In a recent review post, I described a novel as an undemanding read, and when, I did so a second time, I was challenged to define what I meant. Pondering this on a morning walk, it struck me that it’s easier to identify what such a book isn’t than what it is, which feels rather negative or damning with faint praise. Which wasn’t my intention, at least consciously. But don’t you also find that some books – and particularly novels – are just okay, without there being anything special about them? And is that in itself okay?
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2019 Reading Challenge
Anne has read 19 books toward their goal of 100 books.
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About the author and blogger ...
Anne Goodwin’s drive to understand what makes people tick led to a career in clinical psychology. That same curiosity now powers her fiction.
A prize-winning short-story writer, she has published three novels and a short story collection with small independent press, Inspired Quill. Her debut novel, Sugar and Snails, was shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize.
Away from her desk, Anne guides book-loving walkers through the Derbyshire landscape that inspired Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
Subscribers to her newsletter can download a free e-book of award-winning short stories.
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Pity the poor governess: an educated woman obliged to earn her living finding few other options in nineteenth century Britain. But this lesser known of the Brontës’ novels led me to pity her charges too. The three governesses in the second novel are worlds away from Agnes Grey, not only because they’re in France. Although employed by the couple who own the sprawling estate, they’ve brought their charges with them, so aren’t subjected to the condescension of the mini monarchs of the house.
Two short novels about doctoring, by authors with direct experience of the profession. The first, set in Egypt, is a semiautobiographical novel first published over half a century ago by one of the world’s most eminent feminists; the second, set in India, is a magic-realism story by a male author (but we won’t hold that against him). By sheer coincidence, neither of these authors names their characters, instead referring to them by role. (At least they don’t distinguish them by diagnoses!)
Two novels about girls in the painful process of growing up. For Australian Justine, in the first novel, adolescence merely exacerbates a lifetime of neglect; for Irish Lani, in the second, it’s the begins of psychological separation from her family as she falls for a local boy.
Like many words, the meaning of epic has evolved and seems to be applied to various incarnations of big. Both of these novels have been described by others (in the endorsements) as epic: the first, I think for its geographical scope (and, combined with its big brother, can be considered so in length); the second for its length and sweep of history and character.
Enid is a Scottish aristocrat who has married ‘down’; Adèle a working-class Parisian who married into the bourgeoisie. Enid considers sex a painful duty; Adèle is sex obsessed. For Enid, work is for men and servants; Adèle has a job. Born almost a century apart, the ‘heroines’ of these debuts nevertheless have similar motivations: both have been emotionally neglected by their own mothers and feel shackled by marriage and motherhood.
Two very different novels about women’s lives under and after the Soviet system: the first about a young mother from a Tatar village who finds a certain kind of freedom when she’s transported to the Soviet Gulag; the second about girls growing up in Prague in the dying days of communism.
Two British novels about the legacy of paternal violence for adult children, although the father’s tyranny in the first isn’t apparent until later on.
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entertaining fiction about identity, mental health and social justice
Annecdotal is where real life brushes up against the fictional.
Annecdotist is the blogging persona of Anne Goodwin:
reader, writer, slug-slayer, tramper of moors, recovering psychologist, struggling soprano, author of three fiction books. LATEST POSTS HERE
I don't post to a schedule, but average around ten reviews a month (see here for an alphabetical list), some linked to a weekly flash fiction, plus posts on my WIPs and published books. Your comments are welcome any time any where. Get new posts direct to your inbox ...
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