Laura's Victorian Challenges: Book Reviews

NOVEMBER CHALLENGE: Lewis Carroll

Alice's adventures in Wonderland

Another obvious choice, again an illustrated edition by Robert Ingpen with a rather red-headed wiry haired Alice. Apparently more authentic. Liked to read how other illustrators had to wait for a long, long time before they were allowed to illustrate this classic. I thought the caterpillar smoking his hookah was a bit ahead of his time! Suppose I should read the sequel now!


OCTOBER CHALLENGE: Mark Twain

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Must say, I knew the story (vaguely) so this a first read for me. There were multiple editions in our library, but I chose the illustrated one by our Aussie illustrator Robert Ingpen. Somehow you read much faster with such great pictures! Very funny in spots, clever Tom getting everyone else to do the work of whitewashing the fence. Real entrepreneu


SEPTEMBER CHALLENGE: Elizabeth Gaskell

North and South

I've read this one a few times now, and watched the DVD a couple of times too. This time I re-read it. Obviously I love it, and welcomed the chance to re-read for this challenge. Terrific classic, and so well written as all her books.


AUGUST CHALLENGE: Anthony Trollope

He Knew He was Right

Well, I have to say that Anthony Trollope is my all-time favourite author!! I would certainly take his books to a desert island. This was one I hadn't read before, it was a hefty volume, two books comprising 822 pages. I must say the first book dragged a bit towards the end, but things perked up in the second book and I was keen to get to the end to find out what happened.

You just want to shake the husband, poor guy becomes obsessed that his wife is favouring an older unmarried Colonel Osborne, who is pretty naughty following her around. He visits them once for about 45 minutes with her sister present and others in the room, and the husband imagines all sorts of things have happened. The shame of it all!! The poor husband makes himself ill with jealousy in the end, I wont say what happens to him as it may spoil it for you!!

Trollope uses brilliant names as always, such as the vicar called Mr Outhouse, the father is called Sir Marmaduke who lives in a fictitious place called the Mandarins, sort of west Indies location. The detective is Bozzle (sort of Dickensian name). I did get slightly confused early on between Mr Gibson and Mr Glascock, too many names starting with "G"!! Also Nora and Dorothy are similar in character too.

Interestingly I don't think many have read this book, it isn't regarded as one of Trollope's best, nevertheless was a good read. The book I borrowed had been purchased from the library in 2004, and felt and looked like no-one had read it before me.

Now I'll have to find the show which was made for TV, Bill Nighy is in it (probably the bad Colonel) and Anna Massey as the old aunt Stanbury, Geoffrey Palmer is in it too, maybe the father. The screenplay is by Andrew Davies who always does a great job.


JULY CHALLENGE: Oscar Wilde

The Happy Prince

Lovely fairy-tale by one of my favourite authors. The little swallow stays with the Prince instead of flying to Egypt and plucks out both the Prince's eyes and tells the Prince what he has seen. Finally he plucks off the gold leaf on the prince, who then looks quite dull and grey. The swallow gives the gold leaf to poor children, finally as the swallow cannot leave the Prince, he dies in the cold at the Prince's feet. The leaden heart of the prince breaks in two. The Mayor sees the statue and thinks the Prince is too shabby: "The ruby has fallen out of his sword, his eyes are gone and he is golden no longer, he is little better than a beggar". They issue a proclamation that birds are not allowed to die there either. They melted the statue in a furnace, nut the heart would not melt so they threw the heart and the swallow on the dustheap. God asked for the two most precious things in the city and an angel brought him the leaden heart and the little bird. "You have rightly chosen" said God, "for in my garden of Paradise this little bird shall sing for evermore, and in my city of gold the Happy Prince shall praise me"

The Nightingale and the Rose

I heard this read by Stephen Fry on the radio recently (what  co-incidence). I am quite a fan of Stephen, he has such beautiful diction. This was another beautifully read fairy story, but sad of course.


JUNE CHALLENGE: George Eliot

The Lifted Veil

I found this short book (or long story) in a compilation of Eliot things which I had at school!! The main book was Silas Marner but I thought I would read the Lifted Veil and see what it was like.

Rather a strange novel where the main character suddenly realises he can tell what people are thinking which has some interesting consequences. His elder brother Alfred (a handsome, self-confident man of 26) is going to marry Bertha Grant, but the storyteller falls in love with her. While touring through Vienna, the younger brother has a vision or insight of the future and becomes quite ill, he could see into Bertha's heart. Then his elder brother falls from his horse and is killed. As you will guess, Bertha then makes the author think she loves him, they marry and have an awful marriage. One of his friends who is a doctor arrives, Bertha's maid is near death from peritonitis. She dies, but they believe there is some sort of secret between the maid and Bertha. The doctor performs a procedure on the dead maid and she briefly comes to life!! Bertha enters the room and the maid reveals that Bertha had asked her to get poison to give to her husband. The doctor is sworn to secrecy and the couple live apart until his death.

Strange story but it is beautifully written, the prose is very well done.


MAY CHALLENGE

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (DVD)

This was a bit of an old film, but well made! Starring Ian Richardson as Holmes, and interestingly Martin Shaw (who I have only seen in recent series such as Judge John Deed), in this he plays the American Sir Baskerville, and it was strange seeing him as such a younger actor and with an American accent, normally he has such a resonant  English voice.  I hadn't seen the film or read the book for many years, the hound was pretty scary, good sound effects, and you can see why it is one of Conan Doyle's most famous works. Of course Sir Baskerville nearly is attacked by the hound near the end, but falls off his horse and the hound attacks Holmes instead who looks like he should have suffered many fatal bites, but Watson eventually manages to shoot the hound. The baddie Stapleton, who turns out to be an illegitimate Baskerville, and who is trying to kill all the Baskerville's so he can make his claim of inheritance, runs away through the "mire" but Holmes is behind him, and Stapleton falls in to the bog, Holmes tries to save him, but Stapleton drops slowly into the mire screaming on the way. Then Sir Henry walks off with the heroine who was meant to be Stapleton's sister, but was really his wife. Alls well that ends well!!


A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The author for this month is Conan Doyle. Of course I thought of re-reading The Hound of the Baskervilles, but I got a copy of his first book, where Holmes and Dr Watson first meet: A Study in Scarlet.

Not a long book, 147 pages, so it was a quickie, I have some DVDs from the library too which I will describe later.

A Study in Scarlet wasn't exactly as I would have thought. It started describing how Dr Watson was invalided from the army where he was a medical doctor of all places: Afghanistan. That place was surprising to me, I would have thought India would be where he had been sent. He was not too flush with money and needed cheaper accommodation than the hotel where he was staying. He bumped into an old army colleague who suggested sharing with Holmes. They met in the chemistry labs and decided to share 221B Baker St. Interesting how times have changed, an outsider would have no hope of using a chemistry lab at all today.

The first part described the murder, of course Lestrade enters from Scotland Yard and ends up taking most of the credit and gets a commendation at the end for solving the case (although Holmes actually does).

Then the second part takes you to America and some rather scathing parts about the Mormons, Brigham Young even meets the hero's sweetheart's adopted father. I won't spoil the story if someone is going to read it, but he chases the baddies to Europe and finally gets his revenge in England near Baker Street.

As this was a short book, I have also started "The Secret Cases of Sherlock Holmes" which isn't by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle at all, but by Donald Thomas. In this the author brings Sherlock and Watson out of retirement.

Sherlock Holmes:Reinvented starring Robert Downey Junior and Jude Law.

What a brilliant film, such a new take on the classic, showing Sherlock and Watson in an entirely new light.

Talk about action, it was non-stop, I loved the scene at the shipyard where everything went astray. All-in-all a great adventure with some quite funny lines. I'll watch it again one day.


APRIL CHALLENGE

Review of "The Letters of Emily Dickinson 1845-1886 by Emily Dickinson and Mabel Loomis Todd

This was the first Emily Dickinson book I have borrowed from the library, but it is oddly written as the book was made by automating the typing, proof reading and design using Optical Character Recognition software on scanned copies of the original rare book. Consequently I have found it really hard to read as there are lots of mistakes and missing bits. It was hard to achieve continuity of the text because of this, so I have to say that I unfortunately abandoned reading it except for snatches here and there which were more legible.

Good luck if you attempt this one!

now to find some of her poetry!!


Afternoons with Emily" by Rose MacMurray

This was her only novel, which her children published posthumously after she died unexpectedly in 1997, how sad.

I started this book thinking there would be a lot of information about Emily. But while the heroine (Miranda) was one of the few people to visit Emily, most of the book was about Miranda's life. However I did read it all the way through. She spent 4 years writing this book. Her style is easy to read, at first I wondered whether Miranda was a real person, but as I read on, I doubted this. Every conversation of Emily was punctuated with some words in capital letters, not sure whether Emily was "shouting" these words or probably just emphasizing them. Emily comes over as an early feminist, not wishing Miranda to marry. Emily sends poems to many people, but doesn't want them punished. The author also punctuates the book with some of Emily's poems.

Coincidence is amazing. Last night I started book 3 in the Philip Pullman trilogy, The Amber Spyglass, each chapter starts with a poem by a famous author, last night chapter 4 had a verse by Emily:

She lay as if to play
Her life had leaped away -
Intending to return -
But not so soon -