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n0s4a2's review against another edition
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
0.25
bookwormandtheatremouse's review against another edition
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
relaxing
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
laerugo's review against another edition
3.0
this was a nice summer read if i didn't think about it too much, lol. i borrowed this from the library on a whim after seeing it and remembering a friend really liked it, but i didn't know what kind of book it would be or what it was about when i picked it up, so i was a little dismayed to realize it featured a young english girl and her coming of age story as she wrote in her diary... which is not normally the kind of thing i'd pick out for myself. i often got frustrated with characters for being childish (beyond the limits of what i'd consider tolerable, at least, considering half of them were older teenagers). there's a love... pentagon, i guess, with occasionally frustrating notions of "you should've gone for the nice boy who loves you who you don't care about at all."
some parts of this book didn't age well. there's a bizarre subplot of a borderline-abusive father being told he should be allowed to be angry and violent if it produces good art (i don't think domestic abuse is what what the author was getting at, but i think the parallels of domestic violence are too difficult to ignore.) the only person of color, a (black?) woman, is consistently described with awful, unflattering words like "greasy" and the narrator talks about how much she dislikes her for rudeness or nagging or this or that childish reason.
all that said, i read it over a week and if i turned my brain off, i enjoyed large parts of it. cassandra really is a teenager, which works to the author's benefit and downfall sometimes, and she writes and thinks like a teenager writes and thinks, which can be genuinely hard to pull off and still make her likable. i came to like her over time, but it did take a while. other characters were not so lucky: they consistently remained selfish, although of course i see things through cassandra's point of view and i'm sure she's biased.
anyway. give it a go if you like stories about the english countryside and young people in love squares, otherwise, it's really an acquired taste.
some parts of this book didn't age well. there's a bizarre subplot of a borderline-abusive father being told he should be allowed to be angry and violent if it produces good art (i don't think domestic abuse is what what the author was getting at, but i think the parallels of domestic violence are too difficult to ignore.) the only person of color, a (black?) woman, is consistently described with awful, unflattering words like "greasy" and the narrator talks about how much she dislikes her for rudeness or nagging or this or that childish reason.
all that said, i read it over a week and if i turned my brain off, i enjoyed large parts of it. cassandra really is a teenager, which works to the author's benefit and downfall sometimes, and she writes and thinks like a teenager writes and thinks, which can be genuinely hard to pull off and still make her likable. i came to like her over time, but it did take a while. other characters were not so lucky: they consistently remained selfish, although of course i see things through cassandra's point of view and i'm sure she's biased.
anyway. give it a go if you like stories about the english countryside and young people in love squares, otherwise, it's really an acquired taste.
daja57's review against another edition
5.0
This novel is coming-of-age story done in the form of an epistolary novel, written in the form of a journal, although a journal irregularly kept and with very long entries. This means that, despite being narrated in the first person by the protagonist and in the past tense, the reader never knows what the outcome might be . It enables the narrator to comment on the action (eg: "Dancing is peculiar when you really think about it. If a man held you hand and put his arm around your waist without its being dancing, it would be most important; in dancing, you don't even notice it - well, only a little bit."; 2.8) and it allows the reader to sometimes feel that they are 'one step ahead' of the narrator, such as when the reader realises that Stephen is (slavishly) in love with Cassandra before she does.
The book starts by describing the cast of eccentrics that make up the Mortmain family:
Father is the author of a critically successful experimental novel who now suffers from writer's block.
Step-mother Topaz is an ex-model, devoted to her husband, who loves sunbathing nude. Cassandra pokes fun at her for her art and for her consciously artistic views but Topaz holds the family together: "The real Topaz is the one who cooks and scrubs and sews for us all. How mixed people are - how mixed and nice!" (3.14)
Elder sister Rose hates being poor and is prepared to do anything for money, even proposing to become a prostitute or at least marry a rich husband.
Cassandra, the narrator, is a dreamer; she starts as a naive young girl and the book chronicles her passage to maturity.
Thomas, younger brother, is a schoolboy yet he can be very perceptive when necessary.
Stephen is the orphaned family retainer who lives with them and goes out to work and gives them all his money; he is desperately in love with Cassandra but he can't tell her because he feels inferior to her.
They all live in a partially ruined castle in the poorest of circumstances. This is genteel poverty as depicted in so many Victorian books; they have zero income and they've sold their jewellery and most of their furniture ("All we really have enough of is floor."; 2.10) but it doesn't seem to occur to any of them (except the family retainer) to go out and work. Escape from their circumstances depends on Father starting work again, or marrying a rich husband, or living off the earnings of the one working-class member of the household. Not only is there no trace of feminism, the class complacency in this book, of penniless aristocrats nevertheless lording it over the uncultured but hard-working peasantry is staggering. Though, to be honest, this is another faithful reflection of the Austen oeuvre.
A fanfiction mashup?
Towards the end of Chapter 2, the narrator, Cassandra, is discussing with her sister Rose, the re-opening of the nearby stately home and Rose’s desire to marry a man with money (almost any man) and they realise that they are in a position similar to the start of Pride and Prejudice. Rose wants to live in a Jane Austen novel and Cassandra would rather be in a Charlotte Bronte novel and they decide that 50% of each would be perfect.
Cassandra was the name of Jane Austen’s sister in real life.
Almost immediately after meeting the two (somewhat estranged) brothers who are the new owners of Scoatney Hall, Cassandra overhears prickly Neil and easy-going Simon discussing her and Rose in very unflattering terms; one warns the other about gold-digging girls. This is almost a copy of the scene in Pride and Prejudice where protagonist Lizzie overhears stand-offish Mr Darcy disparage her and her sisters to more easy-going Mr Bingley.
Cassandra’s father spends most of his time in the Gatehouse, reading, just like Mr Bennett spends most of his time in the library. But both fathers are perceptive and offer words of wisdom.
Stephen is a poor and stunningly handsome boy who is in love with Cassandra (she gets a funny feeling when she thinks of him but doesn’t think it’s love) and who works for the family (he lives with them and they exist on the wages he earns from the nearby farmer). He adores Cassandra but he knows his place. There is a wistful scene in chapter 7 when she tells him that “gentlemen are men who behave like gentlemen” and he replies that “you can only be a gentleman if you’re born one, Miss Cassandra”. Here are the makings of Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights (admittedly an Emily Bronte novel rather than Charlotte). Stephen is being tempted by a lady photographer to model for him and to act in the movies. Heathcliff, too, had to go away to become rich.
There's a hint, too, of Austen's Sense and Sensibility in which one sister thinks you should marry for money, but ends up marrying for love, and the other sister takes the opposite course.
But if the set-up is a Bronte-Austen mashup, the development of the plot suggests alternative outcomes. Nevertheless, the open ending - which is foreshadowed: in chapter eleven Cassandra says that she doesn't really like "a novel with a brick-wall happy ending - I mean the kind of ending where you never think any more about the characters." - allows one to speculate on what the sequel might have been.
The least Austenish of the characters (except for Stephen, the Bronte intrusion) is Topaz. She's like Mrs Bennett only in the she conspires with Ruth to get her married to a wealthy man and that Cassandra pokes fun at her in the early stages of the novel. But there is a very real side to Topaz. Yes, she used to be a nude model (who still occasionally goes up to London to pose) but her daily life is the usual mother's grind of cooking and cleaning and mending clothes and her relationship with her husband becomes very real when she suspects that he might be committing adultery, if only in his mind. I thought Topaz was a super character who transcended all her stereotypes.
The book starts by describing the cast of eccentrics that make up the Mortmain family:
Father is the author of a critically successful experimental novel who now suffers from writer's block.
Step-mother Topaz is an ex-model, devoted to her husband, who loves sunbathing nude. Cassandra pokes fun at her for her art and for her consciously artistic views but Topaz holds the family together: "The real Topaz is the one who cooks and scrubs and sews for us all. How mixed people are - how mixed and nice!" (3.14)
Elder sister Rose hates being poor and is prepared to do anything for money, even proposing to become a prostitute or at least marry a rich husband.
Cassandra, the narrator, is a dreamer; she starts as a naive young girl and the book chronicles her passage to maturity.
Thomas, younger brother, is a schoolboy yet he can be very perceptive when necessary.
Stephen is the orphaned family retainer who lives with them and goes out to work and gives them all his money; he is desperately in love with Cassandra but he can't tell her because he feels inferior to her.
They all live in a partially ruined castle in the poorest of circumstances. This is genteel poverty as depicted in so many Victorian books; they have zero income and they've sold their jewellery and most of their furniture ("All we really have enough of is floor."; 2.10) but it doesn't seem to occur to any of them (except the family retainer) to go out and work. Escape from their circumstances depends on Father starting work again, or marrying a rich husband, or living off the earnings of the one working-class member of the household. Not only is there no trace of feminism, the class complacency in this book, of penniless aristocrats nevertheless lording it over the uncultured but hard-working peasantry is staggering. Though, to be honest, this is another faithful reflection of the Austen oeuvre.
A fanfiction mashup?
Towards the end of Chapter 2, the narrator, Cassandra, is discussing with her sister Rose, the re-opening of the nearby stately home and Rose’s desire to marry a man with money (almost any man) and they realise that they are in a position similar to the start of Pride and Prejudice. Rose wants to live in a Jane Austen novel and Cassandra would rather be in a Charlotte Bronte novel and they decide that 50% of each would be perfect.
Cassandra was the name of Jane Austen’s sister in real life.
Almost immediately after meeting the two (somewhat estranged) brothers who are the new owners of Scoatney Hall, Cassandra overhears prickly Neil and easy-going Simon discussing her and Rose in very unflattering terms; one warns the other about gold-digging girls. This is almost a copy of the scene in Pride and Prejudice where protagonist Lizzie overhears stand-offish Mr Darcy disparage her and her sisters to more easy-going Mr Bingley.
Cassandra’s father spends most of his time in the Gatehouse, reading, just like Mr Bennett spends most of his time in the library. But both fathers are perceptive and offer words of wisdom.
Stephen is a poor and stunningly handsome boy who is in love with Cassandra (she gets a funny feeling when she thinks of him but doesn’t think it’s love) and who works for the family (he lives with them and they exist on the wages he earns from the nearby farmer). He adores Cassandra but he knows his place. There is a wistful scene in chapter 7 when she tells him that “gentlemen are men who behave like gentlemen” and he replies that “you can only be a gentleman if you’re born one, Miss Cassandra”. Here are the makings of Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights (admittedly an Emily Bronte novel rather than Charlotte). Stephen is being tempted by a lady photographer to model for him and to act in the movies. Heathcliff, too, had to go away to become rich.
There's a hint, too, of Austen's Sense and Sensibility in which one sister thinks you should marry for money, but ends up marrying for love, and the other sister takes the opposite course.
But if the set-up is a Bronte-Austen mashup, the development of the plot suggests alternative outcomes. Nevertheless, the open ending - which is foreshadowed: in chapter eleven Cassandra says that she doesn't really like "a novel with a brick-wall happy ending - I mean the kind of ending where you never think any more about the characters." - allows one to speculate on what the sequel might have been.
The least Austenish of the characters (except for Stephen, the Bronte intrusion) is Topaz. She's like Mrs Bennett only in the she conspires with Ruth to get her married to a wealthy man and that Cassandra pokes fun at her in the early stages of the novel. But there is a very real side to Topaz. Yes, she used to be a nude model (who still occasionally goes up to London to pose) but her daily life is the usual mother's grind of cooking and cleaning and mending clothes and her relationship with her husband becomes very real when she suspects that he might be committing adultery, if only in his mind. I thought Topaz was a super character who transcended all her stereotypes.
jesshaswell's review against another edition
2.5
There were parts of the actual story that I didn't overly care for, but I fell in love with Cassandra and her family. I especially loved the diary format; I can't recall ever reading a book from this time period written in that style, and it really helped to showcase my favourite aspect of reading classic literature - which is the fact that human behaviour and psychology really has not changed very much over time. It was so delightful to read Cassandra's observations and witticisms and worries and realise that a 17 year old now could probably write the same thing. People will always be people and that's terrifying and fascinating and comforting, all at once.
ruby4sure's review against another edition
4.0
Such a lovely book and Cassandra is one of the best narrators - I just know that if I was a 17 year old in the year this was published I would have eaten this up. The narrator is so sincere about everything, which makes her both genuinely and often unintentionally hilarious, as well as offering some very needed reality checks to the adults around her.
The only reason I wouldn't give 5 is because the story relied on my caring or at least having an opinion about the other characters (it's not a complex plot) but unfortunately they all just paled in comparison to the narrators voice. Given it was written as a diary or journal, I think it makes sense for her voice to be the loudest and the others to be reduced to how they interacted with her, but it did make it hard at times to care about how things unfolded and therefore set the time aside to read and 'find out what happens next'.
Wish I had saved it for a holiday in the countryside because it felt a bit disrespectful to the book to be cramming it into my crusty 20 min commutes
The only reason I wouldn't give 5 is because the story relied on my caring or at least having an opinion about the other characters (it's not a complex plot) but unfortunately they all just paled in comparison to the narrators voice. Given it was written as a diary or journal, I think it makes sense for her voice to be the loudest and the others to be reduced to how they interacted with her, but it did make it hard at times to care about how things unfolded and therefore set the time aside to read and 'find out what happens next'.
Wish I had saved it for a holiday in the countryside because it felt a bit disrespectful to the book to be cramming it into my crusty 20 min commutes
mcnallyswife's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0