Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by bdietrich
Thornyhold by Mary Stewart
2.0
Thornyhold has to have been one of the lamest and most boring books I have ever read. The entire thing is exposition, and the only semblance of a climax (and any action at all) happens in the last ten to fifteen pages. Lauren Willig, one of my favorite authors, recommended this book on her website, so I was prepared for something witty and dashing, but this lacked greatly in it all. I don't generally care if a story is told in the past tense, but Thornyhold was the exception. From the beginning, I was constantly wondering why it was told in the past tense. The frame tale, which is finally explained in the last half page, is quite lame and certainly misplaced with the rest of the book.
The only reason this gets two stars is because of the sociological aspects of the story. It takes place in the late 1940s, when England is still in the throes of WWII rationing. I hadn't ever really thought about rationing after the War, until after I had read Sarah Lyall's The Anglo Files: A Field Guide to the British (non-fiction and hilarious), when she talks of moving to Britain in the 1990s, as the UK was just beginning to move beyond the rationing mindset. As such, Thornyhold was a good primary source of life in Britain post-WWII.
The only reason this gets two stars is because of the sociological aspects of the story. It takes place in the late 1940s, when England is still in the throes of WWII rationing. I hadn't ever really thought about rationing after the War, until after I had read Sarah Lyall's The Anglo Files: A Field Guide to the British (non-fiction and hilarious), when she talks of moving to Britain in the 1990s, as the UK was just beginning to move beyond the rationing mindset. As such, Thornyhold was a good primary source of life in Britain post-WWII.