Book Reviews
“The Voyage Out” by Virginia Woolf
While Woolf can easily be criticized for neglecting to research the technical details and for writing only about the upper classes and their manias, to dwell on these issues would be entirely beside the point. E. M. Forster put it best when he described The Voyage Out as “…a strange, tragic, inspired book whose scene is a South America not found on any map and reached by a boat which would not float on any sea, an America whose spiritual boundaries touch Xanadu and Atlantis.”
“The Professor’s House” by Willa Cather
The Professor’s House by Willa Cather was first published in 1925. Split into three parts, the first and last take place in a small college town on Lake Michigan. These two parts tell the story of Professor St. Peter and the changing relationships within his family. The middle section is Tom Outland’s narrative about his adventures in the Southwest where we enter with him into a world of desert mesas and long hidden civilizations.
“Anne of the Island” by LM Montgomery
If the prior two books lacked romance, this one makes up for it. Anne and two college friends share a quaint house in Kingsport, and there is a constant stream of “beaus” coming through the door. One of the friends, Phillippa Gordon, is an excellent addition to the book. She is vain, but knows it, and that somehow makes her utter superficiality less annoying. Even she has her share of romance, happening upon it–as seems the theme of this novel–where she least expects to find it.
“The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern” by Lilian Jackson Braun
Womanless, homeless and broke—this is the way Jim Qwilleran finds himself at the beginning of any early Cat Who… novel. In The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern Jim is richer only by the company of one cat who shares his interesting in solving crimes. He is older by six months. He has a job, albeit with a shaky future.
“The House of Mirth” by Edith Wharton
In spite of the fact that The House of Mirth was published in 1905, the truths that Wharton illustrates with Lily’s story feel strangely contemporary. What a working woman can take away from this story is a gladness that she can marry or not; that she can keep her friends or not; that she can join the social whirl or thumb her nose at it because she possesses an independence that Lily Bart was denied.
“One of Ours” by Willa Cather
A winner of the 1923 Pulitzer Prize, One of Ours tells the story of Claude Wheeler, a young Nebraska man who is struggling to find meaning in his life. The novel is divided thematically into two parts. The first part is set in the Nebraska wheat fields where Claude works on his father’s farm. The second part takes place in France where Claude serves in the American army during WWI.
“Anne of Green Gables” and “Anne of Avonlea”
Perhaps suprising for a book about a young girl, readers of both genders and all ages have posted reviews about how wonderful Anne’s story is, “without violence, sexual situations, or earthy language.” We marvel that we still have the capability of being taken in by such a simple story. Somehow these novels help us tap into a primal instinct for nature and simplicity that reminds us of what life’s really about, and they do it most absorbingly.
“A Humble Romance and Other Stories” by Mary E Wilkins Freeman
This collection catch you from its “humble” beginning. Each story is engrossing, yet surprising in its simplicity of characters and plot. Far from beautiful heiresses or men on panting steeds, the main characters are mostly old spinsters and sometimes a plain niece or two. The plot rarely goes beyond a long held grudge or–at the extreme–a woman left at the alter. But the stories pull you in from the start, as if you had known the characters all you life and are unavoidably invested in their fates.
“The Cat Who Could Read Backwards” by Lilian Jackson Braun
Here we meet a slightly younger, much poorer Jim Qwilleran who has managed to work his way down the social ladder thanks to a few poor lifestyle choices. He is worlds away from Pickax’s celebrated “Mister Q”. This Qwilleran owns no pets. He has no job. He has no home. All his worldly goods can be packed into two suitcases. And his wife is now his ex-wife.
“Wives and Daughters” by Elizabeth Gaskell
Our latest ebook publication is Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell. First published as a serial from August 1864 to January 1866 in the Cornhill Magazine, the story revolves around Molly Gibson, the only daughter of a widowed doctor living in a provincial English town in the 1830s. When Gaskell died suddenly in 1865, it was not quite complete, and the last section was written by Frederick Greenwood.
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