The novel opens with Beatrice, a young girl living in rural Ireland, discovering that her circumscribed life as the daughter of two self-contained and distant parents, can be enlarged through reading and studying birds with her teacher, and later by making lace which she begins to sell at the fam...
This novel has excellent reviews nevertheless, I was a little reluctant to read it based on the storyline...young Irish girl leaves Ireland and goes into service to wealthy family...as it turns out its an excellent story of this young woman's life during WWII while in service to a wealthy and ecc...
I am haunted by this book --- by one of the last scenes in particular, and of course, I can not divulge more. In this story, Mamie Clarke is trying to understand her place in the world, basically as defined by the physiognomy of the female body. While a child living at the family home in Hawaii ...
I would give this three and a half stars. I liked this book but I didn't love it; not because it wasn't good but just because it didn't resonate with me. It's very stylized; the dialogue can be stilted and there are odd spaces in the story. There is a flatness to it, as if all events are given th...