Welcome to Litsy!

There is a lot going on in this book that I didn‘t understand the main one being Henrietta why was she in the story at all?

The real story centres around Leopold and the mystery of why he doesn‘t live with his mother, a mystery which is slowly revealed when the narrative switches to the past and we learn his mother‘s story.

I think I would have enjoyed it more if I followed everything that was going on.

I grew up in Cork and never heard of this Corkonian writer. I had to hear of her from my NY Uni attending daughter. This is the second book I‘ve read of hers, The Hotel being the first. Both are delightful.

I enjoyed it even if I didn‘t really understand all of it. I blame that on it being an older book.

A few of my holiday finds (well, so far 😉).

I hadn‘t heard of this Virago Modern Classic before (it‘s an epistolary novel set in 1730s Ireland) but the author was the script writer for Gaslight, War and Peace, and Anne of the Thousand Days.

The middle of this book is the kind of overwrought doomed love story I adore. The writing style is unique, the voice unusual in a fresh way, and the three-part structure interesting. Despite this, there‘s a sense of low-level pre-WW2 casual anti-Semitism throughout that chafed.

How have I never read this author before? She‘s like, more Daphne duMaurier but her own self too. 💜

Nice touch, the Pleyel music stand. 🖤🎵

One of those books that makes me wish I knew more about 20th century literature, because I'm pretty sure there were interesting things going on technically here. It's hard to capture what the book is "about": there's a little boy whose mysterious origins become clear over the course of the book, along with the complex relationships of the adults around him.

"Karen had grown up in a world of grace and intelligence, in which the Boer War, the War, and other fatigues and disasters had been so many opportunities to behave well."

"She was anxious to be someone, and no one having ever voiced a prejudice in her hearing without impressing her, had come to associate prejudice with identity. You could not be a someone without disliking things."

Starting a new book as my parents run a 5k. To each their own!

I just couldn't connect with the story or characters in this one. I found it to be boring and predictable. I generally dislike precocious children, and this had two of them. The modernist style produced beautiful but frequently confusing sentences. Nothing much happens plot wise.