My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Bookshelves: abandoned, brit-lit, chick-lit, ghost-story, historical-fiction, i-am-an-anglophile, victorian-england
I loved Longbourn, and I noted in my review that it took about half the book for things to really start. I’m 51% in to The Telling and nothing has happened beyond a few packed-up boxes and a lot of whining in the modern story, matched with a lot of laundry and a little forbidden reading in the Victorian timeline. Baker writes beautifully, but I don’t need to read any more about the baby’s sweaty curls against her soft cheek, or the scent of grass on the breeze through the parlor window. It is pages and pages of lovely descriptive passages but nothing much going on.
Maybe it’s me, being unable to enjoy something that moves at a more leisurely pace. But I’m trying to read this during my metro commute and I’m afraid I’ll zonk out and not startle awake until Eastlake, miles after my stop, lost and late for work. I have learned a bit about the Chartist Movement, mainly because Googling that on my phone was more stimulating than reading the actual book, and by extension I learned the origin of “read the riot act.” So, that’s cool.
Perhaps I’ll try this book again when I’m in a more leisurely place in life.
99 Monkeys 