Books read, January
Mar. 21st, 2018 09:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cyphomandraI still have the rest of 2017 to write up, but onwards.
Courtney Milan, Unveiled, Unlocked, Unclaimed, Unraveled (the Turner Brothers series)
Joanna Cannan, Gaze at the Moon
Catherine Storr, Vicky
Anne Saunders, St Brenda's Headache
The Turner Brothers series, about three brothers with bible verses for names - abbreviated to Ash, Mark and Smite - who survive the religious mania of their mother (which kills their sister) and gruelling poverty, to leap into the nobility when a distant and wealthy relation's marriage is exposed as bigamous, and his children made illegitimate. The first book is Ash, a successful businessman who exposes the bigamous marriage, and then falls for the newly illegitimate daughter Margaret, who has disguised herself as her ailing father's nurse. Unlocked is a novella insert about two minor characters, neither Turners; Unclaimed is about Mark, a social sensation for his guide to male chastity and the most famous male virgin in England, and Jessica, a jaded courtesan who originally agrees to seduce Mark for money, but finds herself falling for him. Unraveled is Smite, an uncompromising magistrate with PTSD and Miranda Darling, part of the shadowy criminal underground.
They're all very readable and I blew through them in about a day and a half; they worked better for me than Milan's Brothers Sinister series, which I could not get into but may retry at some stage. She does some interesting things with Mark and male chastity, and balances his desire to respect women versus the misguided organisation that springs up around his book and demonises them (hand signals to warn members of approaching attractive females, lots of slut-shaming, etc); and in Unraveled there are some nice moments where Miranda actually goes to tell Smite she's being menaced by criminals rather than doing the expected "I must protect him! He can never know!". Likewise, the revelation of Margaret's identity in the first book is not used to humiliate her. They're still not quite my thing. I never seem to like both leads equally, and the endings often feel rushed. But I'd cheerfully re-read these at some point in the future.
Joanna Cannan, Gaze at the Moon. I am slowly ambling through Jane Badger's Heroines on Horseback; the Pony Book on Children's Fiction and read this after reading the bit on Cannan. This is Cannan's last children's book and the setting is different from earlier; Dinah lives in a council house with a family who do not understand her twin desires to own a horse and to be an artist. It's competent and quiet, and Dinah earns her horse (and art; I particularly like that she spends a lot of time working on drawing in a way that feels right). My copy has an enthusiastic comment on it from Noel Streatfeild complaining that the only problem with it is that it's too short, which is about right. It's very vivid and exact in its detail.
Catherine Storr, Vicky. This is the sequel to The Chinese Egg, which I last read when I was about 14 or so, although I remember a surprising amount with a clarity that escapes me for, say, something I did last week. But the book I remember was more supernatural, which this isn't; it's something Storr's done before, with the mundane Marianne and Mark as a sequel to the brilliantly terrifying Marianne Dreams, and I feel that maybe she's saying something about growing up that I'm not entirely happy with. The other problem with this - which is a perfectly competent story about Vicky, who is adopted, trying to track down her birth parents after her adoptive mother dies - is that there is a really odd and rather unpleasant plot line in this where the police officer in his 40s who was helped by Vicky and Stephen in the kidnapping case that underpins The Chinese Egg is quite clearly sexually interested in Vicky, who's about 15. Nothing overtly physical eventuates, but it's there. In addition the book does not resolve the puzzle of the egg, which is still left hanging. I have not poked around enough in Storr's bibliography to see if there definitely isn't a third book, though.
Anne Saunders, St Brenda's Headache. Re-read. My mother had/still has a copy of this, and it was my favourite of her old school stories; I finally managed to track down a copy of my own, as she's holding on to hers firmly as it was her favourite as well. Anne Saunders wrote a lot of other stories about St Brenda's that all appeared in magazines that I've never tracked down, although I caught a few in annuals. Perhaps because of that the characters have a depth and a history to them that makes them more than just stereotypes, which otherwise they are - the sporty girl, the American (as always, daughter of a millionaire), the form captain, the fat girl (arrgh), the sneak, the understanding headmistress. The plot is also a favourite of mine - the unjustly accused is redeemed by a perceptive other, who has to contend with their peers to do so - and I'm not sure now how much of my fondness is in fact entirely driven by this book. Charmain LeRoy arrives at St Brenda's, a new girl distinguished by her poise and talents - and her murky past, which turns out to involve being sent to a reform school for theft. Judy, the form captain, embarks on a mission to find the truth of this story which Charmain initially tries to block; another less noble student uses this knowledge to frame Charmain for various petty crimes that escalate. It's deftly drawn and it's well-paced and I don't think I can judge it clearly, but for me it still works, and the emotions ring true. I wish I had her other stories to read.
Courtney Milan, Unveiled, Unlocked, Unclaimed, Unraveled (the Turner Brothers series)
Joanna Cannan, Gaze at the Moon
Catherine Storr, Vicky
Anne Saunders, St Brenda's Headache
The Turner Brothers series, about three brothers with bible verses for names - abbreviated to Ash, Mark and Smite - who survive the religious mania of their mother (which kills their sister) and gruelling poverty, to leap into the nobility when a distant and wealthy relation's marriage is exposed as bigamous, and his children made illegitimate. The first book is Ash, a successful businessman who exposes the bigamous marriage, and then falls for the newly illegitimate daughter Margaret, who has disguised herself as her ailing father's nurse. Unlocked is a novella insert about two minor characters, neither Turners; Unclaimed is about Mark, a social sensation for his guide to male chastity and the most famous male virgin in England, and Jessica, a jaded courtesan who originally agrees to seduce Mark for money, but finds herself falling for him. Unraveled is Smite, an uncompromising magistrate with PTSD and Miranda Darling, part of the shadowy criminal underground.
They're all very readable and I blew through them in about a day and a half; they worked better for me than Milan's Brothers Sinister series, which I could not get into but may retry at some stage. She does some interesting things with Mark and male chastity, and balances his desire to respect women versus the misguided organisation that springs up around his book and demonises them (hand signals to warn members of approaching attractive females, lots of slut-shaming, etc); and in Unraveled there are some nice moments where Miranda actually goes to tell Smite she's being menaced by criminals rather than doing the expected "I must protect him! He can never know!". Likewise, the revelation of Margaret's identity in the first book is not used to humiliate her. They're still not quite my thing. I never seem to like both leads equally, and the endings often feel rushed. But I'd cheerfully re-read these at some point in the future.
Joanna Cannan, Gaze at the Moon. I am slowly ambling through Jane Badger's Heroines on Horseback; the Pony Book on Children's Fiction and read this after reading the bit on Cannan. This is Cannan's last children's book and the setting is different from earlier; Dinah lives in a council house with a family who do not understand her twin desires to own a horse and to be an artist. It's competent and quiet, and Dinah earns her horse (and art; I particularly like that she spends a lot of time working on drawing in a way that feels right). My copy has an enthusiastic comment on it from Noel Streatfeild complaining that the only problem with it is that it's too short, which is about right. It's very vivid and exact in its detail.
Catherine Storr, Vicky. This is the sequel to The Chinese Egg, which I last read when I was about 14 or so, although I remember a surprising amount with a clarity that escapes me for, say, something I did last week. But the book I remember was more supernatural, which this isn't; it's something Storr's done before, with the mundane Marianne and Mark as a sequel to the brilliantly terrifying Marianne Dreams, and I feel that maybe she's saying something about growing up that I'm not entirely happy with. The other problem with this - which is a perfectly competent story about Vicky, who is adopted, trying to track down her birth parents after her adoptive mother dies - is that there is a really odd and rather unpleasant plot line in this where the police officer in his 40s who was helped by Vicky and Stephen in the kidnapping case that underpins The Chinese Egg is quite clearly sexually interested in Vicky, who's about 15. Nothing overtly physical eventuates, but it's there. In addition the book does not resolve the puzzle of the egg, which is still left hanging. I have not poked around enough in Storr's bibliography to see if there definitely isn't a third book, though.
Anne Saunders, St Brenda's Headache. Re-read. My mother had/still has a copy of this, and it was my favourite of her old school stories; I finally managed to track down a copy of my own, as she's holding on to hers firmly as it was her favourite as well. Anne Saunders wrote a lot of other stories about St Brenda's that all appeared in magazines that I've never tracked down, although I caught a few in annuals. Perhaps because of that the characters have a depth and a history to them that makes them more than just stereotypes, which otherwise they are - the sporty girl, the American (as always, daughter of a millionaire), the form captain, the fat girl (arrgh), the sneak, the understanding headmistress. The plot is also a favourite of mine - the unjustly accused is redeemed by a perceptive other, who has to contend with their peers to do so - and I'm not sure now how much of my fondness is in fact entirely driven by this book. Charmain LeRoy arrives at St Brenda's, a new girl distinguished by her poise and talents - and her murky past, which turns out to involve being sent to a reform school for theft. Judy, the form captain, embarks on a mission to find the truth of this story which Charmain initially tries to block; another less noble student uses this knowledge to frame Charmain for various petty crimes that escalate. It's deftly drawn and it's well-paced and I don't think I can judge it clearly, but for me it still works, and the emotions ring true. I wish I had her other stories to read.
no subject
Date: 2018-03-21 09:33 am (UTC)Heh. Can definitely relate. :-)
ETA: Have you read The Suffragette Scandal by Milan? It's one of my favourites of hers.
no subject
Date: 2018-03-22 03:05 am (UTC)I have not! however due to the wonders of modern technology I have just borrowed the ebook from the library without even having to move off my chair.
no subject
Date: 2018-03-21 06:29 pm (UTC)I read a batch of Courtney Milan in December, starting with Unraveled and proceeding through most of the Brothers Sinister; on the whole I enjoyed them, but then I suddenly maxed out my tolerance for het romance and have not yet gone back. I have not loved any of her books as much as I did Unraveled, but I think that one may have been a sweet spot of ethics, protagonists, and supporting cast. She has a number of well-recommended contemporaries that I have not yet tried.
no subject
Date: 2018-03-22 03:12 am (UTC)Richard Dalrymple is great and terrible.