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Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy |
Screen adaptations concentrate on Anna and Vronsky's doomed love affair but there are many concurrent stories: a landowner's social responsibility after the abolition of serfdom (autobiographical Tolstoy?), the descriptions of agriculture and the distance between the upper-levels of society lavishing money on high living and gambling, speaking French and wanting to be more Northern European than Russian. As usual confusion with those convoluted names - keeping a notepad handy to make a cast list helps greatly! A marathon read to be taken gently.
(bwl 97 Summer 2020) |
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Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens |
Dickens and his publishers must have made a packet by publishing this novel in monthly parts, £50 - in today's money - for a complete set. No wonder the tale has so many consecutive story lines. Paul Dombey is a successful businessman but a cold fish emotionally, however he finally warms up when he realises the strength of his family.The expansion of the railway is an interesting and constant background to the story, which is a good solid read.
(bwl 74 Autumn 2014) |
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Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor |
My introduction to Elizabeth Taylor - no, not that one! - the novelist, and what a delight. A genteel old lady moves to a residential hotel in the Cromwell Road. Her fellow guests are very curious to meet her grandson whom she often mentions. By chance she meets Ludo and when he visits she passes him off as the illusive Desmond. A tale of a friendship developing across an age gap. The hotel must surely have inspired Fawlty Towers!
(bwl 66 Autumn 2012) |
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The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy |
The Nation was gripped in 1968 by the TV drama of this trilogy, but reading it revealed the social commentary Galsworthy had written, albeit from a very privileged viewpoint, about an era of considerable change from 1886 to 1920, from Horse Power to horsepower, including The Great War. I was amused by the use of the family surname to describe the whole mercantile class and then the pun was appreciated.
(bwl 69 Summer 2013) |
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The Hundred Year Old Man who Climbed out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson |
A laugh-out-loud romp through the twentieth century, the eponymous Allan Karlsson has a road movie adventure with a group of mis-fits. The story is told in the present with flash-backs of his life in which he has been innocently and non-politically associated with major World Leaders.
(bwl 68 Spring 2013) |
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The New Confessions by William Boyd |
Sorry bwl but this was not for me, I did not develop any feeling for the J J Rousseau obsessed narrator but he did manage to be part of some very interesting 20th Century events. It was all too contrived (I found that in Any Human Heart too, bwl 59 and 63)) but then I have not yet read Jean Jacques Rousseau's True Confessions, I will report back when I have!
(bwl 70 Autumn 2013) |
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Travels with My Aunt by Graham Greene |
Henry, retired suburban bank manager, whose only interest is growing dahlias, meets his septuagenarian Aunt Augusta at his Mother's funeral. Relationships are not as he assumed. Aunt Augusta - who is still 'a bit of a gal' - takes Henry under her wing. They travel to Brighton, Paris, Istanbul and finally Paraguay mixing all the way with an underworld far removed from his origins and he becomes part of this milieu. A period piece, non-P C to some, to be read with tongue in cheek!
(bwl 102 Autumn 2021) |
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