Judith’s Reviews

Next to Love is big in scope while everyday in focus and beautiful in its entirety. It spans the American years from December 1941 to August 1965 (from WWII to the Gulf of Tonkin). And yet, rather than the epic and larger-than-life action that war novels often involve, Next to Love portrays the world of the women left behind, then returned to (or not), and the lives they and their children build under the influence of the ever-present, but rarely-discussed war.

In this novel Juliet Grey is interested in redeeming a much maligned historical figure, who, while usually portrayed as “heedless to headless” was, in fact, a much more sympathetic character. She creates a richly developed inner world for Marie Antoinette from ten-year-old Archduchess of Austria to Dauphine of France on the verge of becoming queen.

The Moonstone is a venerable Victorian classic mystery described by T.S. Eliot as “the first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective novels.” We follow the exotic Moonstone diamond from its home on a Hindu statue through war and intrigue onto the bosom of a proper Victorian lady in a grand country home—only to lose sight of it again for a long but entertaining time. Who took it and where is it? You’ll meet several amusing narrators and wind through intricate clues in this classic, which is available these days as a free e-book.

Van Booy has created a masterful piece of fiction, although it is not an easy read. I found it disorienting at times, and sometimes the masterful demanded I take notice of the author’s skill rather than lose myself in his characters and their world. At the core of Everything Beautiful Began After are three very flawed characters whose emotional crippling as children leads them to unusual relationships as adults. Love and grief take extreme forms that enlighten and intrigue the reader. Click on title to read review.

Ransom focuses on the moment in the Iliad when King Priam retrieves his son Hector’s body from Achilles. In twenty years of teaching that part of the epic, I never survived a class without having to wipe away tears. For me, it is the single most revealing moment in literature about what it means to be human. Nothing tops it. To choose that moment for a book’s primary subject! —audacious and, it turns out, wise.

Waiting for Robert Capa is both a puzzling book and an alluring one. It contains gorgeous, vivid descriptions of life in Paris and Spain in the ‘30s, but we never lose ourselves in Fortes’s imagined semi-fictional world because she tells Robert and Gerda’s story with the all-knowing voice of historical retrospective.

Rhys Bowen’s latest offering in her Royal Spyness series, Naughty in Nice, is pure fun. The French Riviera in 1933, Coco Chanel, Mrs. Simpson and the Duke of Windsor lurking on the sidelines, handsome scoundrels and clever thieves, gorgeous gowns and too much champagne, not to mention a dark, handsome lover and a clever if somewhat naïve young Lady Georgiana (cousin to Queen Mary) out to solve all the puzzles even if it puts her life in danger.

An engaging interview with Elizabeth Speller, author of The Return of Captain John Emmett: what led her to write about the aftermath of WWI, her choice of shellshock (PTSD) and the execution of an officer as foci for the book, and what she discovered along the way of writing it.

Elizabeth Speller joins mystery writers like Jacqueline Winspear in setting her story immediately after World War I, filled with characters fractured by the Great War and trying to pick up the pieces. This debut novel has everything you want in a good mystery: well-developed characters you can’t predict, suspense, love, and twists. It also takes a new approach that works.

Typically historical fiction set in ancient Rome focuses on senators, military geniuses, mad emperors, and a lot of blood. This novel shows a side of Rome most will not be familiar with as it follows four upperclass women through the tumultuous year of the four emperors.