Books this week
Dec. 20th, 2011 03:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
northernwalkerVoices in Summer by Rosamund Pilcher.
First read at least 15 years ago- I can recall sitting in my university library down on the second level in December and letting it take me to Cornwall.
Thoughts- I love domestic fiction and this is an old favorite. Pilcher writes so vividly that I can feel the summer sun and taste peaches even in December. Laura Havestock is hoping to have a baby but nature doesn't seem to be cooperating. She's also having marital issues- being a second wife isn't easy, being a second, younger wife is downright difficult at times. She has an operation, but must go stay with her husband's uncle and his wife to recuperate. While she's there, her tense life blossoms into happiness touched with great sorrow.
Scandalous Risks by Susan Howatch. Book 4 in her Starbridge series.
First read +15 years ago.
Thoughts- Howatch wrote two series involving the Church of England. This is from the first series, set in 1963. The Honorable Venetia Flaxton is 26, wealthy and fed up with her boring life. Searching for meaning, she becomes dangerously entangled with her father's dear friend Neville Aysgarth, a married man with seven children who is the dean of the Starbridge Cathedral. One of the fun points of this series is looking at the historical parallels. Aysgarth is modeled on British Prime Minister H. H. Asquith, and Venetia on Venetia Stanley, with whom Asquith was madly in love. Suffice it to say that things didn't end happily for either Venetia, although the fictional one has hope.
First read at least 15 years ago- I can recall sitting in my university library down on the second level in December and letting it take me to Cornwall.
Thoughts- I love domestic fiction and this is an old favorite. Pilcher writes so vividly that I can feel the summer sun and taste peaches even in December. Laura Havestock is hoping to have a baby but nature doesn't seem to be cooperating. She's also having marital issues- being a second wife isn't easy, being a second, younger wife is downright difficult at times. She has an operation, but must go stay with her husband's uncle and his wife to recuperate. While she's there, her tense life blossoms into happiness touched with great sorrow.
Scandalous Risks by Susan Howatch. Book 4 in her Starbridge series.
First read +15 years ago.
Thoughts- Howatch wrote two series involving the Church of England. This is from the first series, set in 1963. The Honorable Venetia Flaxton is 26, wealthy and fed up with her boring life. Searching for meaning, she becomes dangerously entangled with her father's dear friend Neville Aysgarth, a married man with seven children who is the dean of the Starbridge Cathedral. One of the fun points of this series is looking at the historical parallels. Aysgarth is modeled on British Prime Minister H. H. Asquith, and Venetia on Venetia Stanley, with whom Asquith was madly in love. Suffice it to say that things didn't end happily for either Venetia, although the fictional one has hope.
