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A review by sadie_slater
Madensky Square by Eva Ibbotson
1.0
My first DNF of 2018 was Eva Ibbotson's Madensky Square, which I think I bought years ago when I was going to Vienna on holiday but never got round to reading. I was in the mood for something fluffy and comforting after the grimness of The Power, and thought I'd give it a go as I'm fairly sure someone recommended Ibbotson when I was asking for comfort read recommendations a while ago.
Unfortunately, while I loved the pre-World-War-1 Viennese setting and liked the variety of characters populating the eponymous square, there were too many things I didn't like. The central character, Susanna, is utterly contemptuous of plain women and I found her sympathy for the poor men they have obviously trapped into marriage very hard to take, and almost gave up after reading a scene where she persuades a vegetarian to eat a meaty, offal-heavy Linzer speciality. The final straw, as so often with romances or books close to the romance genre*, was Susanna's lover's high-handed behaviour - demanding she undress for him, "allowing" her to sit up and drink a glass of wine after an afternoon in bed together, and finally choosing a piece of fruit for her to eat instead of letting her choose it herself - and her total acceptance, even enjoyment of this behaviour rather than slapping him and telling him to stop being such a patronising arse. So I stopped reading about 40% of the way through.
*and also such universally-acknowledged classics as Jane Eyre, though I'm not convinced that Charlotte Brontë actually intended readers to think Rochester was really all that and a bag of chips, except possibly by comparison to St John Rivers who does make pretty much anyone else seem like a good prospect.
Unfortunately, while I loved the pre-World-War-1 Viennese setting and liked the variety of characters populating the eponymous square, there were too many things I didn't like. The central character, Susanna, is utterly contemptuous of plain women and I found her sympathy for the poor men they have obviously trapped into marriage very hard to take, and almost gave up after reading a scene where she persuades a vegetarian to eat a meaty, offal-heavy Linzer speciality. The final straw, as so often with romances or books close to the romance genre*, was Susanna's lover's high-handed behaviour - demanding she undress for him, "allowing" her to sit up and drink a glass of wine after an afternoon in bed together, and finally choosing a piece of fruit for her to eat instead of letting her choose it herself - and her total acceptance, even enjoyment of this behaviour rather than slapping him and telling him to stop being such a patronising arse. So I stopped reading about 40% of the way through.
*and also such universally-acknowledged classics as Jane Eyre, though I'm not convinced that Charlotte Brontë actually intended readers to think Rochester was really all that and a bag of chips, except possibly by comparison to St John Rivers who does make pretty much anyone else seem like a good prospect.