Modern retelling of ‘Pride and Prejudice’? Written by Curtis Sittenfeld, author of the brilliant ‘Prep’ (amongst many other fab books)? Sign me up!
I was definitely intrigued about this book and it has been vaguely on my radar for a few years (it was published in 2016). When it popped up as an audiobook suggestion on BorrowBox, I thought I needed to give it a try.
How on earth could ‘Pride and Prejudice’, with its Georgian mores and sensibilities, be dragged into modern-day America? I had to find out.
This marks yet another series that I’ve jumped into at a mid-point! This is the second book in this series, following on from ‘The Christmas Killer’ – although I think this works fine as a stand alone novel.
Thanks to NetGalley and Avon for my copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
This story opens with a farmer returning home on Christmas Eve – it’s snowing in the remote part of Cumbria where he lives and he is dreading discussing his urgent financial issues with his family. When he returns to the farm, he notices some footprints in the snow leading to his cellar – but there are no prints leaving the cellar. Days later, the bodies of the farmer and his family are found in the farmhouse and DI Walker is called in to solve a complex crime.
I loved the remote and snowy setting of this book – there is something really eerie about an already remote place being cut off further by the weather. Cumbria is also a great setting for crime novels as it is at the mercy of the elements and difficult to navigate quickly even in bright sunshine – Rachel Lynch uses just this setting for her excellent crime novels about DI Kelly Porter (also worth a read!)
The central characters of DI Walker and his wife are also well-rounded and engaging. They are expecting a baby and there is a sub-plot to do with their past in London which adds a bit of depth and interest to their relationship and situation – although I think the sub-plot probably feels more high-stake if you’ve read the first book. I thought it was a shame that more of the police team weren’t given more to do – so much of the focus is on Walker himself that the team don’t really have distinct personalities.
The plotting is clever and this is a really solid police procedural novel – I enjoyed following the investigation as it experienced highs, lows and setbacks galore. There was certainly enough happening to keep me reading – but I did guess one of the big revelations very early on which is why this is a 4 star review and not a 5 – maybe I’ve just read too many crime novels and am suspicious of everything! That said, the tension is managed well and the connection to the earlier crime at the farmhouse gives this an interesting dimension.
I’d recommend this to anyone who enjoys tense and twisty police procedurals. There are some really creepy ideas and situations in the book so it probably isn’t for the faint of heart. However, there’s lots to enjoy and it would make a lively festive read…if Christmas bloodbaths are your thing.
Incidentally, no judgement from me because this book is just my thing!
If you’d like a copy of this book, please use my affiliate link below – 99p last time I looked so you can’t go wrong! Thanks for supporting my blog with any purchases.
Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for ‘Baby It’s Cold Outside’ by Emily Bell. This gorgeous, festive romance is out now.
Thanks to Penguin Michael Joseph for my copy of the book in exchange for an honest review – opinions, as always, are my own. Thanks for also inviting me on the tour!
I love historical fiction, am utterly intrigued by the Arctic as a setting for a novel and am totally sold on duel timeline stories. It was clear before I even opened this book that it would tick a lot of boxes for me.
I just didn’t appreciate quite how many.
I loved everything about this book – the setting, the time periods, the gorgeous descriptive language, the characters, the mystery. Everything!
I was contacted by the author to review this novel and she kindly provided my review copy – thank you to Alison Jean Lester for my book, ‘Glide’ coaster and postcard. This has not influenced my review – as always, opinions are my own.
I’ll admit I didn’t fully know what to expect from this novel. I knew it was a study of human relationships, had some psychological drama and also featured photographs alongside the text – all of which intrigued me!
I love Miles Jupp’s comedy and came to this book with very high expectations – thanks to NetGalley and Headline for my copy in exchange for an honest review.
The story is about Clive Hapgood, a History teacher in a small private school. He is having a tough time both at school and in his family life, so a trip to France at half term looks to be the answer to all his problems. However, an incident at school refuses to be forgotten and Clive’s life starts to unravel.
I devoured Cooper’s first novel, ‘The Chalet’ in one sitting during a heatwave – and I’m pleased to report that ‘The Chateau’ was every bit as gripping! This is another one that I sailed through with remarkable speed.
Thanks to NetGalley for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review.
Thanks to Random Things Tours and Harper for inviting me on this blog tour and for my copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
This book was published on 5th August.
From the Publisher:
The year is 1953, and Simon Putnam, a recent Harvard graduate, has landed an editorial role at a distinguished New York City publisher. Thrust into a glittering world of martini lunches, exclusive literary salons, and old-money aristocrats in exquisitely tailored suits, Simon finds himself a far cry from his loving, middle-class Jewish family in Coney Island. But Simon’s first assignment—editing The Vixen, the Patriot and the Fanatic, a lurid bodice-ripper improbably based on the recent trial and execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, a potboiler intended to shore up the firm’s failing finances—makes him question the cost of admission. Because Simon has a secret that, at the height of the Red Scare and the McCarthy hearings, he cannot reveal: his beloved mother was a childhood friend of Ethel Rosenberg’s. Indeed, his parents mourn Ethel’s death.
THE VIXEN is the latest novel from critically acclaimed, bestselling author Francine Prose. “A rollicking trickster of a novel, wondrously funny and wickedly addictive,” lauds Maria Semple, Simon’s dilemma grows thornier when he meets The Vixen’s author, the beautiful, reckless, seductive Anya Partridge, ensconced in her opium-scented boudoir in a luxury Hudson River mental asylum. The assignment leads him in strange and sinister directions, his naivety often exploited by bad actors and power players. As deception abounds, as the confluence of sex, money, politics and power spirals out of Simon’s control, he must face what he’s lost by exchanging the safety of his parents’ apartment for the witty, whiskey-soaked orbit of his charismatic boss, the legendary Warren Landry. Gradually Simon realizes that the people around him are not what they seem, that everyone is keeping secrets, that ordinary events may conceal a diabolical plot – and yet, that these crises may steer him toward a brighter future.
THE VIXEN rewards its reader with an eminently satisfying conclusion. It is the sort of work most needed right now. At once domestic and political, contemporary and historic, funny and heart-breaking, the novel illuminates a period of history with eerily striking similarities to the current moment. Meanwhile it asks timeless questions: How do we balance ambition and conscience? What do social mobility and cultural assimilation require us to sacrifice? How do we develop an authentic self, discover a vocation, and learn to live with the mysteries of life and loss?
Deeply researched, with such broad considerations and hefty socio-political themes, a work of this sort might find itself weighed down by its own ideas. But in Prose’s able hands, THE VIXEN is dazzling and energetic. She opts, instead, for something at once more sly and more accessible, using the historical premise as a vehicle to tell a universally resonant story of love, self-discovery, and family. Like those accused of Communism across America in the 1950s, Simon Putnam is after, most of all, the right to define himself.
My Review:
It was the setting that drew me to this book – 1950s New York sounded impossibly glamorous, even if our central character grew up in the less salubrious Coney Island in the shadow of the amusement park. Throw in the world of publishing and I’m in!
This is the story of Simon Putnam, the Harvard graduate whose education has not prepared him at all for real life. Nepotism lands him a publishing job, but it soon becomes clear that Simon is very much out of his depth. He finds the book he has been given to edit morally dubious – it is capitalising on the deaths of the Rosenbergs while being heralded as the book that will change the fortunes of the struggling publishing house.
When Simon meets (and becomes involved in a relationship of sorts) with the novel’s author, Anya, he struggles even more with the morals of what he is being asked to do – especially as he knows that his parents would be horrified with his choices. However, this turns out to be merely the start of his troubles…
Simon is an engaging and quite relatable narrator. All at once, we see the dilemmas he faces – the desire to do right by his parents, his lust for Anya, his ambitions and attempt at professionalism. He really is caught in an impossible situation whereby the ‘right’ (moral) course of action runs counter to everything else – and would lose him his job and whatever he has going with Anya. His perspective is presented with humour and his narrative voice is lively.
This novel is really at its best when it explores the morality of Simon’s decisions in detail. Indeed, his tiptoeing around the situation is very credible and engaging. I found that I enjoyed this a lot more than the later parts of the novel which seemed (to me) a bit harder to believe.
The setting was hugely appealing for me. Although I didn’t know much about the Rosenberg trial and execution, I loved that this novel sheds light on this shocking and brutal episode in America’s history. The glamorous world of New York’s publishing scene in the 1950s is also well-presented. On the one hand there is decadence and glitz, but on the other we see Simon desperately calculating what he can afford to buy on restaurant menus.
Overall, I’d say this is a hugely readable and enjoyable novel that plays around with ideas of morality – not only personal, but also the moral choices made by the government of a nation. It’s incredibly well-researched, beautifully written and draws the reader into Simon’s world with ease. If you wanted to spend a few hours in 1950s New York, this would be a great choice for you!
About the Author:
Francine Prose is the author of twenty-one works of fiction including, the highly acclaimed Mister Monkey; the New York Times bestseller Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932; A Changed Man, which won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize; and Blue Angel, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her works of nonfiction include the highly praised Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife, and the New York Times bestseller Reading Like a Writer, which has become a classic. The recipient of numerous grants and honours, including a Guggenheim and a Fulbright, a Director’s Fellow at the Centre for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, Prose is a former president of PEN American Centre, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is a Distinguished Writer in Residence at Bard College.
Given my book obsession (hardly a secret), it is quite rare that I pick up a newly released book in my genres in Waterstones that I haven’t heard of before. This one grabbed my attention (bright orange cover!) and I began idly flicking through it. Within a couple of skimmed lines, I was sold and bought it.
I hadn’t heard of Georgia Pritchett before, although I now feel ashamed to say that given her impressive CV writing for pretty much every comedy show I could think of from ‘Spitting Image’ to ‘Veep’, ‘Have I Got News For You?’ to ‘The Thick of It’.
What grabbed me was just how funny this book is. I’m always on the lookout for books that make me laugh and – as it made me giggle to myself in Waterstones – this one hit the spot in seconds.
Essentially, the book is written as Pritchett’s explanation to her psychiatrist about all the things she is anxious about. This starts from her earliest memories and works in chronological order through her life to date – right through her stellar career and into the struggles she is having that take her to her doctor’s door.
Doesn’t sound immediately hilarious, does it?!
However, the writing is absolutely sublime. Pritchett perfectly skewers thoughts and people and events with such precision that it is just so relatable. This is something I didn’t think would be possible when I compare my life (pottering round in Cheshire) with hers (pottering round the White House with celebrities). Turns out that anxiety is a universal experience – who knew?!
There are some great running jokes – Bob Dylan’s every appearance made me snort with laughter – but there is also real warmth in the descriptions. I loved Pritchett’s Dad (complete with story about how he got his nickname – The Patriarchy), The Moose, The Speck…no-one is called by their actual names and it is like being let in on family in-jokes.
As Pritchett becomes older and immersed in her career, the reader is treated to some lovely anecdotes about celebrities and working on high-profile comedy programmes. It never becomes about name-dropping and there is always Pritchett’s imposter syndrome to contend with – she is self-deprecating to the point of not realising that her achievements are down to her own talent.
That’s not to say that the book doesn’t cover some really serious (and anxiety-inducing) topics. Some of Pritchett’s experiences are heartbreaking, yet there is a matter-of-fact presentation of them and an ability to see humour in the darkest of situations.
I loved this book so much. I raced through it, reading bits to anyone who would listen along the way, and I’m already thinking about a reread! If you love humorous books with bucketloads of warm wit then this is for you. If you have anxiety in any form, the sentiments will all seem so familiar – except narrated by someone really, really funny.
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