A Wife Now Living

Wuthering Heights Book review by Margaret Emily Bronte Rating: 9/10 Date read: 20 June to 3 August Wuthering Heights, the only novel written by Emily Brontë (a friend of the blog), was published in 1847. It is a Gothic romance novel which centres around themes of the supernatural, nature & civilisation, love, passion, masculinity & femininity, revenge & redemption and social class (LitCharts). The story’s chief characters are Catherine Earnshaw and her adopted brother, Heathcliff, who originally live in Wuthering Heights, an old manor house on the dark and stormy Yorkshire Moors. The majority of the story is narrated by Nelly Dean, a lifelong employed servant of the Earnshaw, and later, Linton families. She explains to John Lockwood, a wealthy gentleman staying in Thrushcross Grange, a house later owned by Heathcliff, the complicated and strange histories of the Earnshaw and Linton families over the past fifty years. This consists of three generations of people, many birt

The Great Gatsby Book review by Margaret F. Scott Fitzgerald Rating: 8.5/10 Date read: 19 June The Great Gatsby was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1925 and explores themes of love, class, past versus future, the American dream and dysfunctional relationships within the setting of the Jazz Age in New York. The novel is narrated by Nick Carraway, a bond salesman living in the fictional neighbourhood of West Egg on Long Island. His next-door neighbour is the infamous and enigmatic Gatsby: owner of riches, thrower of parties and inviter of speculation. Gatsby, Nick, Nick’s cousin Daisy Buchanan, her husband Tom, their friend Jordan Baker, the woman with whom Tom Buchanan is having an affair, Myrtle Wilson and her husband George all form the cast of characters in this rich, sultry and absorbing narrative. This novel was much shorter than I expected, and I read all of it in a day. It was an enthralling story; not fast-paced or action-packed, but vivid and bold, overflowing with vibran

Gilead Book review by Margaret Marilynne Robinson Rating: 6.5/10 Date read: 12 June to 18 June Gilead is a 2004 fictional epistolary novel by Marilynne Robinson, whose main character, a Congregationalist pastor called John Ames, is writing letters to his son. John is in his late seventies and married to a woman more than thirty years his junior, with an unnamed son of about six years old. John knows that, due to his heart condition, he will not live for much longer, so he has decided to leave a monologic record of various experiences, thoughts, meditations, observations and impressions for his son to read when he is older, presumably after John’s death. However, John’s son plays a relatively minor role in the book itself; rather, Jack Boughton, the son of John’s best friend, plays the most active role in the story, serving as one of the primary focuses of John’s thoughts.  I found this novel to be highly engaging on an ideological level, though the story itself was meandering and f

Atonement Book review by Margaret Ian McEwan Rating: 8/10 Date read: 8 June to 11 June Atonement is a 2001 British metafiction novel which takes place in three settings: 1935 England, Second World War England and France, and 1999 England. It follows the story of Briony Tallis, a thirteen-year-old, upper-class girl whose innocent mistake one summer night ruins the lives of her elder sister, Cecelia, and Cecelia’s childhood friend and lover, Robbie Turner. Briony spends the rest of her life trying to atone for her mistake, as the effects of it spread throughout her family. Atonement is centred around themes such as the power of storytelling, the nature of perspective, regret and guilt, and childhood versus adulthood (Sparknotes).  In short, I was enthralled by the first half and utterly bored by the second. I thought the writing was excellent; the setting was richly vivid, the characters deep and unique, and the story (at least the first part) absolutely gripping. Yet I hate war sto

The Queer Terror Of 'The Haunting Of Hill House' “To learn what we fear is to learn who we are. Horror defies our boundaries and illuminates our souls.” written by Ollie Largely regarded as one of the greatest horror novels of all time Shirley Jackson's 'The Haunting Of Hill House' perfects and modernises the conventions of haunted-house stories. Jackson masterfully blurs the lines between 'the haunted house' and 'the haunted housed'. The house itself is 'not sane' but neither are its inhabitants, which allows Jackson to explore the deepest shadows of the human psyche.   However, beyond the banging doors and blood-written messages of Hill House an even darker terror resides, the terror of realising you are queer in a world where queerness means isolation. exploring the genuine fear experienced by individuals who identified as queer during the 1950s. A time when being gay was at best a life sentence of exclusion and at worst a death sentence.