Amiche devote

I do love a book which divides opinion. As I was preparing to write about my reactions to the novel, I glanced over a few reviews of it on Librarything.com and Goodreads.com – and there certainly seems to be as many people who really liked it as didn’t. So before I go any further I must immediately Leggi tutto

What a horrible book. Evil lesbian, "nasty" appearing to be used to mean "homosexual" (as in, "Albert was a nasty boy"), casual racism. And even without all that it was a relentlessly unpleasant book. Three stars because it was so effectively, deliberately horrible. I was absorbed even as my brain ma Leggi tutto

An enjoyable read; astutely witty, without any doubt. However, as a modern reader, I cannot simply look past the littering of racial slurs and homophobic insinuations bubbling under the service, despite being able to acknowledge this as a ‘novel of its time’. I have the same problem with Nancy Mitfo Leggi tutto

It seems the story took a downward turn after my initial status update in which I called it awesome. Jessica and Jane are (sometimes-more-than) friends who have lived together for about six months. They are the rich, the upper class, somewhat uninteresting in the way that the exceptionally rich often Leggi tutto

Devoted Ladies are people I wouldn't want to be friends with. My god, this is so close to the truth it's a crazy mix of clever black comedy and horror. Because people do behave like this, and Keane has dissected these personality attributes so well, with her dry wit, that you find yourself stuck in

Keane is a new discovery and a happy one for me. She wrote this novel as a response to a newfound awareness of homosexuals in her society, both set and written in the 1930's. Keane saw gays as a fresh cast of characters for a novel. Here, she satirizes the upper, fox-hunting, class, skewering their

I heard about this book in a random article I found about gay women in "gothic" literature. Not really what I'd consider a gothic book by any streach of the imagination, it was more Collette meets Cold Comfort Farm. But I throughly enjoyed it! Written in 1936 it is a book that starts out with two wo Leggi tutto

When I spotted a Virago copy of Devoted Ladies by M.J. Farrell in an Oxford charity shop, I knew precisely three things about M. J Farrell: 1. She was Irish. 2. She also wrote under the name of Molly Keane – a name popular among bloggers who are avid readers of Virago Modern Classics. 3. Her work was c Leggi tutto

This takes place in rural Ireland in I think 1933. The author seems almost malicious towards her characters who are variously presented as evil, pathetic, manipulative or stupid. There's a fox-hunting scene, which I wish I understood better, and at the heart of the novel a portrayal of a very abusiv Leggi tutto

A viciously funny black comedy of manners, mainly set in Ireland. Nice little details involving antiques, dogs, horses, even plants.