Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891) Penguin, 1978 She's "goodness made interesting". That's what Irving Howe calls Tess, the main character in Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Interesting is one way to put it. Not all of his Victorian readers found it so however. His religious skepticism and his
Margaret Laurence's The Stone Angel McClelland & Stewart, 1964 Virago Modern Classic No. 251 The Afterword in my McClelland & Stewart edition is written by Adele Wiseman, long-time friend of Margaret Laurence, and it contains several long excerpts from the letters exchanged between the writing friends (Adele Wiseman's The Sacrifice and Crackpot
Gustav Flaubert's Madame Bovary (1857) Trans. Alan Russell Penguin, 1987 SPOILERS ABOUND (not only for this novel, but for Anna Karenina, too) If you've been following along, you might recall my brief and unsatisfactory meeting with Emma Bovary, about twenty years ago: a passing acquaintance, which offered only a brief glimpse of the
Michael Cunningham's By Nightfall Harper Collins, 2010 I read Michael Cunningham's first novel, A Home at the End of the World last month, and wholly enjoyed it. Nearly as much as The Hours, but the bookishness of the latter (or, perhaps I should say, the Woolfishness) left it in the
Gustav Flaubert's Madame Bovary (1857) Trans. Alan Russell Penguin, 1987 If you've been following along, you'll know that I was thrilled to join, and have wholly enjoyed the early discussion connected with, Frances' readalong of this classic novel, one which I had false-started with as a younger woman but had
