What do You think about A Woman Of Substance (2006)?
I love historical fiction, and to my mind there aren't enough that focus on the drama of building a business, so the premise of this appealed to me. It's the rag to riches story of a British woman who went from lowly maid to powerful head of a business empire in the early 20th century when women weren't by and large able to rise to such heights. However, the writing style here was puerile romance aisle, and far too wretched to make me willing to stay with this for over 900 trade paperback pages. Within ten pages we have such cliched and purple writing as "implacable mouth" and eyes "cold as steel," (Emma Harte's, our heroine--they're green--classic Mary Sue color--as is those of her granddaughter protege--those are "violet.") and loads of adverb, adjective and simile prose pile-ups and dizzying point of view shifts. I guess there's something to be said for getting engrossed in a trashy book, but I knew dozens, let alone hundreds of pages of this would drive me insane.
—Lisa (Harmonybites)
I stayed up later than I usually do in order to finish this book, not because I was riveted, but because I just couldn't stomach one more evening spent on it. It's so long. Length is not itself a deterrent for me, but when it's so much unnecessary length of so little substance (heh...irony), it becomes tedious. I don't need to know everything everyone wore on every occasion. I get it. She's pretty and dresses better than everyone else could possibly hope to dress. Save the detailed descriptions for first impressions. On the upside, I bet it made the job of costuming for the mini-series super easy. They didn't have to imagine what anyone was wearing - Bradford already told them.I also grew weary of Emma Harte. I didn't dislike her, but I didn't really like her either. The sum of my reaction to her is a begrudging "Okay, I guess I see why you made that choice," with a side of "...but I suspect that this will end badly for you," followed inevitably by a "See? I told you so."
—Suzanne
This book is a hula hoop. It is crowding frat boys into phone booths, it is savory jello salads with miracle whip. In short, it was a runaway success and completely of its time. It doesn't translate well for readers in a different era. I've not ever read this before but I've often heard it spoken of and referred to. When it was a Kindle Unlimited selection I figured the price was right. Sadly, I'm just not fitted for this book. It is written in the style popular during the 50s, 60s and 70s--lots of infodumps, lots of words, lots of telling. After a very lengthy intro from the author about how famous the book is and how much she, the author, single-handedly revolutionized fiction (name-dropping the film stars from her book's adaptation all the while) the story itself starts. We are immediately on a plane streaking through a "vaporous haze of cumulus clouds". That's the wordy style popular in mid-century modern literature, Nevermind that clouds are a vaporous haze and so the extra words are there in the same way there is flocking on wallpaper...because at the time the style was popular because it _seems fancy_. We are introduced to this Woman Of Substance as she exposits to her heir apparent and ponders the inner workings of her empire. The character is not appealing to me; perhaps if Id first met her as the poor urchin she was in the beginning I might have an empathy for her story. Instead I met a hardened old woman who hates most of her children and pins her hope (and scenery chewing lecture) on a granddaughter who isn't quite so eager to alienate the world in pursuit of cash. I know that in the world of Bobbsey Twins and Peyton Plage this savvy businesswoman was probably revolutionary for fiction. Now she's as tired as Alexis Carrington, Gordon Gekko and every other grasping relic of the 20th Century's money-mad ways. I skimmed a bit and skimmed a bit more. But this book just isn't for me. I've spent more time on this review than I had expected to, simply because it spurred me on to ponder just how much fiction has changed--for better and worse--and just how much the popularity of the book is owing to the times it was released as opposed to any true power of the story itself or the way that story was told.
—Katherine Coble
