Book Review: The Awakening of Miss Prim by Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera

The Awakening of Miss Prim by Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera

Published by: Atria Books

Published on: July 8, 2014

Page Count: 272 pages

Genre: Fiction

My Reading Format: ARC provided by publisher via NetGalley

Available Formats: Paperback and Kindle e-book

My Review: 

Can you think of a fictional character who is so uptight you read about them wishing they would just lighten up, making their own life and the lives of the character around them easier? A few such characters come to mind for me like that:  Aunt Cordelia in Up a Road Slowly, Captain Von Trapp in The Sound of Music and Mrs. Gulch in The Wizard of Oz. But I can't think of any uptight character I liked so much right away as I do Miss Prudencia Prim. The epitome of a Type A personality, the heroine in The Awakening of Miss Prim is punctual, dependable, disapproving, rigid and not much fun. She's seeking new scenery and a change in her life. Though overqualified for the position, she applies for a job with and is hired by a man to organize his in-home library, and moves to San Ireneo de Arnois, a small village in France, for several months to complete the job. This self-proclaimed "mistress of the art of delicacy" is ready to jump in with both feet and get her boss, the Man in the Wingchair, all squared away.

Prudencia believed herself to be capable and completely in control of the life she'd chosen for herself (one that includes no wiggle room). However, as Prudencia spends more time in San Ireneo de Arnois, she begins making friends with the children in the household and the townspeople. Many of those friends are women who have ideas about what constitutes a full and complete life for a woman, which at first differ from Prudencia's ideas on the subject. First off, every woman should be married (Prudencia disagrees of course, as she's got her life just how she wants it). Also, every woman should be given time to discover herself (Prudencia believes she already has), and villager Eugenia believes this should happen in Italy.

Things don't go as Prudencia plans. The exasperation she feels toward the Man in the Wingchair not surprisingly softens. She discovers her female friends know some secrets to life that she's previously missed. She is accepted by and learns from the experiences of her boss' mother, with whom she forms a close friendship.

I would have liked to know more about Prudencia's background and would have loved to see more development in her relationship with the children in the household. When she travels to Italy, we know she's become more self-aware by the end of the trip, but it's a transition we sense more than see the details of. Those things are small though in relation to how much I enjoyed the story.  

Yes, I felt pretty sure I knew what was coming but that didn't take anything away from my enjoyment. It echoes of Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice and Little Women, three of my favorite books. In short, I had fun reading this book, and I think you will too.

Four and a half out of five stars

If you liked this book, you’ll like Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice and Little Women, of course.

Pride and Prejudice turns 200

One of my favorite novels, Pride and Prejudice, turned 200 this week. Coincidentally, it's what my high school students are reading right now and most of them are really enjoying it. (One student did remark that the Bennet sisters were stuffier than Alcott's March sisters, however.) Since another student expressed genuine surprise this week when I told him I'd never read a graphic novel, I'm going to say that this cartoon from NPR counts.

Just for fun, here are a few photos from my trip to Bath a few years ago where you can still feel immersed in Jane Austen's world.

Rereading

The other day on Twitter I came across an article published in the Mail called "Reading a book really is better the second time round - and can even offer mental health benefits." I completely agree! I've reread several things in the past several years for the second time, and found those stories to be much more wonderful the second time around.

Here are a few of my favorite rereads:

Lord of the Flies (blog post coming soon on this one) by William Golding
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
The Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Pride and Prejudice (OK, anything Jane Austen)
The Color Purple (turning 30 this year, by the way) by Alice Walker
A Wrinkle in Time (my most recent reread) by Madeleine L'Engle
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Diary of Anne Frank
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

What are your favorite rereads?

Book Review: Midnight in Austenland by Shannon Hale

Midnight in Austenland by Shannon Hale
Published by: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published on: February 6, 2012
Page Count: 288
Genre: Adult fiction
My Reading Format: Advanced reading PDF by Netgalley
Available Formats: Hardcover

 

My Review: 

When recently single Charlotte Kinder reaches the breaking point due to the complicated family dynamics among her ex-husband, their two children and his new wife, Charlotte needs to escape reality. She finds a list of goals she wrote earlier in her life of things to do before turning 30. One of them is to read Jane Austen's six novels. When her children head to their father's for the weekend she does just that and is left wondering what it would be like to be an Austen heroine. To find out, she books a two-week stay at Austenland, an English estate where immersing oneself in everything Regency sounds like the break Charlotte needs. Upon the guests' arrival, they are met with their potential love interests (paid actors) and a mystery that must be solved before the ball on the last night of the vacation. Not only will Charlotte take the helm in solving this mystery, but she uncovers another, which is fact rather than fiction, and shows the dark side of this world where tourists and actors play at an Austen-themed life.

Charlotte proves herself to be both a very human and very hilarious main character. Her struggles to stay in character is difficult considering all the self-dialogue she's involved in during nearly every waking moment. Some of the chapters in this book give readers background information on Charlotte's marriage, her life as a mom and successful businesswoman, and her struggles to define her relationship with her ex-husband while balancing the single life. The other chapters involve Charlotte's time in Austenland and the clever way she solves not one but two mysteries. Though I am regularly amused by the books I read, few books actually make me laugh aloud, but this one did. And, most satisfactorily, by the end of the book she's not only found a mate in true Austen style, but found herself as well.

Note: Hale's 2007 novel, Austenland, is being made into a movie.

Book Review: Jane Austen: A Life Revealed by Catherine Reef

 

Published by: Clarion Books, a division of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published on: April 18, 2011
Page Count: 208
Genre: Juvenile Biography
My reading format: Advanced reading copy in Adobe Digital Editions from NetGalley
Available Formats: Hardcover

Jane Austen: A Life Revealed is a readable, easy to understand report on Jane Austen's life during the late 18th century and early 19th century in England. It's geared toward younger readers who may or may not have had prior experience with Austen. The book provides context on the social norms, politics, customs and ways of life of those living in England during Austen's time, which is helpful both for one who has never read Austen and is unfamiliar with Georgian England, and also a good review for those of us who haven't considered these things in a while.

Of course this title caught my eye immediately, having recently visited the Jane Austen Center in Bath and listened to James Edward Austen-Leigh's A Memoir of Jane Austen, so I had to know what Reef's take is on things. Her biographical information is fairly familiar to me, so I was looking for something a little bit different. What I liked the most about Reef's version of Austen's life is that a sense of mystery can be found within the pages. Reef's book is not much different than other accounts of Austen's life in that no new information is ever really turned up. A limited number of the several thousand letters Austen wrote during her lifetime have survived (most were destroyed by her family members), so our view into her world and her personality is limited. We do know enough, Reef maintains, to have reason to believe that Austen had a certain amount of sass in her personality.

Reef's biography is full of good information on Austen for those who haven't read her novels before (generous summaries of each major work are included, which should help young readers decide which one to start with), and which should inspire a whole new generation of Janeites.   

Remarkable Creatures

Tracy Chevalier's Remarkable Creatures made my top 10 list for 2010. It was fiction based on fact about a pair of female archaeologists in England finding fossils in the early 19th century, the struggle to be a female scientist, and the excitement of scientific discovery. The story takes place in Lyme Regis, the town where Jane Austen's Persuasion took place. I've done a little more research on the area.

Lyme Regis webcam  
Lyme Regis walking tour 
A fossil hunting company 
Lyme Regis Museum
The Natural History Museum in London
The Natural History Museum in London, Mary Anning exhibit
Dorset County Museum
The Dinosaur Museum
Oxford University Museum of Natural History 

Westminster Abbey

While in London, I got to visit Westminster Abbey twice - once for a tour, and one for a service. Both were wonderful. If you haven't been to Westminster, anything I told you about its magnificence still wouldn't do it justice, so just take my word for it. Of particular interest to me here was the Poets' Corner, where over 100 writers are buried and/or celebrated. I was most interested in seeing the Williams (Shakespeare, Blake and Wordsworth), Chaucer, Burns, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, Austen, Byron, Dickens, Lewis Carroll, the Bronte sisters, George Eliot, Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Henry James. It was really overwhelming to see so many important literary contributors all mentioned together. Luckily, I had been able to study up on everything before my visit, thanks to a book Teresa bought for me on the Poets' Corner during her London trip three years ago. What fun!  

Jane Austen

Reading all of Jane Austen's novels, seeing many of the movies, and finally, visiting Bath, wasn't near enough to satisfy me. I'm still obsessed with all things Jane Austen, and as evidenced by a book I picked up in the gift shop of the Jane Austen Centre, so is everyone else in the world. The book is called Jane's Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World by Claire Harman. I read it over last weekend (I still have a long way to go to get through the large stack of books I brought back from England!), and enjoyed it. Part biography and part listing of all the places in pop culture that Jane Austen has influenced, the book was a fun read and only made me add to my list of books and movies that relate to Jane Austen that I must now read and see. Jane really is everywhere, still seeping into our lives over 200 years later. 

The book details interesting facts such as how hard Austen's family members worked after her death to see to it that she got the credit she deserved for contributing to English literature. It also discussed Austen's contemporaries who did not see the value of her work, and those who later did (Rudyard Kipling was one of many fans).

Besides this book, one of the Jane-related things I've really enjoyed lately is the movie Lost in Austen, which is apparently a takeoff on a BBC television series (or maybe the series is a takeoff on the movie - either way, they are related). In it, a modern-day Austen fanatic switches places with Elizabeth Bennet, who becomes a nanny in London while the main character, Amanda, ends up in Pride and Prejudice, and spends every second trying not to derail the plot of the book, while its characters have no idea they're even in the book. This movie got a lot of chuckles out of me, and I loved how the characters could jump back and forth between modern times and centuries ago. 

Just do a search on YouTube for movie trailers, spoofs, tours of Bath and Chawton Place, and many other Jane Austen gems. If you're in the mood for a laugh, be sure to check out the Jane Austen Fight Club videos. Very funny.

Jane Austen's Bath

One of the things I was most looking forward to doing while in London was taking the train to Bath to visit this town where Jane Austen spent a few years, to walk the streets she walked, trying to imagine what life in Bath was like around 1800. The day of our scheduled excursion, we bought a round-trip ticket from Paddington Station to Bath, but needed the help of two train system employees to un-confuse us and make sure we made it to the right platform and on the right train. Not an easy task in this busy, busy place. Once we comfortably on board, however, the scenery once we got out of London was just beautiful, and it was so nice to see a few towns besides on the way, and some rolling country hills.

Even after all I had built Bath up to be, I wasn't disappointed. It is a lovely place, very walkable with beautiful homes and gardens, and folks a bit friendlier than those in London. We walked from the train station to the Jane Austen Centre right off, and toured this museum a few doors down from the home Austen and her family inhabited for some of the five years they spent in Bath. The museum gave lots of helpful and interesting biographical information on the author and her family, and Jane's feelings on living in Bath (she didn't much care for it, and didn't do much writing there). The Centre did a great job helping visitors know what it would have been like to live in Bath around 1800. 

For lunch that day we ate at The Pump Room, a restaurant that appears in Northanger Abbey, and the food was very good. While we ate, tourists kept coming in to take a taste of "Bath water," which is from the town's natural waters and the reason Bath had so many tourists in centuries past (the water has healing properties). We didn't see one person who appeared to enjoy the taste of this water, and overheard several say it tasted like sulphur. So, instead, we opted for soups and sandwiches with Cokes to drink.

Following our lunch we took a walking tour with a jolly fellow, volunteer and resident of Bath. We walked all over town and he must have told us practically everything he knew about the place, as he barely took a breath during the whole two hours and kept us very entertained. We learned about the old town of Bath, the spas, royal visitors, architectural details and many other interesting tidbits.

Later, after visiting The Georgian House Museum, we walked down the path that appears at the end of Sense and Sensibility, a street over from Gay Street where Austen lived (above), and spotted a Georgian Garden open to visitors (below). I may need one of these in my yard one day.

Rare Books and Manuscripts

Yesterday I finished my third of three books about books (you can see my thoughts on the first two here and here), titled simply, Books by Larry McMurtry. I was hoping it would be much like one of these recent reads, The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop by Lewis Buzbee. Instead, it covered decades of McMurtry's life as book scout and seller of rare and valuable books. It was interesting enough, though he dropped only a few names I recognized and many, many I didn't. However, I really enjoyed hearing about all the rare books he's found over the years in basements, on bookshelves of both regular people and the rich and famous, and the ones he's sold himself and been paid a pretty penny for.

While I was in London, I, too, got a taste of rare books and manuscripts by visiting the British Library. This facility houses 14 million books, 920,000 magazines and journals, 58 million patents and three million sound recordings, according to their website, which you can visit here. I knew before I went that I'd see a Gutenberg Bible, several versions of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and some other things. I wasn't prepared, though, for feeling overwhelmed by seeing so many world-changing works all housed in one place. It was so much that I knew I'd forget a lot of it, so I started jotting down notes while I was there. Here's a sampling of what I saw/heard:

• A recording of James Joyce reading from Finnegan's Wake
• 
  
• Jane Austen's third volume of a journal she wrote from age 12 to 17 with writings composed for her family's enjoyment

• Jane Austen's writing desk, given to her by her father. It was kind of like a lap desk that held supplies in compartments.

• Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre manuscript

• A notebook containing writings by Virginia Woolf that she used to write Mrs. Dalloway

• Original sheet music by Handel for Messiah and the Wedding March he created for A Midsummer Night's Dream (which just so happens to be my favorite Shakespeare play, and the musical selection I chose to walk out of the church to with my new husband in 2007 at our wedding)

• The beginnings of Beatles songs scribbled on napkins, paper scraps and other things that eventually became hit songs

• Notebooks from Leonardo Da Vinci

• The Magna Carta

• A letter from Charles Darwin to a friend which became the basis for Origin of Species

• A lecture draft written by Sigmund Freud

• A version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland illustrated by Salvador Dali

• Shakespeare's first folio, which was open to Henry VI Part I

And that's just a sampling of all that is there and on display. It was truly amazing to see. Of course there's no picture taking on the inside, but here is the library from the outside:

London

All writing, editing, blogging, networking, freelancing and other professional endeavors came to a halt last week as I visited London for the first time with a friend. I hope you enjoyed Lori's entries during my time off.

As I do with many of my travels, I read and watched related movies ahead of my trip that relate to London in preparation. I soaked up everything I could and read a lot while I was there, so it's no surprise to me that the list of "homework" I've given myself to do now that I'm back in the States is lengthy.

Before I went, I read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, and watched Tim Burton's recent movie version (I recently blogged about that here). I listened to Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens and Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest on my iPod. I watched the Hugh Grant/Emma Thompson/Kate Winslet movie version of Sense and Sensibility. I watched Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law's version of Sherlock Holmes that came out a couple years ago. I watched Great Expectations starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Ethan Hawke (I don't recommend it). I watched PBS' recent productions of Emma and Northanger Abbey. So, as you can see, I went feeling prepared to experience Literary London.

I picked up about 10 books while I was there, found new subjects to read about, got book recommendations from my travel buddy, and listed out additional books and movies I hadn't gotten to before the trip, but that I intend to watch and read now that I'm back.

In the coming weeks I'll be blogging about my trip as it relates to literature, and reporting on my related reading. Keep checking back for more!

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

A recent article in USA Today made me realize how many authors are jumping on the bandwagon merging a classic novel with a terrifying monster. My recent read, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, isn't all that's out there. (To read the article, click here.) I enjoyed my recent foray into this genre, but can't say that I plan to spend much time in it. This is the kind of thing that could wear on me after a while. I will say, however, that I'm tempted to get my hands on Little Women and Werewolves by Louisa May Alcott and Porter Grand, due out May 4. I can just imagine what Jo would do with a werewolf!

Celebrating Women's History Month

Last month, I listed suggested reading to celebrate African American History Month. I'm a little behind in getting this posted, but in celebration of March being Women's History Month, here is some recommended reading that celebrates the female experience:

Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire by Amanda Foreman
Anne Bradstreet poetry
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs
A Lost Lady, O Pioneers!, and My Antonia, all by Willa Cather
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
The Road to Coorain by Jill Ker Conway
Unbowed by Wangari Maathai
Iran Awakening: A Memoir of Revolution and Hope by Shirin Ebadi
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (You didn't really think I'd leave this one out, did you?)
The Last Girls by Lee Smith
The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells
Atonement by Ian McEwan
The Stone Diaries by Joyce Carol Oates
Anne Sexton poetry
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
One Writer's Beginnings by Eudora Welty
Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons
An American Childhood by Annie Dillard

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

This morning I finished Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Sethe Graham-Smith. I have to say I was a little unsure before I started about how I'd feel about Pride and Prejudice, a novel I love, being updated by another author. Graham-Smith did a great job. It is certainly an interesting way to merge a classic novel with modern pop culture. I wonder how many people will become familiar with Austen for the first time because they like to read zombie novels?

Here are some of my favorite lines, and some of them even got a laugh-out-loud response:

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains." (p. 13)

"[The unmentionable] rushed at Elizabeth, her clawed fingers swaying clumsily about. Elizabeth lifted her skirt, disregarding modesty, and delivered a swift kick to the creature's head, which exploded in a cloud of brittle skin and bone." (p. 38)

Mr. Darcy's description of an accomplished woman: "A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages; she must be well trained in the fighting styles of the Kyoto masters and the modern tactics and weaponry of Europe." (p. 45)

"No ninjas! How was that possible? Five daughters brought up at home without any ninjas! I never heard of such a thing. Your mother must have been quite a slave to your safety." (p. 144-5)

If you can't tell by these quotes, this is a fun book. If like zombies or Austen or both, it's worth a read.

Love Stories

In honor of Valentine's Day on Sunday, I've compiled a list of my favorite love stories. In no particular order, they are:

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller
A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare
The Senator's Wife by Sue Miller
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Jane Austen's Emma

The third and final installment of PBS's new production of Emma aired Sunday night. I was sure I had the DVR set properly before my husband and I headed out to a Superbowl party. Unfortunately, it taped another show, Miss Austen Regrets, which I'm sure is great, but since it wasn't Emma, in my disappointment, I deleted that. Now I'm on the waiting list on Netflix for this version of Emma, thankful it's already available, I'll just have to wait a bit for my turn.

I have to say that on the first two Sunday nights of Emma, I thoroughly enjoyed being a part of the Emma Twitter Party, tweeting during the show and seeing what everyone else was saying about casting, costumes, and all other things Austen.

There's still more PBS fun to come, which I will make sure the DVR is set properly for, or watch it while it's airing. This Sunday night is Northanger Abbey (on my 2009 book club reading list), and Persuasion is February 21. Check your local listings for times.

Besides all of that Austen fun, I'll soon be reading my 2010 book club Austen selection, Sense and Sensibility. And, I have the Hugh Grant/Kate Winslet/Emma Thompson movie on VHS to watch once I'm finished.

I recently listened to a podcast hosted by the book publisher, Penguin, on Elizabeth Gaskell and Jane Austen, and why the stories of both these novelists have been adapted to the screen so often. The general consensus is that Austen's novels are funny and engaging with a lot of dialogue, so therefore, they translate easily into movie form. In another episode called "Why We Love Jane Austen," socially accepted behavior, Austen movie adaptations and her influence on contemporary literature is discussed (Ian McEwan's Atonement=Northanger Abbey and Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series=an updated Pride and Prejudice plot). To subscribe to this podcast, visit the iTunes store and search for "Penguin Classics on Air." (NOTE: A blog post on literary podcasts coming soon.)

Here's an article worth checking out from the Wall Street Journal called "What Would Jane Do? How a 19th-century spinster serves as a moral compass in today's world." To read it, click here.

Even as I've been writing this blog post, I saw a tweet from PBS's Masterpiece Theatre with a link to an article entitled, "What Did Jane Austen Know About Social Media?" To see that interesting article, click here.

Austen Alert!

Over the next several Sunday nights, PBS will be showing adaptations of three Jane Austen novels. To see the schedule, visit here. Emma will be shown first. To prepare yourself, go head and take the Bachelors of Highbury quiz. Apparently, my best match would be George Knightley.

Also, Sunday night, there is an Emma Twitter Party (read more about that here). Sign up to follow @pbs and @masterpiecepbs. While you're at it, feel free to start following me @betsyrhame.

Also coming up on PBS in April is The Diary of Anne Frank.

Enjoy!

Book Club Selections for 2010

Last summer I posted what my friends in my book club and I would be reading over the summer. For 2010, we've already chosen our selections because our list is especially ambitious. I'm already on the waiting list at the library for most of these, or I already own them, so I'll be getting started very soon.

Sweet Tea and Jesus Shoes by Deborah Smith, et al
Knit the Season by Kate Jacobs
Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City by Greg Grandin
A Different Drummer: My Thirty Years with Ronald Reagan by Michael K. Deaver
The Harry Potter series (yes, the whole series!)
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong by Terry Teachout
Rhett Butler’s People by Donald McCaig
How the World Makes Love…And What it Taught a Jilted Groom by Franz Wisner
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsen

Have you read any of these already? What did you think?

Summer Reading

Memorial Day is the first day of summer vacation for schoolchildren in Metro Atlanta, and the start of summer always makes me think ahead to what I’ll be reading this season. Several years ago, an English major friend and I began creating a summer reading list. Our reading group has grown and here are the 12 books we’re reading this season.

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
Irish Girls About Town by Maeve Binchy, Marian Keyes and Cathy Kelly
My Life in France by Julia Child
Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
Beyond Belief by Josh Hamilton
Knit Two by Kate Jacobs
Here’s the Story: Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding my True Voice by Maureen McCormick
Sundays at Tiffany’s by James Patterson
The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII by David Starkey
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates