Wednesday Reading Meme

[osprey_archer]

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

I picked up Vivien Alcock’s The Cuckoo Sister intending to read a chapter or two, and then ended up mainlining the whole book. Before Kate was born, her older sister Emma was kidnapped from her pram. When Kate is eleven years old, a girl shows up at the door with a note saying that she’s Emma… but is she?

The focus of the book is not so much on the “is she or isn’t she?” detective work (it’s 1985, so they can’t get a DNA test, but they could at least get a blood test), but on the emotional impact primarily on Kate and Emma, who was raised as a Rosie and had no idea she might be the kidnapped Emma until Kate’s parents let her read the note she had unwittingly delivered. Totally absorbing. A fast read, highly recommended.

I also intended to take my time with D. E. Stevenson’s Young Mrs. Savage, in which a young widow and her four children return to the Scottish seaside town where she grew up, but instead I ended up taking it down in two gulps. One thing I really like about Stevenson’s work is that her children are always people: you never think she’s saying “How do six-year-olds act?”, as if six-year-olds were interchangeable, but “How would Mark and Nigel react to this circumstance?”

You would imagine that more authors could do this, as every author was at one point a child, but in fact this seems to be surprisingly difficult.

I also read Elizabeth von Arnim’s Elizabeth and Her German Garden, a memoir/novel about an Englishwoman married to a Prussian count who finds happiness through reviving the garden on his estate. Gorgeous garden descriptions, almost quit in the middle because I was so fed up with the narrator’s smug sense of superiority to just about everyone: peasants of course, Germans in general, people who want to live in towns and don’t think the idea of being snowed in all winter sounds just lovely. Persevered, glad I finished it, doubtful if I’ll seek out any of von Arnim’s other work even though I loved The Enchanted April, as I suspect now I’ll see traces of that selfsame smugness in it all.

What I’m Reading Now

I finished Among the Shadows, so I’ve swung back around to A Cavalcade of Sea Legends, which actually I think is more effectively spooky anyway. There’s just something eerie about the sea.

What I Plan to Read Next

Procrastinating on Interview with the Vampire, because I’m pretty sure that when I read it, it’s going to become my entire personality for about a month. Will that be because I love it or because I hate it? Well, it could go either way.

Comments

[edwardianspinsteraunt]

I know what you mean about Elizabeth and her German Garden - the narrator can really be quite insufferable and unconscious of her privilege. I’ve read a couple of von Arnim’s other works and I’d say this is probably the worst in terms of smugness. The non-Elizabeth ones (i.e. where her semi-autobiographical persona isn’t the narrator) tend to be much better in that respect.

And ooh, The Cuckoo Sister has an excellent premise - I shall have to add it to the TBR.

[osprey_archer]

That's good to hear. I didn't remember The Enchanted April having the same feeling of smugness, but it's been a decade since I read it, so I could have just not noticed at the time or forgotten in the interval or what have you.

[sovay]

I picked up Vivien Alcock’s The Cuckoo Sister intending to read a chapter or two, and then ended up mainlining the whole book.

And it's a Vivien Alcock I haven't read! I shall look for it in my local library system.

[osprey_archer]

Best of luck! I actually did find that one in my local library system, so it's possible it's in yours too.

[nineveh_uk]

I really must read The Cuckoo Sister, because I watched the television adaptation when I was a child and missed the final episode, so I still don't know if Rosie really was Emma!

[osprey_archer]

Oh, yes! Time to read the book and learn the solution to the mystery!