Much of Caroline Herschel’s life is spent alone with her angry, unhappy mother, working as little better than a slave for a woman who has never shown her any interest or kindness. As a young girl she contracted typhus but it is the 1700s and there is nothing to be done but hope she survives. When she does it is to even greater misery from her mother who seems to enjoy telling ... Read More...
The Household Spirit
In The Household Spirit, on a rural road in upstate New York, there sit two identical houses inhabited by two people who are anything but identical. Howie Jeffries is fifty-years old and has lived alone in his house since he and his wife divorced twenty years ago. He is a man with a huge heart wrapped in a persona of extreme shyness and an exterior that is so dour when he does ... Read More...
Emma: A Modern Retelling
Alexander McCall Smith takes a turn at adapting Jane Austen in his newest novel, Emma: A Modern Retelling. Don’t call for the smelling salts diehard Austen fans, he does not commit the unpardonable sin of veering too far off course from her classic. Emma is still Emma as are all the other characters right down to their names. What have changed are the times. Now the ... Read More...
The Moor’s Account
And thus it was done. Of all the contracts I had signed, this was perhaps the only one my father could never have imagined me signing, for it traded what should never be traded. It delivered me into the unknown and erased my father’s name. I could not know that this was just the first of many erasures. The Moor’s Account by Laila Lalami is the story of Mustafa, a young man ... Read More...
