The bucolic town of Eyam is nestled in the gently rolling hills of the Derbyshire dales. With its rambling roses and stone cottages, there isn’t much to differentiate its quaintness from other small towns in the area—except that Eyam has a tragic tale to tell. In 1664 the deadly plague known as the Black Death, or Bubonic Plague, had returned once again to bedevil. It was to be the last major outbreak of the disease in England, but as it went on its way, it took 100,000 Londoners with it: one quarter of the city’s population at the time. For the…
By Its Cover is a series of posts wherein I read a book solely on my love of the cover. No reading the jacket, no checking reviews! This is where I must confront my apparent obsession with books featuring elegantly dressed women on the cover. See here and here. Somewhere I read a phrase that this book was a “substantive beach read” which I thought to be an excellent turn of phrase and one which describes this book perfectly. It’s an easy to read page turner grounded in good writing, excellent dialogue (really, that can make or break a book) and a decently complex…
By Its Cover is a series of posts wherein I read a book based solely on my love of the cover. No reading the jacket, no checking reviews! In May of 1952 Claire Pendleton arrives in Hong Kong with her husband of a few months. He is an engineer assigned to oversee the building of the Tai Lam Cheung reservoir. Claire doesn’t particularly love her husband. While acknowledging that he is a good man, she married him to escape a dull life. To fill her days, Claire becomes a piano teacher for Locket, the spoiled daughter of a wealthy Chinese couple, Victor…
I’m a huge fan of the flower still life paintings of the Dutch masters. Whilst my own world tends to be filled with muted tones and neutrals, I find the rich and vivid colours of those flowers set against a dark background, highlighting light and texture, to be just stunning. Hardly surprising then that this book cover would lure me in, not only for that gorgeous tulip but because the pages within seem to promise an historical setting. The title refers to an interesting in Holland’s economic history. Holland in the 1600s was experiencing a Golden Age. The creation of the…
~Lillian Boxfish Takes A Walk Kathleen Rooney Lillian Boxfish, aged 85, walks to Grimaldi’s for her annual New Year’s Eve dinner. She stops in at a bar beforehand, having decided to walk to the restaurant in an attempt to work up an appetite after munching on one too many Oreos. After dinner she makes an impromptu decision to walk to another restaurant which she has not visited since her divorce, which inspires contemplation about the life she has lived. Lillian’s character is based upon a real person — Margaret Fishback — a celebrated and successful writer in the advertising department at…
