I
adore the narration, which manages to be both foreboding and
light-hearted.
I was pulled into the
story of a marriage which pits Lucrezia Medici against Alfonso, Duke of
Ferrara, in a silent war for autonomy and mastery, each a two-faced Janus
trying to stay alive in their respective roles.
Lucrezia is a painter of hand-holdable studies of the way nature and
society connect; absorbed in her own world, she is overwhelmed by the court
life of which her husband is the ruthless leader. His impotence bleeds into disguised hatred of
her childlessness, while her imagination keeps her sane in the complicated
politics of two powerful 16th-century duchies.
WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION FINALIST • REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK • NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • The author of award-winning Hamnet brings the world of Renaissance Italy to jewel-bright life in this unforgettable fictional portrait of the captivating young duchess Lucrezia de' Medici as she makes her way in a troubled court.
“I could not stop reading this incredible true story.” —Reese Witherspoon (Reese’s Book Club Pick)
"O’Farrell pulls out little threads of historical detail to weave this story of a precocious girl sensitive to the contradictions of her station...You may know the history, and you may think you…
I’m working on a novel which includes a couple of
chapters of what it was like to be a Marine Corps CAP (Combined Action Program)
member, and The Village chronicles the very first CAP unit and the enemy they
faced.
It begins almost as a mystery
novel but moves quickly into the friendly relations the CAPs had with the
hamlet they were stationed in and the enemy that was omnipresent and personal
in its hatred of the Americans.
I could
not have written these chapters as well without this nonfiction account of how
fifteen men established themselves in a village and how eight men walked out.
The true story of seventeen months in the life of a Vietnamese village where a handful of American Marines and Vietnamese militia lived and died together attempting to defend it.
In Black Hawk Down, the fight went on for a day. In We Were Soldiers Once & Young, the fighting lasted three days. In The Village, one Marine squad fought for 495 days—half of them died.
Few American battles have been so extended, savage and personal. A handful of Americans volunteered to live among six thousand Vietnamese, training farmers to defend their village. Such “Combined Action Platoons” (CAPs) are now…
Persuasion is Austen’s most mature
and humane novel, often overlooked for Pride and Prejudice.
Anne Elliot has lost her looks and her home. She goes to visit her younger sister and then moves permanently to Bath. Into these scenes enters the one man she ever
loved and was persuaded not to marry.
He
now has a tidy fortune, and Anne watches from the sidelines as he flirts with
her sisters-in-law. She keeps a bland
demeanor as her heart shatters over and over again, and I admire this, as well
as her steadfastness of heart when all hope is lost.
I have to read this novel once a year for its
serious look at how women can love.
'In Persuasion, Jane Austen is beginning to discover that the world is larger, more mysterious, and more romantic than she had supposed' Virginia Woolf
Jane Austen's moving late novel of missed opportunities and second chances centres on Anne Elliot, no longer young and with few romantic prospects. Eight years earlier, she was persuaded by others to break off her engagement to poor, handsome naval captain Frederick Wentworth. What happens when they meet again is movingly told in Austen's last completed novel. Set in the fashionable societies of Lyme Regis and Bath, Persuasion is a brilliant satire of vanity and pretension,…
Frances Kuffel transformed her life by losing 188 pounds.
Unfortunately, she gained over half those pounds back. But she also gained four new friends during this period, whom she met online. Frances, Lindsay, Katie, Mimi, and Wendy bonded quickly, dubbing themselves the Angry Fat Girlz.
In Eating Ice Cream with my Dog, Frances Kuffel shares a candid and witty account of one year in which five women diet and eat, lose and gain, exercise and survive injury--and struggle to find their best selves.
