Archive
June 2017 Reads – #scifi, #chicklit
For more shots check out my bookstagram
In June I was back up to my average 4 reads in a month, and I had two each in scifi and chick lit.
I started the month by finishing up the audiobook version of The Chrysalids by John Wyndham. This scifi looks at a post nuclear apocalypse world that has reverted from technology into essentially a farming sans tech existence where anything veering from the norm at all is culled out (including people). It’s an interesting idea but I found it to be a bit too preachy. I don’t like it when it feels like the author is preaching at me through a character, and this happened a few too many times for my taste.
(3 out of 5 stars, buy it)
(Source: Audible)
Next I read a duo of chick lit. First up was Summer at Castle Stone by Lynn Marie Hulsman. In this a ghost-writer from New York City accidentally ends up working in the kitchen of a castle getaway in Ireland in her attempts to get an inside scoop on the chef who works there (in order to better write the copy around his new cookbook). I thought this book had a wonderful setting and while the mix-ups were expected, they were for the most part cute. I did find some of the situations to be a more serious issue than the laugh they were played for but those didn’t keep me from enjoying the escape.
(3 out of 5 stars, buy it)
(Source: purchased)
My second chick lit was The Finishing Touches by Hester Browne. I’ve read many of her books before and came into this fully expecting to enjoy it, and I did! In this, a fading finishing school gets 21st century makeover. As is typical of Hester Browne, the main plot actually involves the heroine’s career with romance being (for her) an unexpected side-plot. Delightful, but not my favorite among her works, which is why this received 4 stars. The finishing school wasn’t quite what I was expecting from the description.
(4 out of 5 stars, buy it)
(source: library)
My final read of the month was the feminist scifi classic A Door into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski. In this book there is a planet that is mostly water with a humanoid species of entirely women that live both in and out of the water. This planet is under threat from an interplanetary organization that has many political ties–essentially a corporation with a powerful lobbyist group. Two women from this planet take on a male from another planet as an apprentice in an attempt to see if the aliens trying to take them over are children or adults. (They do not determine adulthood by a numerical age but by behavior and mental state, with adulthood being awarded upon someone by a committee). The reason for this important determination is it will decide how they respond to the threat with the response being very different to a child than to an adult. I would honestly say that although this book is known as a feminist classic I perceived of it more as a pacifist classic. Femaleness and maleness come up far less in the book than I would have expected (with the exception of sex and reproduction of course). Most of the book is actually about how to respond to threats, whether violence in the face of violence changes who you are, etc… I suppose some people might view those as masculine or feminine responses but I do not and so I didn’t see this as a feminist book per se. It really delivered on the plot summary though, particularly with the world building. If this intrigues you, I recommend you pick it up.
(4 out of 5 stars, buy it)
(source: PaperBackSwap)
My total for the month of June 2017:
- 4 books
- 4 fiction; 0 nonfiction
- 3 female authors; 1 male author
- 2 ebooks; 1 print book; 1 audiobook
If you found this helpful, please consider tipping me on ko-fi, checking out my digital items available in my ko-fi shop, buying one of my publications, or using one of my referral/coupon codes. Thank you for your support!
Book Review: Dreamsnake by Vonda N. McIntyre (Audiobook narrated by Anna Fields)
Summary:
On a far future Earth destroyed by nuclear warfare, most people have reverted to tribal living on the desert. These people rely on roaming healers armed with three snakes whose venom help provide healing relief. Snake is on her first year of bringing roving healing, but when a misunderstanding ends in the death of her dreamsnake, she is determined not to return home to the healers until she finds a way to replace him. It is almost impossible to breed dreamsnakes, but maybe the city will be able to help. The city that keeps the tribes mostly locked out and communicates with the people who live in outer space.
Review:
This book made it onto my tbr for three reasons. It’s 1970s scifi by a woman author, known for being feminist, and is supposed to be able to change your mind about snakes. I was surprised to find it on Audible but elated, especially when I heard the sample of the narrator’s voice. She speaks at the perfect speed and tone for my listening taste. What I found, upon listening, was a book that brought everything I had been promised in a unique plot that I still find myself thinking about periodically. It is just so different, and different is good in my scifi.
You can’t talk about this book without talking about the snakes. I have a gut negative reaction to snakes; one that most likely was learned before I have memories, I’m sure. Both my husband and a close friend think snakes are super cute, so I was hoping this book might change my perception to at least be less negative. Interestingly, a key part of the plot revolves around a person minsinterpreting a snake as dangerous and reacting violently to it. Snakes are not seen as not dangerous, just that only certain snakes have truly dangerous venom, and people are encouraged to get immunized against this venom and to be cautious in areas where they might frighten a snake into striking. I came to care about Snake’s snakes and by the end of the book, where there is a scene that normally would have haunted my dreams (it involves someone in a pit full of snakes), I actually was able to react rationally to the situation and be more concerned about the evil of the person who threw the person in the pit and whether the person would be able to get out of the pit eventually than really be concerned about the snakes themselves. The book presents snakes much like other animals. They’re a living creature that can be dangerous or harmless or some mixture of both, and it’s about building your own knowledge so you know how to handle them more so than just being gut afraid of them. If that was all this book gave me, I would have been impressed, but it gave me so much more.
The plot leads through multiple different tribes and cultures, and all are imagined creatively and differently from each other. Cultural understanding is valued but only to the point where the culture is not actively harming innocents. As mentioned earlier, the whole book centers around a cultural misunderstading, and everyone on both sides of it takes responsibility for the situation. There’s a love interest for Snake who seeks to help her but she also helps herself (along with others). There’s a positive representation of adoption, as well as multiple sexualities and women and men both being responsible for birth control. Without giving anything away, the ultimate conclusion is about how changing your viewpoint can bring a solution, which is kind of the other side of the coin of the original cultural misunderstanding. It’s a smart book, largely about how different people interact and how humility and willingness to listen can move everyone forward.
Overall, this is a unique piece of scifi with an engaging plot that will change your mind about snakes. It left me wishing there was a sequel so I could revisit this world.
If you found this review helpful, please consider tipping me on ko-fi, checking out my digital items available in my ko-fi shop, buying one of my publications, or using one of my referral/coupon codes. Thank you for your support!
5 out of 5 stars
Length: 312 pages – average but on the longer side
Source: Audible
Trigger Warning:
Readers who are sensitive to discussions of rape of a child should be aware it is discussed as something that occurred in the past to a character, although not depicted, and the victim is ultimately empowered.
Book Review: The Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You by Dorothy Bryant
Summary:
Running from his demons, a man crashes his car and wakes up being assisted by a deceptively primitive people–the kin of Ata. He discovers that he’s been mysteriously brought to an island inhabited only by these people. As time passes, he comes to learn there is much more to them than first appears.
Review:
I can’t recall exactly how this ended up in my tbr but I am certain it had something to do with it being older feminist scifi/fantasy, which I collect and read as much as possible. What I was expecting, particularly from a book from the 1970s, was a wishful book about an impossible utopia. What I got instead was a spiritual parable that left me breathless, surprised, and craving more–not out of the book but out of life.
The book starts slowly. The entire first chapter has the main character driving angrily down a road just after committing a murder during a fit of rage. He is not a character with which you can particularly empathize at this point, and it is confusing as to just when the titular Kin of Ata will show up. I admit that the first chapter moved so slowly and was so difficult to relate to that I was expecting the book to be a slog, but I persevered on, and in retrospect I appreciate the first chapter quite a bit. I’ll discuss why at the end of my review.
The man wakes up to people getting him out of the car and bringing him to a cave. They then bring him out of the cave to their hut-like homes. He perceives of them as primitive and judges them harshly. Gradually over time he comes to better understand them and their ways and to understand that he is not with primitive people hidden in the woods near his home. He is on an island, and he somehow was spirited there. I won’t discuss much more of the plot, because it could ruin it, but essentially the man is a stand-in for the reader. The Kin of Ata have spiritual lessons and teach them to the man, and in turn to the reader. It comes across much like a parable.
The Kin believe that humans need to remember and respect their dreams (actual dreams we have at night). They view our sleeping lives as just as important, if not more so, than our waking ones. They thus design their waking lives to be lived in the right manner so as to elicit the most powerful dreams. This means things like working but not too hard. Thus making yourself tired enough to sleep but not so tired that you sleep the sleep of the dead. It also means discussing your dreams every morning upon awaking. It means listening to your dreams and choosing daytime activities that suit what they are telling you. Put another way, the Kin choose daytime activities that fit the callings of their deepest souls. They essentially live a very mindful life that helps them achieve happiness and a peaceful community.
The main character starts out as a deep blight on the community. He keeps trying to force his ways upon them. He comes across as an angry cloud. In addition to being a murderer he also rapes one of the female Kin early on in the book. I found the depiction of this rape fascinating. The man sees people having sex with each other in what appears to him to be whenever one person demands it. In actuality, the people are choosing each other and subtlely letting each other know whether they want to have sex or not. The man decides he wants to participate and goes after one of the women. She indicates to him through cultural body language (these people do not speak much) that it is the wrong time. He does it anyway and she does not resist but she also does not participate. The whole community judges him as it being a wrong and a rape in spite of the fact that the woman never said no. The whole community views sex as only consensual if joyous consent is given, not just if the word “no” is not said. The man is startled and yet also immediately understands their point. He felt dirty and wrong after the sex and wasn’t sure why but now he understands and doesn’t know why he never thought of it this way before. He is utterly ashamed of himself.
Longtime readers of this blog know that I struggle with plots that ask us to empathize with a rapist. It honestly surprised me that this scene didn’t turn me off the book entirely. Yet this is also a huge turning point for the main character. He realizes that his way of doing things leads to him feeling bad and wrong and negatively impacts others. The woman spends several days in a cavelike place, which is basically where the Kin go to meditate. When she comes out, she forgives the man, because harboring a grudge against him would hurt her own ability to live the right path. I found the whole event of how the community confronts the man about his wrongdoing, how he responds to this confrontation, and how the woman handles it to be incredibly thought-provoking. It made me think about how much culture impacts people’s ability to even recognize when they’ve done something wrong. Also, much as I had heard many times growing up how harboring hate in your own heart poisons yourself and not the one who harmed you, seeing a character fully embrace this after a traumatic experience made it sink in much more for me than just hearing the saying ever did.
This scene also served another purpose. It reminded me that we’ve all done things we’re ashamed of and showed a path of redemption. The man starts to pursue living the right way. He has set-backs and stumbles. It sometimes takes years for him to see the results of certain actions that he starts doing the right way. It takes perseverance, unlike living the easy way, like he used to. It’s a powerful parable for practices such as meditation, for which you often don’t see results right away.
Similarly, again, I don’t want to spoil it, but the book demonstrates how it takes a community living right for a truly peaceful and happy community to exist. It also demonstrates, though, how one person who is very strong in their commitment to this right path can impact a whole community that is lost.
I promised to touch back on why I came to appreciate the first chapter. I appreciate it because it shows us the main character living his life following the wrong path within his own original community. It shows us where he came from before showing us how he develops into a life so much better through his work with the Kin. It also makes for a powerful bookend with the final chapter, whose surprise I will not reveal.
This is a powerful parable that demonstrates how much impact living mindfully can have, and also how important developing healthy communities is for the happiness and peace of all. It shows how wrong cultural ideals can lead people astray and hurt even the perpetrators of violence. Some may struggle with parts of the book, but that is part of the process of learning the lessons in the parable. I highly recommend this short book to all seeking a thought-provoking read.
If you found this review helpful, please consider tipping me on ko-fi, checking out my digital items available in my ko-fi shop, buying one of my publications, or using one of my referral/coupon codes. Thank you for your support!
5 out of 5 stars
Length: 228 pages – average but on the shorter side
Source: PaperBackSwap
Buy It (Amazon or Bookshop.org)
Friday Fun! (Cool People I Follow!)
Hello my lovely readers! I don’t have too terribly much to update you on today since I managed to get bronchitis “with a touch of strep” and have been down for the count all week. I am on antibiotics now. They are a beautiful beautiful thing. Anyway, so since my life this week has mostly consisted of laying around with a fever watching Big Bang Theory and Battlestar Galactica on repeat, I thought I’d do something different today and let you guys know about a few unique folks I follow in my GoogleReader that you might want to check out.
ANZ LitLovers LitBlog is a book blog I just recently discovered that focuses in on the literature of Australia and New Zealand. The instant I saw the title of the blog I went, “Wow, duh, what a gap in my reading!” She has a great page featuring a listing of must read ANZ lit titles.
Joe’s Blog is one of the few author blogs I follow (as opposed to authors who happen to have book blogs. I follow a few of those). Joseph Robert Lewis is an indie author whose books are available as ebooks, and he is a smart dude. Not only does he write scifi/fantasy/steampunk with a feminist slant out of a desire to write the types of books he wants to be available for his daughters to read, he’s also a really giving guy. He has a great section of advice for fellow writers looking to self-publish and maintains a great relationship with his readers (um, including me). His blog itself is an awesome mix of posts on what inspires his scifi/fantasy/steampunk worlds, his own life, and musings on writing. Oh, also, he came up with this awesome idea for a series co-written by a bunch of authors who have never met before all set in the same universe, and he’s actually pulling it off. The dude is creative and productive. Check him out, even if his books aren’t your genre.
Native Appropriations is run by fellow Boston gal, Adrienne, who is a member of the Cherokee tribe and currently studying for her PhD. Her posts discuss representation and appropriation of Native American culture in American pop culture and media. Her posts are thought-provoking and eloquent. Seriously, get rid of your People Magazine and Cosmo subscriptions and read what this smart lady has to say instead.
No Meat Athlete is run by a male vegan who also is, you guessed it, an athlete. He primarily runs marathons, but his posts feature great information for any type of athlete or fitness fan who is plant-based. I particularly found his post 7 Secrets of Post Work-out Recovery super useful for this plant-based weight-lifting lady. He’s also going to be doing the Boston Marathon. Yeahhhhh!
Finally, for everything vegan from vegans in the news to animal rights to product reviews, definitely follow Vegansaurus. They are my go-to site for sane animal rights coverage (unlike PETA *cough*). They also feature real life help this one situation here this one time if you can shout-outs that help me feel connected to the animal rights community. (Like one time we all got together to help a gal get her pup needed surgery, because, you know, who actually has insurance for their pets?) Between that, the cookbook reviews, the recipes, the products, and the news bits, it’s one of my favorite news sources.
I hope you all found some new reading material. Happy weekends!
Friday Fun! (On Health and Entitlement of Women’s Bodies)
Hello my lovely readers! Sorry for the relatively smaller amount of reviews this week. I’ve finished a few books, but didn’t have the time to write up the reviews yet. This just means next week will be full. 🙂
I have a relatively serious topic I want to talk about today. You guys know that I take health and the obesity epidemic seriously. One argument that I’ve heard a lot of unhealthy women make is that they put on a ton of weight to avoid men. They weren’t comfortable with the attention, etc… I remember thinking, when I, at the time, was overweight myself, “How bad could it really be?” Turns out…..pretty bad.
Over the last year, I’ve gone from a size 16 to a size 10. Over the last month, I’ve had more encounters with men who feel entitled to my body than I had over the entire two years I was overweight. I know correlation does not necessarily equal causation, but in some cases it does.
I’m a single lady. I date. I go places where single people hang out to try to meet new people. I do what single people in cities do. I dress attractively, because I WANT to, but also because I’ve worked damn HARD for this body, and I’m proud of my work. I’m not saying I’m Miss America, and I wouldn’t want to be, but I definitely look happy and healthy when I go out. Much more so than when I was overweight. I get hit on. I get asked on dates. This also happened when I was overweight. The difference, though, is that now when I dare to say the word no a much higher percentage of them get downright angry at me.
He’ll say something like, “Do you want to go on a date?” I say, “No, thank you.” He says, “WHY?! Think you’re too good for me?!” or “Well you shouldn’t dress that way if you don’t want attention” or “Please, you obviously need a good fucking.” (I am not exaggerating. These all have been spoken or texted or what have you to me).
Worse, though, is I’ll go on a first date. Usually dinner or drinks. I have a nice enough time, but I can tell we wouldn’t work long-term, and I want a relationship at this point in my life. He leans in for a kiss, and I turn my cheek or he asks me for a second date and I say no I don’t think it’ll work out. The reaction generally is, “You owe me, I bought you dinner!” or “How can you possibly know after only one date?!” or “Well, I thought you were ugly anyway.” (That last one, btw, makes zero sense since he ASKED ME OUT TO START WITH).
What really aggravates me about these interactions isn’t their disappointment that I said no. Obviously, that is flattering. What is bothersome is the evident sense of entitlement over MY BODY that they have. I’m pretty and single. They’re available and have a penis, ergo, I must want them or I’m a horrible woman. Since when did my body become the possession of every straight man in the greater Boston area?
Oh yeah, since I started glowing with health.
It’s draining. It’s enough to make me not want to go out some nights. It’s enough to make me want to stick my earbuds in in public and ignore everyone. Of course, I’m me, so I’m not going to do these things. I’m going to keep being my awesome self and feminist hulksmashing the douchebags (verbal smack-down, folks, not a physical one), but. If I didn’t have such a strong personality or had personal issues or WHATEVER I could totally see this being a thing that would make me stop working out, stop eating healthy, stop it all and just hide to protect myself.
Do you see where I’m going here? This misogynistic entitlement to women’s bodies is a poison to our whole society. A POISON. Every time you police a woman’s body or act entitled to her or watch it happen to a woman and not stand up for her, you are essentially watching the cook poison the food and then serve it to the dinner party without saying anything or trying to stop him. It hurts everyone, and it is not ok! It is just as bad as those cultures (that I know Americans judge) that say, “Women need to cover up because they tempt men.” Our cultural impetus is the opposite. “This woman is young and healthy and available ergo I deserve her body.”
No. You. Don’t.
I vow to say something any time I hear this attitude happening, and not just to me. I vow to encourage all women to remember that our bodies are ours and our health is about US and not about THEM. I hope you all will do the same.
Book Review: A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen
Summary:
It’s Christmas time and Nora is eagerly getting ready for the holidays with her husband, Torvald, their children, and their friend Dr. Rank when her old friend, Christine, shows up in town. Christine is recently widowed and is looking for work. Nora, who appears flighty and silly at first, informs Christine that she saved her husband’s life when they were first married by taking a loan from, essentially, a loan shark to pay for them to take a trip to Italy. He remains unaware of both the loan she is working on repaying and the fact that his life was ever in danger. Unfortunately, things come to a head when the man who loaned her the money, Krogstad, threatens to reveal all to her husband.
Review:
This three-act dramatic play was first performed in 1879. It explores the nature of domestic relationships in a way that still holds relatability and power today. The play accomplishes this using the same set design of the Helmer family’s living room throughout all three acts. I found myself impressed by the different feelings evoked by the identical set in each act.
Get the full text of this review by clicking here! (It is 7 paragraphs total with 604 words).
4 out of 5 stars
Length: 88 pages – novella/short nonfiction
Source: Audiobooks app for the iTouch, iPhone, and iPad.
Buy It (Amazon or Bookshop.org)
Book Review: Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy
Summary:
Connie, a 30-something Chicana of the 1970s who has led a rough life, enjoys the time she spends in 2137 at Mattapoisett with Luciente. She believes she is a catcher and Luciente a receiver, which allows her to time travel in her mind. Luciente tells her there are two possible futures, and they need her and all the downtrodden to fight and not give up or the utopian future of Mattapoisett will be lost. Connie’s family and friends, however, believe she is schizophrenic and in need of their help. Who is right?
Review:
I almost gave up on this in the first chapter when we discover that Connie’s daughter has been taken away from her due to child abuse. Connie blames everything bad in her life on other people–the police, social workers, white people, her brother, etc… She takes no responsibility for anything. I was concerned that Connie’s opinions were the author’s opinions as well–blame society for everything and take no individual responsibility. I was wrong about that, though, and I am very glad I didn’t stop reading.
Marge Piercy’s writing is astounding. She sets up a complex social situation and leaves it open-ended for the reader to decide who is right, what the problems really are, who is to blame, how things can be fixed. Unlike most books regarding time travel or mental illness, it is not obvious that Connie is actually time traveling or that she is schizophrenic. This fact makes this a book that actually makes you think and ponder big questions.
The future world of Mattapoisett is of course the reason this book is considered a classic of feminist literature. In this society it has been decided that all of the bad dualities of have and have not originate from the original division of male and female, so they have done everything they can to make gender a moot point. The pronouns he and she are not used, replaced with “per,” which is short for “person.” Women no longer bear children, instead they are scientifically made in a “breeder,” and then assigned three people to mother it. These people can be men or women; they are all called mother. In the future of Mattapoisett, women are allowed to be strong; men to be gentle, and that is just the tip of the iceberg of the interesting, thought-provoking elements of Mattapoisett.
At first I was concerned that this book is anti-psychiatry, but really it is just pro-compassion. The reader is forced to observe the world from multiple atypical perspectives that force a questioning of world view. More importantly though it helps the reader to put herself into another person’s perspective, which is something that it is easy to forget to do. To me the key scene in the book (which doesn’t give away any spoilers) is when two people in Mattapoisett dislike each other and are not getting along. The township gets them together and holds a council attempting to help each person see the situation from the other’s perspective, as well as to see the good in the other person.
What I’ve said barely touches the surface of the wonderful elements of this book. I absolutely loved it, and it is a book I will keep and re-read multiple times. I highly recommend it to all.
5 out of 5 stars
Source: PaperBackSwap
Book Review: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall By Anne Bronte
Summary:
Cited as the feminist antithesis to her contemporary Austen’s romantic 19th century ramblings, Anne Bronte’s best-known novel presents the much more dire image of the very real risk of marriage in a time where the wife loses all her human rights to her husband. Gilbert Markham becomes infatuated with the widow Helen Graham who has moved into his neighborhood with her son, but rumors soon start to spark up around her. When he confronts her about her conduct, she shows him her diary. There he learns her travails and sufferings at the hands of her still very much alive husband.
Review:
I came to this book with high expectations. I heard of it simply as the one of the earlier feminist novels written in response to such works as Austen’s. I felt this opened the door to many possibilities, but perhaps I was thinking about this with too much of a 21st century brain. What held The Tenant of Wildfell Hall back was the relentless presentation of Helen as the picture of Christian piety. Given the fact that Helen behaves quite willfully and controversially for the time period by leaving her husband’s home to live separately from him, this was probably quite necessary for Bronte’s contemporaries to find Helen a sympathetic character. For me though her severeness sometimes had me siding with her tyrant of a husband in my mind. He calls her cold and calculating. Well all she ever talks about is living piously now to be joyous in heaven after death. I would find that cold and calculating as well.
This book does hold value for the modern feminist though if we re-position ourselves to look at it through the lens of how society at the time has messed up both Helen and her husband, Arthur. Society tells Helen that it is her job as a woman to be the pious one. Although single men may go cavorting about she must sit respectably at home or go out to supervised dances. Men may behave however they desire as long as they settle down after marriage. This belief leads Helen to make her foolish, egotistical mistake of thinking that marrying Arthur is alright for she can change him after they are married. To a certain extent Arthur makes the same mistake. He has been told the ideal wife is a highly pious one, so he marries Helen thinking she will save him when, in fact, they are the most mis-matched couple ever.
Arthur enjoys cavorting, playing cards, and drinking. Helen refuses to do these things out of piety and nags Arthur not to do them. They both come to realize they are mis-matched, but in their society divorce is a painful embarrassment to both parties. Helen doesn’t even consider it for Christian reasons; Arthur in order to save face. This leads to their gradual loss of caring for each other, although Arthur’s comes much faster and more brutally when he carries out an affair with the wife of a visiting friend.
Arthur no longer wants Helen, but she is his wife and he would be a laughing-stock if he couldn’t control her, so he starts abusing her emotionally–repeatedly telling her it disgusts him to see her pale skin, for instance. He also carries out the afore-mentioned affairs with her full knowledge and at first forbids her from having any of her own. I am not condoning Arthur’s ill-treatment of Helen. He made the situation far more worse than society alone would have had them make it. He could, for instance, have allowed them to set up separate households, which was sometimes done. He at least could have shown her the respect she deserved as a human being, but instead he came to view her almost as a hated prison guard. This would not have been the case if they could have parted ways amicably.
I must admit what struck me far more than the restrictive society was Helen’s restrictive religion. She almost constantly lives only thinking of her reward after death in Heaven. She possesses nearly no joy for her beliefs require that she squander her life away serving a man who hates her. The only reason she even leaves him for a time, relieving some of her pain, is because she believes her duty to raise a pious son outweighs her duty as a wife, so she is justified to remove her son from the soul-risking influence of his father. Helen’s faith seems to bring her no joy, but instead demand she behave as a judging marble statue.
Although The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is not an obvious feminist manifesto, it as an excellent rendition of the oppression of 19th century society on both men and women. Reading of their struggles and realizing as a 21st century observer that there is essentially no way out for either of them beautifully demonstrates how far we’ve come. Bronte’s writing style is complex enough that what could be a bit of a boring, straight-forward tale remains interesting throughout. She changes perspectives a few times via diaries and letters. She does suffer from the 19th century literature trap of overly extensive descriptions of settings, but these are easily skimmed. An excellent example of 19th century literature, I wish Bronte’s realistic work was assigned more often in literature classes than Austen’s fluffy, unrealistic drivel.
3.5 out of 5 stars
Source: Library
This work by Amanda Nevius is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Opinions of a Wolf 