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3.72 AVERAGE
3.72 AVERAGE
I always love a good historical novel, especially about WWI. Engaging female characters, interesting plot. I liked how the author examined women at different ages and stations in life, their values and expectations. Though her characters were sometimes judgmental, I didn’t think she was as an author.
I would have liked more examination of Daniel’s character, though. I’m still not sure if the author meant for him to be gay or was being terribly innocent about his love for Craigmore. I would have appreciated the author dealing with it more like Celeste’s pregnancy: clearly there were societal implications, but there would have been individual, emotional implications that forced characters out of their comfort zones. I wanted a bit more of that.
I would have liked more examination of Daniel’s character, though. I’m still not sure if the author meant for him to be gay or was being terribly innocent about his love for Craigmore. I would have appreciated the author dealing with it more like Celeste’s pregnancy: clearly there were societal implications, but there would have been individual, emotional implications that forced characters out of their comfort zones. I wanted a bit more of that.
I would probably enjoy a movie of this story more than I enjoyed the book. Can't say exactly why, but the book just never really engaged me except when it annoyed me for being too real. I had thought I was getting an uplifting, light-hearted novel from the cover and the title. I didn't find that to be the case. For one thing, the majority of the book seems to happen during, not before, the war. Well-written but just an instance of my expectation being one thing and reality being another.
This one took a while to finish - the first 300 pages were slow and dry. (However, very descriptive, and they would make a great movie.) The last 170 pages were great, and full of emotion, as everything clicked into place and the plot started rolling forward. Then it was a great ride!
Solidly written book, I did enjoy it. Looking foward to more by this author.
Lovely lovely. Perfect Sunday morning finish with tears and everything.
Not sure why this book rubbed me the wrong way. Perhaps it is my projections and assumptions that the author is romanticizing pre-war England. Perhaps it is my personal feelings that class and women's issues have evolved so much and our understanding and current discussions so much beyond how they are presented in this book. Thomas Hardy and Charlotte Bronte explored a similar world, albeit it their novels took place earlier in time but it felt more honest coming for them as contemporaries of the time. Downton Abbey is a current serial fiction I enjoy but the medium of TV makes it easier to show the hypocrisies and class struggles of the time as a commentary. We can laugh at and with the ladies of Downton Abbey. This book feels like a false remembering or a longing for a time that never existed.
I wish I could give this 3.5 stars. I loved Major Pettigrew's Last Stand. At times this felt a little slow, but I still really enjoyed it.
– It was the cheapest kind of rebuke, to call a woman ugly, but one to which small boys and grown men seemed equally quick to stoop when feeling challenged. –
– Surely one can write poetry and pursue a responsible career. –
– Despair had a way of making tea taste bad. –
– If the war could be won by the wearing of red, white and blue ribbons on one's hat...perhaps it would already be over. –
– She did not know how he could continue to just take the souls from people he knew and mix them about on his palette like a rude painter. For now it seemed to her that all his novels were filled with people he knew and had betrayed....'One is always careful to change the names, of course.' –
– Surely one can write poetry and pursue a responsible career. –
– Despair had a way of making tea taste bad. –
– If the war could be won by the wearing of red, white and blue ribbons on one's hat...perhaps it would already be over. –
– She did not know how he could continue to just take the souls from people he knew and mix them about on his palette like a rude painter. For now it seemed to her that all his novels were filled with people he knew and had betrayed....'One is always careful to change the names, of course.' –