. But the novel ends with the trip ending, the men having not really changed, and a concern that any newfound happiness will be crushed by the concerns of daily life that the pairs of lovers return to. Maybe this is also meant to be a question - if not the biggest question - that sticks with readers: once we've found happiness, how do we preserve it? But at the end of the day, it feels like Arnim asks more of her female than male characters and for that I have to ding a star. It also feels like the book would be more powerful to modern readers if some of the women - Caroline and maybe even Rose - didn't end up with men at the end. But this is a critique of how the book is read 100+ years later and doesn't affect my rating.
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
reflective
relaxing
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
funny
hopeful
relaxing
slow-paced