So engaging, read it in very short order. Wonderful characters and a plot that developed unpredictably and seemed true to its main characters. So muchSo engaging, read it in very short order. Wonderful characters and a plot that developed unpredictably and seemed true to its main characters. So much fascinating information on the lives of Koreans in Japan. Recommend highly....more
Very enjoyable biography of Bertie. I am pretty sketchy on the English monarchy so it was like fitting a puzzle piece that makes a picture come cleareVery enjoyable biography of Bertie. I am pretty sketchy on the English monarchy so it was like fitting a puzzle piece that makes a picture come clearer. Queen Victoria emerges as a cranky old lady who was an awful mother and a neglectful queen, favoring a life of mourning for Albert over duties of state. Bertie was inauspicious to begin but eventually, for all his flaws and philandering ways, emerges with a degree of dignity--and ultimately beloved of his people. Not to say, that the whole royal family wasn't a pampered, indolent lot. It's almost comical--their yachts, their taking the cure, their house parties, their vast appetites.
Bertie died just a few years before WWI. But the clouds were gathering and the book provides glimpses Nicky the hapless Czar and William, Bertie's nephew, who becomes Kaiser Wilhelm--a villain if ever there was one.
Like most books that I really like, this story was vivid and easy to inhabit for the duration--a tribute to Jane Ridley's writing and organization of the material....more
This is very much my favorite of the three books by Claire Messud that I've read (The Woman Upstairs, The Emperor's Children). It is a coming of age sThis is very much my favorite of the three books by Claire Messud that I've read (The Woman Upstairs, The Emperor's Children). It is a coming of age story, in which I found much that seemed familiar--which is saying something, since it takes place in the South of France, is about the complicated history of France and Algeria, includes a handicapped brother and a suicide. Messud has a great ear for dialogue, family tension, and just how fraught it is to be an adolescent....more
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