A friend of mine loaned me this book. She recommended it to me, knowing my tendency to enjoy all things British. I also read this book as part of Semicolon's Saturday Review of Books challenge.
I did enjoy the book but not *nearly* as much as I expected. Funny to have high expectations of a book and then be disappointed.
I'm too lazy to write an original review so here is Amazon's plot summary.
Seventeen-year-old Cassandra Mortmain wants to become a writer. Trouble is, she's the daughter of a once-famous author with a severe case of writer's block. Her family--beautiful sister Rose, brooding father James, ethereal stepmother Topaz--is barely scraping by in a crumbling English castle they leased when times were good. Now there's very little furniture, hardly any food, and just a few pages of notebook paper left to write on. Bravely making the best of things, Cassandra gets hold of a journal and begins her literary apprenticeship by refusing to face the facts. She writes, "I have just remarked to Rose that our situation is really rather romantic, two girls in this strange and lonely house. She replied that she saw nothing romantic about being shut up in a crumbling ruin surrounded by a sea of mud."
I read Carrie's review of this book and I have to agree with a lot of what she said. I found it hard to stomach the father's laziness and unwillingness to be a man and support his family. He reads detective novels while they struggle to eat! The poverty at the beginning of the book wasn't romantic in the least.
I enjoyed the witty dialogue and the bear story is very funny. My final comment - read it for fun but don't expect it to rival Jane Austen.Pin It
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2 comments:
I have this book down for my "Books to Movie Challenge." My daughter loved it. I'm hoping I like it as I've read a few less than stellar reviews lately.
I was given this book to read by an English teacher in grade 7 and it changed my life. I who hated the classics til then fell in love with the beautiful simplicity of the writing and I have read this book every year since - I am now 41 so that is a lot of re-reads! I am now an English teacher myself. I have just finished reading it again and still find something new in it. It delights me that as life has changed for me so have the characters I have identified with and focussed on over the years - it is a story full of powerful truths.
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