Tag: Read

#BookReview Charlotte by Helen Moffett @ZaffreBooks

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9781785769108About the Book

Everybody thinks that Charlotte Lucas has no prospects. She is unmarried, plain, poor, and reaching a dangerous age.

When she stuns the neighbourhood by accepting the proposal of buffoonish clergyman Mr Collins, her best friend Lizzy Bennet is appalled by her decision. Yet this is the only way Charlotte knows how to provide for her future.

Her married life propels Charlotte into a new world: not only of duty and longed-for children, but secrets, grief, unexpected love and friendship, and a kind of freedom.

This powerful reimagining takes up where Austen left off, showing us a woman determined to carve a place for herself in the world. Charlotte offers a fresh, feminist addition to the post-Austen canon, beautifully imagined, and brimming with passion and intelligence.

Format: (Hardcover, 368 pages)              Publisher: Manilla Press
Publication date: 3rd September 2020 Genre: Historical fiction

Find Charlotte on Goodreads

Purchase links*
Amazon UK | Hive (supporting UK bookshops)
*links provided for convenience not as part of an affiliate programme

My Review

The Charlotte who emerges from the book is loyal, honest, intelligent, an attentive, loving mother and wife. Above all, she’s a pragmatist, her aim being ‘to secure a future free of anxiety and material want’ for herself and her children. The author provides the reader with a different picture of the relationship between Charlotte and Mr Collins than might be imagined from Pride and Prejudice. Although a marriage of convenience initially, there is mutual affection and, at times, even desire between the pair. Yes, really. Granted, Mr Collins remains his overly talkative self and pathetically grateful for every favour that comes his way from his patron, Lady Catherine, but there are some touching scenes in which he and Charlotte are brought together by grief.

The author has some fun imagining “what happened next” to the other Bennet sisters and expanding the role of some of the secondary characters from Pride and Prejudice, notably Anne de Bourgh, daughter of the formidable Lady Catherine. There are also literary allusions to spot such as a first meeting on a moonlit road, a female character with a fondness for wearing men’s clothes and a wet-shirted emergence from water.

An invented character, Austrian musician and piano tuner Jacob Rosenstein, acts as a vehicle for Charlotte to recount, in a series of flashbacks, scenes from Pride and Prejudice (seen from her point of view) as well as details of the early part of her marriage. He also acts as a welcome distraction from her grief over a family tragedy.

The book is written in elegant prose reminiscent of, but not slavishly copying, Jane Austen’s style. Much tea is consumed, health-giving country walks are taken and musical evenings are enjoyed.

A repeated theme of the book is the inferior status of women whether manifested through inheritance laws, social conventions or the constraints of marriage. It leads Charlotte to reflect on ‘the swinging unfairness of the lot that made her a woman’ making her ‘little better than a parcel to be lodged where first a father and then a husband decreed’. Having said this, Charlotte proves herself adept at subtle manipulation and the end of the book sees her influencing the turn of events.

I received an advance review copy courtesy of Manilla Press and Readers First.

In three words: Tender, assured, engaging

Try something similar: The Other Bennet Sister by Janice Hadlow or Longbourn by Jo Baker

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EQngv350_400x400About the Author

Helen Moffett is a South African writer, freelance editor, activist, and award-winning poet. She had a PhD on Pre-Raphaelite poetry and has authored or co-authored university textbooks, short story anthologies, non-fiction books on the environment, two poetry collections, and various academic projects. Charlotte is her first novel. (Photo credit: Twitter profile)

Connect with Helen
Website | Twitter

 

#WWWWednesday – 2nd September 2020

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WWWWednesdays

Hosted by Taking on a World of Words, this meme is all about the three Ws:

  • What are you currently reading?
  • What did you recently finish reading?
  • What do you think you’ll read next?

Why not join in too?  Leave a comment with your link at Taking on a World of Words and then go blog hopping!

Currently reading

A book for a blog tour and two ARCs

Talland House by Maggie Humm (eARC, courtesy of She Writes Press and Random Things Tours)

Royal Academy, London 1919: Lily has put her student days in St. Ives, Cornwall, behind her – a time when her substitute mother, Mrs. Ramsay, seemingly disliked Lily’s portrait of her, and Louis Grier, her tutor never seduced her as she hoped he would. In the years since, she’s been a suffragette and a nurse in WWI, and now she’s a successful artist with a painting displayed at the Royal Academy.

Then Louis appears at the exhibition with the news that Mrs. Ramsay has died under suspicious circumstances. Talking to Louis, Lily realizes two things: she must find out more about her beloved Mrs. Ramsay’s death (and her sometimes-violent husband, Mr. Ramsay); and she still loves Louis.

Set between 1900 and 1919 in picturesque Cornwall and war-blasted London, Talland House takes Lily Briscoe from the pages of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse and tells her story outside the confines of Woolf’s novel – as a student in 1900, as a young woman becoming a professional artist, her loves and friendships, mourning her dead mother, and solving the mystery of her friend Mrs. Ramsay’s sudden death.

Charlotte by Helen Moffett (ARC, courtesy of Zaffre and Readers First)

Everybody thinks that Charlotte Lucas has no prospects. She is twenty-seven years old, unmarried, plain, and seemingly without ambition. When she stuns the neighbourhood by accepting the proposal of buffoonish clergyman Mr Collins, her best friend Lizzy Bennet is angry at her for undervaluing herself. Yet the decision is the only way Charlotte knows to provide for her future, and marriage will propel her into a new world, of duty, marriage, children, grief and ultimately illicit love, and a kind of freedom.

Jane Austen cared deeply about the constraints of women in Regency England. This powerful reimagining takes up where Austen left off, showing us a woman determined to carve a place for herself in the world. Charlotte offers a fresh, feminist addition to the post-Austen canon, beautifully imagined, and brimming with passion and intelligence.

Adrift by Amin Maalouf (ARC, courtesy of World Editions)

The United States is losing its moral credibility. The European Union is breaking apart. Africa, the Arab world, and the Mediterranean are becoming battlefields for various regional and global powers. Extreme forms of nationalism are on the rise. Thus divided, humanity is unable to address global threats to the environment and our health.

How did we get here and what is yet to come?

World-renowned scholar and bestselling author Amin Maalouf seeks to raise awareness and pursue a new human solidarity. In Adrift, Maalouf traces how civilizations have drifted apart throughout the 20th century, mixing personal narrative and historical analysis to provide a warning signal for the future.

 

Recently finished

Links from the titles will take you to my review.

Crooked Heart by Lissa Evans

When Noel Bostock – aged ten, no family – is evacuated from London to escape the Blitz, he ends up living in St Albans with Vera Sedge – thirty-six and drowning in debts and dependents. Always desperate for money, she’s unscrupulous about how she gets it.

Noel’s mourning his godmother, Mattie, a former suffragette. Brought up to share her disdain for authority and eclectic approach to education, he has little in common with other children and even less with Vee, who hurtles impulsively from one self-made crisis to the next. The war’s thrown up new opportunities for making money but what Vee needs (and what she’s never had) is a cool head and the ability to make a plan. On her own, she’s a disaster. With Noel, she’s a team.

Together they cook up an idea. Criss-crossing the bombed suburbs of London, Vee starts to make a profit and Noel begins to regain his interest in life. But there are plenty of other people making money out of the war and some of them are dangerous. Noel may have been moved to safety, but he isn’t actually safe at all… (Review to follow)

V For Victory by Lissa Evans

The Museum Makers by Rachel Morris

A Prince of the Captivity by John Buchan

The Night of the Flood by Zoë Somerville

 

What Cathy (will) Read Next

9781788546430The Ghost Tree (A Betty Church Mystery Book 3) by M. R. C. Kasasian (eARC, courtesy of Head of Zeus via NetGalley)

Detective Betty Church is forced to revisit ghosts from her past when a skeleton is found buried in the woods.

July, 1914: Sixteen-year-old Etterly, running from something, hides inside the trunk of a tree and disappears. The police search but find no trace. Her family and friends rack their brains, but come up with nothing. And so slowly life returns to normal. The hole in the tree is boarded up and the town of Sackwater moves on. Only Etterly’s best friend, Betty, clings to hope, insisting she can hear her friend crying for help.

June, 1940: A skeleton is discovered buried in the woods. Though most clues have long since decayed, it is wearing an unusual necklace. As soon as Inspector Betty Church sees the evidence she recognises it. The necklace belonged to Etterly. Fearing the worst, Betty is determined to solve this strange case once and for all.

What happened to Etterly? And why has this secret remained buried for so long?