Book Review: The Fortune Hunter by Daisy Goodwin

The Fortune Hunter by Daisy Goodwin (The American Heiress)

Published by: St. Martin's Press

Published on: July 29, 2014

Page Count: 480

Genre: Historical fiction

My Reading Format: ARC provided by NetGalley on behalf of publisher

Available Formats: Hardback, paperback, audiobook, Audible, Kindle ebook

My Review: 

Empress Elizabeth "Sisi" of Austria, in need of a change of scenery and some space from her husband Emperor Franz Joseph, travels to the English countryside to engage in fox hunting with her English royal counterparts. Here she is provided with Bay Middleton, a hunting guide and accomplished horseman who is without a fortune. Bay is engaged to Charlotte Baird, a noblewoman who is bossed around by her older brother and his fiance Augusta. Charlotte looks forward to starting her life with Bay but he is sidetracked by his employ by Sisi, who is older but beautiful. The attraction between Sisi and Bay is mutual, and Bay is torn between the potential for an exciting affair with the Empress or a comfortable life with Charlotte. 

I've long had a fascination with the British royal family, and since my trip to Austria last year, I've now added to that my obsession with Austrian-Hungarian royalty. This book, a marriage of the two, seemed like a perfect to-read for me. Therefore, I liked the book on the whole just for that reason. I also liked learning more about a traditional English hunting expedition. From a technical standpoint, I like Goodwin's writing style. She uses description beautifully and told the story in a way that was enjoyable to me as a reader.

I had trouble with a couple things with regard to character development. Charlotte is a well-rounded character, and I really felt for the tough spot she was in. Bay, however, made his choice very quickly right at the end of the book, which felt forced to me. Sisi was an interesting character, but I would have liked to know more about her inner struggle between her attraction to Bay and her loyalty to her husband and family. Overall I thought this was a fun read, even though I felt the plot was resolved abruptly. I'd love to do more reading about Sisi.

Three out of five stars

If you liked this book, you’ll like The American Heiress by Daisy Goodwin, Mrs. Poe by Lynn Cullen, Blue Asylum by Kathy Hepinstall, A Nervous Splendor by Frederic Morton and Becoming Queen Victoria by Kate Williams.

Alice in Wonderland Tea

For Christmas my best friend's children gave me a wonderful surprise:

They found the tea during a recent trip to Disney World and found the teapot and cup online. I absolutely love them. This, the 2013 Scarlett O'Hara ornament from Hallmark, a gift card to purchase books and a book by a distant cousin of mine published posthumously by his wife (I'll blog about it later) were my literary Christmas gifts this year.

What were yours?

Recent Read: A Nervous Splendor: Vienna 1888/1889 by Frederic Morton

At a friend's recommendation I borrowed  A Nervous Splendor: Vienna 1888/1889 from the library to read after returning from vacation. It's not one I likely would have been very interested in were it not for the fact that I've just visited Vienna and seen some of the places mentioned in the book. While the author does a great job of showing what all was going on in Vienna during a short period of time and it was fascinating to note all the interesting and historically significant people all in this city all at the same time, the writing is a little dry in places and difficult to muddle through. There were places I just needed to skim to get through, which doesn't happen very often. I was very glad though to get some extra historical context to go along with what I heard and saw on the visit.

The hunting lodge, Mayerling.

One day we took a bus tour of the nearby Vienna Woods, a rural area with protected land, some small towns and farms, kind of like the national parks we have in the States. We stopped briefly outside Mayerling, a small town with what today is an abbey but during the time frame in the book was the hunting lodge for Austria's Crown Prince Rudolf. The lodge was the location of Rudolf's suicide and his 17 year-old mistress' murder while Rudolf's wife was away. It was a scandalous, mysterious event.

I wanted to read the book to learn more about their relationship and the murder-suicide. Of the 30 chapters in the book, however, Morton really only dedicated about two chapters completely to Rudolf and Mary Vetsera's relationship and infatuation with each other, so that wasn't quite what I expected. The book did provide me with a few nuggets of good information and in parts was a good complement to the recent vacation.

Recent Reads: Night Falls on the City and The Journey That Saved Curious George

I'm just back from a wonderful family vacation where, unlike my usual vacation reading behavior, I only read one book. It was a long one, related to the trip, and I enjoyed it immensely. It's called Night Falls on the City by Sarah Gainham, and it's historical fiction about Vienna from 1938-1945 during Nazi occupation and World War II. The central character is a prominent Viennese stage actor named Julie who is married to a Jewish lawmaker. He's forced to go into hiding soon after the Nazis make their entrance into Austria, and Julie and their housekeeper Fina have to keep everything under wraps. While in hiding Franzl leads a monotonous existence but spends most of his time writing a book that Julie and a friend named Georgy risk everything to publish without putting Franzl at risk.

I began reading this book on the plane on the way over. The trip culminated in Vienna, so I read the book before bed each night as I looked forward to seeing this elegant city in person (in the meantime there was quite a lot to behold in Munich, Innsbruck, Salzburg, and a few Austrian and German small towns in between). I finally finished the book the day after our return, having read about half of it on the plane ride from Vienna back to the States. It very nearly received five stars from me, and would have been one of the few to get that distinction from me all year. Without Julie and her theater company's too-long and too-drawn out residence in Poland, which didn't relate quite enough to the crux of the book for me, it would have gotten a perfect rating. Nonetheless, it was a fantastic book and I raved about it to my family the whole time we were away.

Then, just after finishing Night Falls on the City I read The Journey that Saved Curious George: The True Wartime Escape of Margret and H. A. Rey by Louise Borden. As a child I read and loved the Curious George books, but I had no idea all the authors had to go through to get them published. The couple had to escape Paris on bicycles with their manuscripts as the Germans invaded France during World War II. Their first stop was Rio de Janeiro before they settled in New York City. Borden traces their steps across the continents by car, bike and ship, and you realize all the things that could have gone wrong, causing the Reys to lose their Curious George manuscripts. It's really an amazing journey, and both books are wonderful reads.

Here are a few photos from Vienna:

 Schoenbrunn Palace, the Habsburgs' summer residence

 St. Stephen's Cathedral

 The Habsburgs winter residence

Beethoven and me

Silver Linings Playbook and Building My Own Syllabus

Last week I was putting together my syllabus for a year-long American literature course I'll be teaching to ninth and tenth graders at a homeschool co-op starting in the fall, my favorite genre. There are so many wonderful things I've considered including that I needed advice and perspective from others to help me make sure I wasn't overloading the class. So I tossed the question out on Facebook to find out people's favorite and least favorite books they read in high school. For my purposes this time I threw out everything that wasn't American lit and made my choices from the feedback I got.

Did you see Silver Linings Playbook a few months ago when it was out? I loved the complex characters, plot and the balance between funny and serious moments throughout the film. I thought Bradley Cooper as the main character Pat was wonderful. While I liked him just fine in The Hangover and Wedding Crashers, I loved seeing what else he could do.

I just read the book version by Matthew Quick earlier this week. There are some big differences between the book and the movie, but I liked each of them for different reasons. In both the book and the movie Pat is trying to win back his ex-wife by getting in shape and reading everything she has put on the syllabus for her high school English students. Though he doesn't love what she's selected, he plows through them, looking forward to the day when he'll be reunited with his ex-wife and they can discuss the novels.

Two-thirds of the books Pat reads are ones I've chosen for my syllabus: The Great Gatsby, A Farewell to Arms, The Scarlet Letter and Huckleberry Finn. The two Pat read that I didn't pick are The Catcher in the Rye (which almost made it on to the syllabus. If I teach this class again I might teach this one.) and The Bell Jar. 

Here are the rest of the novels that made it in: My Antonia, Of Mice and Men and The Color Purple. We'll also read A Streetcar Named Desire and bits and pieces of Phyllis Wheatley, Anne Bradstreet, Thoreau, Whitman, Emerson, Sandburg and Dickinson. I'm looking forward to rereading all these classics myself to prepare.

Have I missed anything What other books do you consider to be important to American literature?

It's Monday. What are you reading?

 

This event is hosted by Sheila from Book Journey. Go check out her blog.

I'm currently enjoying Thomas Wolfe's You Can't Go Home Again. It's been patiently waiting on my shelf for me to pick it up ever since I visited the Old Kentucky Home on a trip to Asheville several years ago. It will definitely take me the rest of the week to finish it. 

 

 

Up next on my to-read list are The Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick, A History of Food in 100 Recipes by William Sitwell (for future book review) and Elaine Neil Orr's A Different Sun (also for future book review).

Also, I'm still currently listening to The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Migration by Isabel Wilkerson in the car. 

What are you reading?

Where the Wild Things Are

"The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind and another his mother called him 'WILD THING!' and Max said 'I'LL EAT YOU UP!' so he was sent to bed without eating anything."

These are the opening lines of one of my all-time favorite books, Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are. Sendak died this week and is being celebrated right now all over the place (I like USA Today's article). I can hardly think of my childhood without remembering being read this book on many, many nights before bed by my mom or grandmother. My childhood copy is still at my parents' house, but my grandmother's copy was one of the first things I grabbed when we were sorting through her things after she died.

Chances are that if you're my friend and you've had a baby, this is what I've given you (along with some Robert McCloskey or Dr. Seuss). I have Where the Wild Things Are Christmas ornaments and one of the wild things even provides me with daily inspiration at work (he's really my only coworker).

The book made it into the top 50 on USA Today's Best-Selling Books List for the first time in 2009 thanks to the movie adaptation that came out that year. Since its publication in 1963, Where the Wild Things Are has sold 10 million copies. A childhood favorite for many more than just me.

Nashville, Tennesee

I love all kinds of music, but I have a particular affinity for country music. I listen to it often, love its TV specials (check out a great one here) and love to visit Nashville to experience country music first hand. Recently, I walked the Country Music Half Marathon with some friends and stayed a few extra days. Once I was back home, I had two books to read about country music. The first, Will The Circle Be Unbroken: Country Music in America, is filled with short articles and lots of pictures, telling country music's story from its earliest days to the present. It would make a good coffee table book; it was so full of information it was a bit overwhelming. I enjoyed the second book much more: Composed by Roseanne Cash. This memoir was just beautifully written. I really liked Cash's style, and since I knew more about her famous father Johnny and her stepmother June, it was nice to learn about her and her life as a musician and mom in the country music business. I really hope she writes another book.

Here are a few photos from the trip to Nashville:

 Ryman Auditorium

 A statue of Minnie Pearl and Roy Acuff at the Ryman

 Elvis' star on the Music City Walk of Fame

 RCA Studio B

Part of the set from the TV show Hee Haw

The Book Versus the Movie

Have you ever liked a movie more than the book that preceded it? That almost never happens to me, except for recently with Water for Elephants by Sarah Gruen. I listened to the audiobook about three years ago, and recently saw the movie. I thought the movie was very well done. I didn't think of Twilight each time Robert Pattinson was on screen. I like Reese Witherspoon in the role of Marlena, and I thought her husband, August (played by Christopher Waltz), made my skin crawl in just the right way.The elephant in the movie was just beautiful.

I remember when I finished listening to the audiobook that I felt like I had somehow missed something big, because otherwise, I would have liked the book a lot more. Then, as the movie release approached and I heard that more and more people had read and liked the book I figured I'd better go see it. I'm glad I did. I liked the movie so much that I'm on the waiting list at the library to borrow the book to read this time instead of listen to.

Have you seen this movie or read this book? What did you think? Are there any books you've read where you liked the movie version better?

P.S. I bought May's issue of Vogue because Reese Witherspoon is on the cover. I really enjoyed the story. She seems like such a nice person. Self-assured. Normal. Unlike other celebrities out there.

What Women Want

When I’d show up for class in college on the day we’d start talking about a new work, one of my favorite things was hearing my professor lecture for a bit on the author of the work, giving context and insight into their life, their work and how the two were intertwined. Now I really enjoy works of fiction and movies that depict authors’ lives, drawing conclusions, filling in blank spaces and speculating on what might have been going on in an author’s life. In this genre I have read The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen by Syrie James and watched Becoming Jane, among other works about both Austen and other authors. It’s fun to think about what lives authors were leading before, during and after the writing of their notable works. What has been left out of their biographies? Lost or unrequited loves? Dissatisfaction with home and family life? A secret desire to have a certain type of career? In many cases we’ll never know for sure, which for me is part of the fun.

Last week I read The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott by Kelly O’Connor McNees just after finishing reading Little Women for the first time since high school or maybe even middle school. A friend of mine had also just finished The Lost Summer and asked me what about the work was fiction and what was written based on truth. Of the top of my head, I knew Alcott’s father, Bronson, was a free-spirited Transcendentalist philosopher who never earned quite enough money to support his wife and four daughters comfortably. I knew Alcott was the second of four sisters and is often thought to have written her character Jo to reflect herself.

These things were reflected in The Lost Summer, and the author notes at the end of the novel that she had been on a quest to find out about the real Alcott, as her biographies portray her in different ways (now I’m interested in reading some of those biographies for myself). Once McNees discovered in one of the biographies that Alcott often burned letters she received after reading them, she latched on to that and began to form a story around a supposed love affair (Alcott’s love interest in the novel is a fictional character). She set the story during a summer when the Alcott family lived temporarily in Walpole, New Hampshire, where not much is known about how Alcott spent her time while she was there.

The book was well-researched and seemed very real to me, contributing more to the enjoyment I got out of reading it. Also, I was happy to have just read Little Women again, which is a story I just adore. I’m still hanging on to my VHS tape of the 1994 movie version starring Susan Sarandon, Wynona Ryder, Kirsten Dunst, Samantha Mathis, Gabriel Byrne, Claire Danes and Christian Bale. I think it’s about time to watch it again.

It was interesting to be reading The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott while listening to Leslie Bennetts’ The Feminine Mistake: Are We Giving Up Too Much? in the car. Since I don’t have children, I don’t really have a dog in this fight, but it’s an interesting subject considering that I have friends that are moms. Some have chosen to keep working and some have put careers on hold to make parenting at home their full-time job. (**Note: I’m not taking a position on the mommy wars, just simply reporting that I’ve read an interesting, thought-provoking book!)

Bennetts’ stance is that women who fool themselves into assuming they’ll always be financially taken care of by their husbands are assuming too much. With a high divorce rate, an unstable economy and risks of disability, medical issues and death, stay at home moms are taking a huge risk by giving up their own income to rely solely on their husbands’.

In The Lost Summer, Alcott struggles with the fact that she’s different from every other unmarried young woman in Walpole and Boston in that she has absolutely no desire to change her marital status. That makes her different and it’s a hard concept for some, like her landlady in Boston, to understand. She says things like, “The dainty ones [women] look pretty in a sitting room, ma’am, but when a woman is making her way in the world on her own, she must resolve to take fate by the throat and shake a living out of her.” She thinks to herself, “Was it too much to ask to simply be left alone? It seemed her very existence as a single woman invited speculation and offers of help, as if it were simply impossible that she truly might not want to be married.”

Bennetts cites woman after woman who is left in the lurch after her husband runs off with a younger woman from the office, is diagnosed with terminal cancer or just decides marriage isn’t for him, and she has to earn a living to provide for herself and her children. Bennetts give a lot of evidence on why and how it’s so hard to jump back into the labor force once you’ve been out, even if just for a little while. (This book was published in March 2008. I would LOVE to get Bennetts’ take on this topic now that the economy has tanked and some families have been forced to get really creative to keep their households going.)

I guess women have been struggling with some of the same things for centuries, trying to decide what’s best for them. I expect going forward that will stay the same.

Ian McEwan Novels

Years ago my grandmother asked me if I'd ever read any of Ian McEwan's novels. When I told her no, she came back with something along the lines of, "Well, you'd better." Jump ahead a few years to the release of the movie Atonement. I read the novel in preparation and then saw it with two friends. I enjoyed both immensely, and this one is right up there in the plot-twists-I-never-saw-coming category.

This year I nominated another McEwan novel, Saturday, as a book club pick for one of the groups I'm in, and the book didn't get chosen. It's still on my own list to read though. Then, at a recent used book sale at the Decatur Library, I found Amsterdam for 50 cents (winner of the Booker Prize in 1998). It's less than 200 pages and I breezed right through it in a couple of sittings. The plot in this one's twisty too, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. But then again, I seem to love any story that involved ethics decisions in journalism (Almost Famous, All the President's Men, etc.). Read and enjoy!

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!  

Literary Trails of North Carolina

At long last, one of the follow ups to Literary Trails of the North Carolina Mountains has been published! For my birthday last week, my sister bought me Literary Trails of the North Carolina Piedmont: A Guidebook by Georgann Eubanks. I've skimmed most of the book so far, but just can't wait to start checking things off as I have done in the past year or so in Asheville and Hendersonville, NC. At first glance, there are a lot of fun things to check out: the residences of Betty Smith (author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn), all the authors living in Hillsborough (Lee Smith, Hal Crowther, Allan Gurganus, Jill McCorkle and sometimes Annie Dillard) and NC Central University where Zora Neale Hurston taught briefly, to name a few.

Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens

One of the books I listened to on my iPod before traveling to London was Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens by J. M. Barrie. Like Alice in Wonderland and Mary Poppins, other books written by English writers but adapted by Disney, the Disney movies are what I think of when I think about the characters in these books. Barrie wrote several Peter Pan books, and I hope to listen to more of them on my iPod when I can.

In Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, we meet Peter Pan, a baby with the ability to fly. Overnight one evening, he flies out of the window to nearby Kensington Gardens and becomes stuck there, unable to return to his London home. At this point he begins to encounter many of the creatures and characters inhabiting the park, many of who come alive at night after all the humans have gone home. Once Peter gets there, he realizes his mother probably misses him, and Peter enlists the help of the fairies to help him fly home. Once he gets there, he realizes his mother has had another baby and he is heartbroken, returning to live at Kensington Gardens.

This book was a fun, short read. The day my fellow traveler and I visited Kensington Palace, I thought about Peter Pan flying about once we'd all gone home for the day. In the park, there is a statue honoring Peter Pan, and this photo was taken by my best friend Teresa on a trip to London with her family several years ago.

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?

More fun with Where the Wild Things Are

I received another Where the Wild Things Are ornament for Christmas. Since I posted a picture of the first one, here is the new one, front and back.

Happy New Year! I hope you read lots of good books in 2010.

Literary Trails of the North Carolina Mountains

For my birthday in November, my best friend got me a great gift, a book called, Literary Trails of the North Carolina Mountains: A Guidebook. Lucky for me, I'll get to use it this week as I head to Asheville with my family to celebrate my parents' 35th wedding anniversary.

Back in September, I visited the Thomas Wolfe Memorial House and Carl Sandburg's home, Connemara. There is much more in the way of literary sites still to see in the Asheville area.

Check back at the end of the week for more!