Winifred Holtby's South Riding (1936) You know how some people say that they won't read fantasy novels because the long list of characters in the front is just too much? Well, I just checked the list in Guy Gavriel Kay's first book of The Fionavar Tapestry, and the list is
Andrea Levy's The Long Song (Hamish Hamilton, 2010) And now Persephone Week is finished and I'm back to being Buried in Print on Mondays and Thursdays. As much fun as my Persephone reading as been, as encouraged as I have been by being immersed In Wartime reading, I have been
Duff Cooper's Operation Heartbreak Persephone No. 51 (1950) When it comes to articulating how I choose the Persephones that I read, I tend to think that it's simultaneously an exhaustive and amorphous plan: I want to read all-things-Persephone, s-o-m-e-d-a-y. But, in fact, I do have an unspoken ranking system and
Etty Hillesum's An Interrupted Life: 1941-1943 Persephone No. 4 (1999) One of the reasons that Etty Hillesum's diaries touched me so deeply is the way in which she openly struggles with the persecution that she is facing. Whether looking for a distraction from the blatant threats posed to her very
Etty Hillesum's An Interrupted Life: 1941-1943 Persephone No. 4 (1999) Of the three personal accounts that I read for Persephone Reading Week, In Wartime, An Interrupted Life, Etty Hillesum's diary, was the one that struck me most soundly. Partly, perhaps, because she does not survive the war, so what a
