Review of 'Ruth Hall; A Domestic Tale of the Present Time' by Fanny Fern

Although I love reading older novels, it can sometimes be really hard to relate to them. We no longer live in a world where we need chaperones to wander around, or where you can only travel by foot, horse or train, or where you have to send letters to contact people. But the issues involved in this book are things that I still come into contact with all the time. It was startling, but nice to finally be able to properly connect with a female protagonist of the 1800s.

The novel opens just before Ruth Ellet marries Harry Hall. She's lucky: they genuinely love each other, and the match is a good one. Her family have money, but are only too glad to get the only girl of the family off of their hands. The Halls are not as wealthy. After their marriage, Ruth and Harry make do with the little money they have and are happy. They have their first child, and she is a wonderful creature, but dies young. Ruth is devastated, and struggles to recover from her grief.

Behind the backdrop of this family unit, is a pair of overbreaing in-laws. Harry's mother criticises everything Ruth does; she insults her housekeeping, spies on her, critiques the way she brings up her children, and has no sympathy for the mother who has lost a child. 

Soon Ruth and Harry have another two girls, and the family is becoming more financially stable. Ruth is happy. Suddenly Harry is struck with an illness. His parents won't take it seriously, and by time the doctor is permitted to be called it is too late. Harry passes away and Ruth is left alone to look after their young girls. But what about the Halls who always wanted more involvement in the pairs' marriage? They don't think they ought to support the young widow - she's not their child after all. Despite being very well off, Ruth's father and brother considered her done with: they felt that as she had married into the Hall's family, she was not their concern anymore. The village that her and Harry lived in loved the little family so much that they raised money for the poor widow, but her brother took it, vowing he would give it to her himself, yet he never did.

Ruth is forced to live on a pittance that her father guilt trips her about endlessly. It's hard for a woman to find work and she goes into poverty stricken lodgings. Ruth tries a variety of forms of work, but she is too physically weak for manual labour: grief has hit her hard.

Soon, Ruth struggles to raise enough income to support both children, and reluctantly agrees to allow her eldest to live with the Halls. She is determined to improve her monetary situation and get her daughter back asap. Ruth finally turns to writing, and after a long and strenuous toil begins to achieve some success from it. Writing saves both her mind and body.

I loved this book so much. Overbearing in-laws are the bane of my life, and I felt like I knew exactly how frustrated Ruth felt. It was also fab to see a girl win her own place in the world, and prove everybody that tore her down wrong. If you want a feel-good classic that's not as long as a Dicensian novel, or as wordy as a Hardy, then I would 100% recommend giving this a go.

Have you read it? What did you think?

My 10 favourite classics of all time

I think it's been over a year now since I posted anything other than just a straight up review on here, and I've decided to make things a little bit more varied over the next couple of months. I'm kick-starting this with this super-quick top 10 classics post. Hopefully (maybe?) it'll inspire your choice in the next classic to read, or you'll be able to relate with me on some level about my love for that particular text. So, without any further babble, let's go. 

In no particular order, here are my 10 favourite classic texts of all time:

1.) Pablo Neruda's poetry, in particular 'Ode to the Clothes'. He manages to make the most ordinary of things the most beautiful, and really changed my opinion of what poetry could do.

2.) Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Let's face it, this was always going to be on my list, I mean, I am an ex-English student after all. This was the first text I ever remember studying in which it was clear that the author had imbued every scene with symbolism and hidden meanings.

3.) Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus. This is one of his earliest and least famous texts. It's also one of his bloodiest and seeing it at the RSC was a once-in-a-lifetime treat for me that I'll never forget.

4.) Dickens' Bleak House. Part of me has no idea why I like this - it's long, I had to make a physical list of characters so I didn't get confused, and the plot has about 17 thousand strands. But, seeing all those strands come together and finally reading a book in which Dickens offered a fairly realistic insight into the mind of a woman (for once) made it all worth it. 

5.) Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. Pre-warn: there are going to be a fair few Victorian texts on here, but I love them, so we're all just gonna have to deal with it. This is possibly my favourite book of all time, and it's something that I really savour coming back to time and time again. I've possibly read it five? times now and each time I come away feeling bowled over by this woman's incredible writing.

6.) Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. I actually remember borrowing this off of my mum when I was a teenager and I fell totally in love with the whole Jane-Rochester debacle. I'd tried reading Austen before, and assumed all Victorian texts fell under the same dreary brush (sorry Austen fans), but this definitely opened up my eyes to the power of Victorian literature.

7.) Stoker's Dracula. I've got a little confession here: I only actually read this for the first time about a year and a half ago. It's one of those texts that was so hyped up I was actually put off of it. When I read it however I was totally wowed by how many of our notions about Vampires come from this one text, and how forward it was in terms of discussing sex.

8.) Hardy's Tess of the D'Ubervilles. All I can say is that I warned you about how much of this would be Victorian. Sorry not sorry. Seriously though, get your hands on an unedited copy of this and you can get a real insight into how society treated a 'fallen' aka non-virginial woman, way back when.

9.) Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. This broke my heart and mended it all over again about seven times. If you're looking for an insight into the world of America's slave trade, then this is a good place to start.

10.) Donne's 'The Broken Heart'. I actually read this Medieval poem when I was studying my a-levels, in an attempt to secure some extra reading to help with my university application. What I didn't envision was falling totally in love with it and finding what still remains my favourite poem of all time.

I honestly thought I was going to struggle to think of 10 texts, but here I am struggling to contain all my favourites within a mere list of ten. I feel like writing this post in itself has been a journey for me, reminding me of why I love reading, and why certain books touched me at certain points in my life. I'm also feeling totally inspired to get back in to reading poetry and plays, to the extent that I'm now considering having a 'poem of the week' post once a week. Would you guys like that? I'd love to hear some input!

Review of "Us"

It took me about four years after "One Day" was published to actually get around to reading it despite the hype ... and that might have been because I wanted to watch the film (pretty much a crime, I know!). I've been similarly slow with this book by David Nicholls, but not quite to the same extent! Despite the raving reviews that I've seen scattered over the interwebs, I was actually a little disappointed. Reading is a chance to escape things, and this book pretty much felt like I was being endlessly slapped around the face with a chipping away of hope over and over again. Now, I can't speak for anyone else, but I usually want to like my protagonists, but let's face it, Douglas is a bit of a dick. I have to say though, this kind of worked in the book's favour - I think we need to be reminded sometimes that we all have a bit of an asshole inside of us that always seems to come out at the worst of times. We all make mistakes, and unlike what the majority of novels suggest, a multitude of "sorrys" and a romantic gesture can't always fix something that's broken.

Douglas Petersen is woken in the middle of the night by his wife of almost twenty years, Connie, stating that she wants a divorce. Not only is Douglas unaware of anything being wrong with their relationship (whoops), the timing is unfortunate as they're about to take their 17-year-old son Albie on a Grand Tour of Europe - something which Connie doesn't want to put off despite their marital dilemma. Douglas is left to consider exactly what he's done wrong, or rather not done right, in the twenty years they've been together, and as they move across Europe he realises that he's perhaps not been the most perfect husband and father. Despite this slow epiphany (oxymoron much, sorry!), he aggressively publicly denounces Albie as an embarrasment, causing Albie to run away across Europe alone. Now Douglas is left with a slightly larger conundrum: how does he get both his wife and son back?!

Author: David Nicholls

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Published: 2014

Rating:

Review of "Follow Me Follow You"*

This was my favourite line from the whole book. Although this doesn't directly give details of the plot of the book, it does actually speak true to what the characters are dealing with: the past. Now, although everyone says "never judge a book by it's cover", I'm a sucker for a book with intriguing cover art. So, when I first received this from Choc Lit I was quite put off. However, once I started reading I realised that (thankfully) the cover did not do justice to the contents of the novel.

Without giving too many spoilers, and going too deep into the plot, I'm going to give a quick summary of the book. The key protagonist is Victoria Noble, a recent divorcee with a four year old son (Seth) who hates her. She is co-owner of a social media firm called EweSpeak, and is slightly hung up over her past with actor Chris Frampton. In an effort to go "back to basics" to repair her relationship with her son, Victoria moves back to the town in which she grew up. Once there, she discovers that her past could just be the key to creating her and Seth's future ...

When I first started reading I got really worried. We Need To Talk About Kevin is my all-time favourite  book and it looked like Follow Me Follow You was going to go down the same plot route. However, the tension between Victoria and Seth was not the only plot strand of the novel. Chris and his son Ricky made a touching pair in the face of their tragedy. Plus, not only was it well written, but contained many narrative ideas and styles which I hadn't really come across. I personally loved the whole idea of EweSpeak, which is effectively twitter. The "bleats" (aka tweets) at the start of each chapter were such a unique and funny addition to the book. Also, the way in which certain key issues were handled (*ahem* I did warn no spoilers) was realistic and touching.

All in all, I loved this book, and after the first couple of chapters I couldn't put it down!

Have you read it? What did you think?

Get it here!

Steph x