The Gilmore Guide to Books

Connecting Books and Readers One Review at a Time

  • Home
  • About Me
  • Reviews
    • Reviews by Author
    • Reviews by Title
    • Reviews by Genre
  • Podcast
  • Policies
    • Review Policy
    • Cookie Policy
    • Privacy Policy

Rare Objects: A Novel

April 20, 2016

Rare Objects by Kathleen Tessaro
Published by Harper
Publication date: April 12th 2016
three-stars

rare objects

 

Before we’ve even met her Maeve has lived a lot of life for a twenty-five-year-old woman in the 1930s. After secretarial school she leaves Boston for New York City, using the lie of a big job opportunity as a way to get out of marriage and town. But because no such job existed in Depression era NYC Maeve ends up working in a dance hall on Broadway where only alcohol makes the job endurable. After she is raped by a man for stealing his gold watch she tries to kill herself and ends up in an asylum. These are not spoilers, they are recounted early in Kathleen Tessaro’s new novel, Rare Objects, and go a long way to establish just how desperate Maeve is for a real job when she returns to her mother’s apartment in Boston. It’s only when she shortens her name to May and bleaches her bright red hair blonde that’s she able to finagle a position as a sales girl at a small antique dealer. And begins another series of inventions for herself in an effort to get the life she wants.

My life was full of cracks, ever-widening gaps between the person I wanted to be and the person I was. 

Tessaro seasons Rare Objects with a diverse cast of characters ranging from Diana, a society girl Maeve befriended at the institution to Mr. Winshaw, the man responsible for finding and procuring the rare objects that fill the shop. Each are there to push and pull her in various directions, either towards a better self or to the easy way out. Tessaro uses plot in the same way and in combination with the numerous characters this can get a bit unwieldy, with a lot going on but no real certainty as to where it’s going. It makes for a bit of a conundrum because many of the historical details are interesting, but they aren’t pursued in-depth. Facts like Diana’s family are Afrikaners is noted, but its implications are not explored.

Rare Objects succeeds as a catchy read, with the kind of characters who have dimensions and the presence to make the reader want more—which given the ending may be a possibility. While I would have appreciated further development of certain plot points, the fact that I came away feeling that I learned something is always a mark of not only enjoyable fiction, but authors I will come back to again.

three-stars

Related Posts

  • Related Posts
  • Same Genre
  • 3 Star Books
Valley of Amazement
The Valley of Amazement
november
November Reading Wrap-Up
march reading
March Reading Recap
fever
Fever: A Novel
Wise Men
Wise Men
Plainsong
Plainsong
The Sandcastle Girls
The Sandcastle Girls
alone
You Are Not Alone by Greer Hendricks
klara
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
perfect little world
Perfect Little World: A Novel
deep
The Deep by Nick Cutter
nonfiction
Summer Nonfiction Mini-Reviews
last exiles
The Last Exiles: A Novel
california
California: A Novel
marilyn
Marilyn: The Passion and the Paradox

1 Comment
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: 1930s, chick lit, historical fiction, New England

Comments

  1. Tara Caudle says

    April 22, 2016 at 2:02 pm

    I just love this cover, Catherine!!

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

  • Bloglovin
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter

Save time and subscribe via email

No time to keep checking for new reviews? Enter your email address to subscribe and receive notifications of new posts by email. No spam!

Currently Reading

Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle
Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle
by Emily Nagoski
The Dutch House
The Dutch House
by Ann Patchett
Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me
Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me
by Adrienne Brodeur

goodreads.com

Affiliate Disclosure

I’m an affiliate for Indiebound and Amazon. If you click on a link that takes you to any of these sites and make a purchase I’ll earn a small fee, which goes towards the costs of maintaining this site. Your support is appreciated. Thank you!

Archives

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.

Theme Design By Studio Mommy · Copyright © 2023

Copyright © 2023 · Beyond Madison Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in