Tag: women’s fiction

Review 2333: The Halt During the Chase

~ whatmeread ~ 5 Comments

Sophie is an intelligent, vivacious young woman who is in love with Philip, whom she considers perfect. It’s clear, however, that she is subduing her personality and dressing to please him. She, her mother, and friends have been waiting for a proposal of marriage, but none has been forthcoming. Then, during a romantic tryst in a hotel room, he says something that she finds unforgivable, and it becomes clear to her that, although he loves her, he wants a wife with money.

Sophie realizes she needs to be more independent of her mother, too. After attending some “spiritual” lectures that sound like they are about self-realization, she realizes that their relationship as it is, with her coddling and reassuring her mother, is bad for them both.

Sophie decides to split from Philip, although it is difficult to do so because she still loves him. But she wants to live her own life. Her elderly friend Pussy has told her that once she tries to leave, he will try to get her back, and he does.

This novel is intelligent and funny. It contains unusual turns of phrase and vividly conveys emotions. Sophie is a sparkling heroine. I just loved this novel.

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Review 2188: Which Way?

~ whatmeread ~ 4 Comments

Which Way? is an early speculative novel about how a small choice can affect the rest of your life. After a beginning section that introduces us to Claudia Heseltine and gets her to the age of 22, she is presented with a choice of invitations—two by letter and one by phone—for the same weekend. Then the rest of the novel is split into thirds depending upon the invitation she decides to accept.

Claudia is a popular girl with intellectual and cultural interests. She has a close friendship with Hugo Lester, and at the point where the decision comes in, she has promised to visit his family home, and it is clear that he plans to propose to her. So, selecting another of the invitations means breaking her promise.

I found interesting what Benson makes of Claudia’s three fates and how these reflect the times. In two stories she marries, although only in one does she marry Hugo. In one she has a romantic (as opposed to sexual) affair with a married man and in another a full-fledged affair with the same man. All of the stories involve some pain, but Claudia herself changes with the situations she is in, so that in the story where she is faithful to her husband she seems the most superficial and frivolous.

Although, interestingly, she ends up happiest in the story where she remains single, she thinks she has missed the most important things in life—which are, of course, marriage and motherhood. There’s no happy career girl in the novel, although Simon Thomas points out in the Afterword that at her marriage she is much more innocent than he would have expected for the 1920s. In both stories in which she is married, she spends her honeymoon crying after ignoring the vaguely ominous things her mother tries to tell her.

I thought this book was most interesting as a portrait of the times, for the choices that are available and how Claudia views them.

I received this book from the publisher in exchange for a free and fair review.

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Day 467: Queen Sugar

~ whatmeread ~ 4 Comments

Cover for Queen SugarMany of the outcomes of Queen Sugar are foreseeable from the beginning. Charley Bordelon, an African-American widowed school teacher from California who has inherited a Louisiana sugar cane farm, will face multiple problems in an industry dominated by white men but will prevail. Charley, a suburbanite from Los Angeles, will create a place for herself among her relatives in the small rural community. Charley will have problems with her tween daughter Micah but will work them out. Charley will find love. And Charley may be able to mend her relationship with her estranged brother Ralph Angel.

Well, almost right. The fact is that Queen Sugar is predictable, but it still makes an enjoyable and interesting reading experience.

Charley and her daughter arrive in Louisiana a little late for the start of the sugar season, but she’s hired a manager, who supposedly has gotten started on his own. When she arrives at her farm, though, the manager has done nothing and hands in his resignation. With a late start and a bedraggled looking acreage, Charley must find a manager to teach her the sugar business. She just barely has the money to make it through the first year.

Charley and her daughter Micah are living squeezed into a small room in the home of Miss Honey, Charley’s grandmother. Miss Honey throws a party for Charley to meet all her Louisiana and Texas family, but everyone is dismayed when Charley’s half-brother Ralph Angel arrives with his little boy. Charley has not met Ralph Angel since she was a girl, but the rest of the family is angry because he pushed Miss Honey down and broke her arm the last time he was there. Still, Miss Honey wants the family to accept him.

Baszile does a good job of making Ralph Angel understandable. He bears a grudge against Charley, believing that she has been spoiled all her life and has had all the advantages due to him. He is also a criminal. He is not a villain, but his behavior is almost invariably self-defeating. He considers himself too educated for manual labor, consistently exaggerating his accomplishments, and works his way out of several jobs, cheats, lies, and steals. Still, Baszile is able to evoke in us a modicum of sympathy for him without magically providing him a happy ending.

http://www.netgalley.comCharley battles bad weather, difficulties finding a manager or affordable equipment, attempts to cheat her, and her own feelings of inadequacy trying to get her first crop to the mill. During the battle we learn interesting facts about the sugar industry. Baszile also creates a lively picture of this colorful area of the country, with its mix of cultures.

Charley’s courtship by a sugar grower named Remy Newell adds some piquancy without taking over the story. If you are looking for something light with a likable, determined heroine, you’ll probably enjoy Queen Sugar.