JULIET by Anne Fortier
Hands up anyone who doesn’t know the story of Romeo and Juliet. No-one? Thought not. Chances are you cut your literary teeth on it, and it probably holds some special associations for you. That’s why it’s such a good subject for a modern/historical parallel romance story with sinister overtones.
July 29, 2011
· 
Judi Clark · 
No Comments
Tags: Fairy Tales, love, Middle Ages, Quest, Shakespeare, Time Period Fiction · Posted in: Contemporary, Debut Novel, Facing History, italy, Reading Guide
NEXT TO LOVE by Ellen Feldman
NEXT TO LOVE starts out very strong. We meet three childhood friends in Massachusetts – Babe, Millie, and Grace – whose men are on the cusp of going off to World War II. Ms. Feldman deftly juggles their stories and breathes life into their characters. Grace is the beauty who is married to the heir of one of the town’s most illustrious citizens and has a young daughter; Millie is married to Pete, the pharmacist’s son; and Babe is the feisty wrong-side-of-the-tracks gal who is in a committed relationship with an upstanding man who wants to become a teacher.
July 28, 2011
· Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: 1940s, 1950s, 20th-Century, Friendship, Small Town, Time Period Fiction, War Story, WWII · Posted in: Facing History, NE & New York, Reading Guide
RULES OF CIVILITY by Amor Towles
If a novel could win an award for best cinematography, this would take home the gold. Amor Towles’s sophisticated retro-era novel of manners captures Manhattan 1938 with immaculate lucidity and a silvery focus on the gin and the jazz, the nightclubs and the streets, the pursuit of sensuality, and the arc of the self-made woman.
July 27, 2011
· Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: 1930s, NYC, Time Period Fiction · Posted in: Class - Race - Gender, Debut Novel, Facing History, Humorous, New York City, Reading Guide
KAMCHATKA by Marcelo Figueras
He calls himself “Harry” now, after his new hero, the famous escape artist, Harry Houdini, hoping that one day he, too, will be a successful escape artist. Discovering a book about Houdini, hidden in the room that will now serve as his bedroom, the ten-year-old boy finds a new source of inspiration. Only the day before, and without warning, his family had to leave their comfortable house in Buenos Aires with nothing but the bare essentials. An abandoned country house has to serve as their temporary shelter. Harry already misses school, his friends and his board game Risk. With his routines disrupted, his sense of dislocation is further heightened when papá tells him and his little brother that they all have to take on new names and forget their former ones: it is too dangerous. Set in 1976, against the backdrop of what has become known as Argentina’s “Dirty War,” that left thousands of people as desaparecidos – disappeared without a trace -, Marcelo Figueras takes us on a moving and intricate journey, through hope, devotion and betrayal, through human frailty and strength, through loss and perseverance.
July 11, 2011
· Judi Clark · Comments Closed
Tags: 1970s, Argentina, Real Event Fiction, Time Period Fiction · Posted in: Facing History, Latin American/Caribbean, South America, Translated, World Lit
THE WINTER GHOSTS by Kate Mosse
Mosse gives her beguiling novel an old fashioned gothic framework that suits this eerie story of ghostly love in an insular mountain village of France a decade after WWI. The story opens in 1933 as Frederick Watson visits an antiquarian bookseller in Toulouse. “He walked like a man recently returned to the world. Every step was careful, deliberate. Every step to be relished.” Well-dressed and confident, Watson knows his appearance contrasts sharply with his last visit to Toulouse in 1928 at age 25. “He had been another man then, a tattered man, worn threadbare by grief.”
July 10, 2011
· Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: 1930s, Gothic, Grief, love, Time Period Fiction, Unreliable Narrator · Posted in: 2011 Favorites, Facing History, France, Mystery/Suspense, Psychological Suspense
THE DANTE CLUB by Matthew Pearl
You could classify THE DANTE CLUB loosely as historical fiction. Or perhaps, try historical-fantasy-fiction-literary-murder-mystery. It’s definitely a work to be enjoyed by “literary types,” but also by thrill-seekers, detective buffs, psychological and social analysts and in fact anyone who enjoys a good read.
June 30, 2011
· Judi Clark · One Comment
Tags: 19th-Century, Boston, Dante, Real People Fiction, Story Retold, Time Period Fiction · Posted in: Facing History, Literary, Mystery/Suspense, NE & New York
