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Book Reviews From The Bookbag (view source)
Revision as of 08:29, 7 August 2021
, 08:29, 7 August 2021no edit summary
'''Read [[Forthcoming Publications|reviews of books about to be published]].
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=0008421714
|title=Mrs March
|author=Virginia Feito
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The problem began just after the publication of George March's most successful novel to date. Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the last page) seemed to either be reading it or had already done so. Every day Mrs March went to the local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, Patricia asked, as she was wrapping the bread, ''but isn't this the first time he's based a character on you?'' She mentioned that Johanna, the principal character had 'her mannerisms''. Perhaps this would not have mattered, except for the fact that Johanna is the whore of Nantes - ''a weak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, unloveable wretch.''
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=John Boyne
|summary=It's April 1953, and Adolf Hitler's schedule includes going to Moscow to attend the state funeral of Joseph Stalin then within weeks coming to London, parading around a bit, and watching over the sanctioned return to the throne of Edward VIII with his wife, Queen Wallis. For yes, Britain caved in the lead-up to the World War Two that certainly didn't happen as we know it, and we are now a protectorate – well, we share enough of the same blood as the Germanic peoples on ''the mainland''. But this is most certainly a different Britain, for Nazi-styled phrenology, and ideas of female purpose, has put all of that gender into a caste system, ranging from high-brow office bigwigs to the drudges, and beyond those, right on down to the childless, the husbandless and the widows. Female literacy is actively discouraged. And in this puritanical existence, our heroine, Rose Ransom, is employed with the task of bowdlerising classical literature to take all encouragement for female emancipation out of it – after all, not every book can be banned, and not every story excised immediately from British civilisation, and so they just get a hefty tweak towards the party line before they're stamped ready for reprint. That is her job, at least, until the first emerging signs of female protest come to light, with their potential to spoil Hitler's visit.
|isbn=152941198X
}}