A review by foggy_rosamund
Mariana by Monica Dickens

2.0

My mum leant this to me to read as while I was suffering from sinusitis. I wanted something light, and I suppose that is what I got! She likes it a lot, and kept asking me where I was in the story, and laughing about the different scenes. So I feel rather guilty to have not liked it very much. We begin with Mary as a child, visiting her wealthier relations at their country house, hero-worshipping her cousin Denys. The story is framed by two chapters in which Mary is afraid her husband may have been killed: in between lies the whole story of Mary's life, up to the point where she meets her husband. Monica Dickens writes with charm and humour, and this sustained me through the first half of the book. But the more I read, the more bored I became with Mary, and Monica Dickens' conventionality runs against my own grain. The episode in which Mary cannot marry Pierre because he does not appreciate the wonder of England or the joy of living a conventional English life really made me want to throw the towel in. I was skipping bits by the end. Perhaps Dickens mostly works for me when she's writing about childhood and animals; her musings on adult life are not for me.

Some unexpected antisemitism thrown in here, too.