This booked exhausted me — I couldn’t stand the characters (I believe one of my status updates while reading it wished death upon the mother) and it was just horrible event after horrible event. I get that the 1830s were probably not the greatest time to be alive, but still! “Prying out a stump reminded him of how deeply a tree clung to the ground, how tenacious a hold it had on a place. Though he was not a sentimental man – he did not […]
A new Tracy Chevalier favorite.
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a huge Tracy Chevalier fan, but haven’t been as good as I should have been in keeping up with her newest books. I read At the Edge of the Orchard and thought it was just okay, but I really did like The Last Runaway. Count it in the category with Girl with a Pearl Earring and Falling Angels. You can find my full review here.
A story that revolves around apples and trees. No, really.
The film adaptation of Girl with a Pearl Earring was released my freshman year in college (I think January of 2004), and for one of my Much Ado about English (the intro course to my major) projects, I wrote a comparison of the film with the book (spoiler: the book is so much better). Thus began my craze for Tracy Chevalier novels. My favorite to this day is Falling Angels, though I also very much like Remarkable Creatures, The Lady and the Unicorn, and Girl […]
A Story Of Masks And Costumes
While not my favorite read so far, Tracy Chevalier’s Girl with a Pearl Earring is at least moderately enjoyable. More importantly, though it is set in the 1660s in Europe, this novel highlights the illusion of social mobility we cling to and our obsession with appearances. We like to think as a society that we have moved on from the prejudices of Griet’s days, but reading Girl with a Pearl Earring, some of what she faces feels all too familiar. Read the full review here.